And that level is ignorance.
And that would be your level.
This tells me you missed the point completely. With the advent of time keeping, we can race individual racers one at a time and the awards goes to the ones with the three lowest times. All race times will be kept secret until all racers completed their runs. The only pressure in the racer's head will be the knowledge of the current time record and the uncertainty of who could beat his or hers later.
But that is neither how we race nor how we want to race. We want the physical presence and psychological pressures of fellow competitors as well as the pressure of knowledge of the current time record. So despite the fact that the awards are given to the top three finishers, EACH of the contestants are more focused on breaking the time record than on finishing first.
This is where you missed the point completely: That you will always have the opportunity to race against a time record than against a fellow racer, especially if that racer lives in another continent and is well known in the sport, but you will always know the immutable record of what he/she has done and trains for it. Or rather against it.
You will never know who is going to be next to you on the starting line. If the world's best tripped while getting out of the bathtub and died before the meet, you will still have what he accomplished to race against. Not against the world's second best next to you. Not against the unknown several spots down the line. The advent of time keeping elevated international sports to entirely new levels in that such knowledge compelled new training techniques, products, and even humans, across the world.
Again, and this shows your level of comprehension. What you're trying to proof the whole time is how much those swimmers deserve the medals, which is what I've never denied in the first place.
It's not a matter of how they race, but who they knew they're racing "again", when they know how the other performs after numerous of racing against them. The faster swimmers knew as long as they push themselves to the limit, the outcome won't be too much different, which is winning. And this has nothing to do with how much contestants they're racing against each time.
My argument is based on how poor the medal distribution that killed the meaning of the medals. It doesn't take 30 rounds to show how fast the same swimmers are, against the slow ones, and award the same ones 30 times.
Your silly "if"s, doesn't change the fact that the medals goes to the ones who win the race,
NOT breaking the record. As well as over half of US's medals/golds, as of now, came from the pool, where China has gotten theirs from more different sports, including table tennis, which the number of medals are shredded.
Not to mention the stuffs you've proved also applies to other type of races, but you would never see how those races offers as many medals.
I know you want to downplay the Americans' accomplishment out of nationalistic fervor for China, but yours is a feeble criticism and seemingly reflect no experience at formal competition in either combative sports or else. Try yours on the Chinese Olympians and see how much they will laugh at you.
And this is where your problem is, you're assuming me trying to downplay Americans' accomplishment the whole time. While me never blamed/questioned a thing about their accomplishments.
Meaning is subjective.
Humans aren't cars, and by comparing the two you are implying that American Swimmers have some sort of inherent natural advantage against other swimmers.
You got it wrong again.
It is the
proven faster swimmers kept racing against the
proven slower ones repeatedly, that killed the meaning of those medals after a certain amount of races.
so stop your bs here
China's Lin Dan beats Malaysia's Lee Chong Wei in men's singles badminton. 
