Waving the white flag....

Less and less is that true...........and then I guess it depends on what "OK" means to an individual.

Yeah, this is what I see more and more of even at the AG level.  Guys can ride 22-24 mph pretty regularly, and a 6:00/mile run will keep you in most races (at least at the local/regional level).....but increasingly, I see guys who can do that, and hold 1:10-1:15/100 in the swim (and many faster).  If you are swimming 1:30-1:45/100, which 10 years ago was decent for AG triathlon, you're pretty much not in the race at sprint and Oly distance. 

Go ahead and get out of the water in a sprint swim (750M) at 12 minutes and see what happens....and good luck.  Get out of the water in an Oly in 25-27 minutes (again, not too shabby a few years ago) and you will find yourself in a 5-8 minute hole pretty regularly.....have fun. 

It's not as dramatic at long course racing...........yet. 

In years to come if you can't swim you can't win.....watch and see. 

First, on Oly is 1.5 K.....so your numbers are even more abysmal per minute.

Second, yeah, it was horrible back in the day.

Third, I don't know where you are racing that you can get on a podium with a 2:00/100 swim, but you aren't anywhere near the races we go to.

Pros?  Go look at AG National Sprint/Oly from last year......it's a race you don't even have to qualify for at the sprint level.....2:00/100?  You're not even racing, much less on a podium. (and that swim was about 80M long for the sprint)

ETA - my comments have nothing to do with long course racing......I specifically said as much. 

A quick look at AG Sprint nationals (no qualification) showed the first person with a 2:XX swim in 294th place......no podium there.  

If you couldn't hit 1:30 you could barely crack the top 50. 

For the Oly race a 2:XX swim didn't make the top 1000...........just saying. LOL

As I said, yeah.....for now. 

Again, a few more years down the road and you won't be able to win a 70.3 without a really decent swim.....eventually it'll catch the IM distance too. 

Triathlon is finally becoming a 3 sport race in the U.S......that's a good thing.

Good observation, you are defintely seeing this with ITU popularity and how fast you have to be to make the first pack then put that same emphasis on AG non draft short course racing swim times are coming down. More and more young people who grew up swimming are finding they have a second sport bike/run they are pretty good at and they didn't know it because all of their time was spent in the water and you are now seeing the results. Remember Macca never was able to get his swims times down to the current ITU levels when he made his attempt at the Olympics.

But for a lot of people putting in that much work on the swim just doesn't pay great dividends.

I'm going to come at this from a different angle.  The more I've swum, the more I've enjoyed it.  Of course, that might be because I've really enjoyed my masters group, and it's great to have people to do the workouts with.  My solo swimming has also improved quite a bit.

As for races, I dunno, I derive a personal challenge in trying to do better.  If you don't, that's fine.  Pick your own goals.

This basically summarizes my current attitude towards swimming. 

As other have said above, with limited time to train, to make any decent gains in my swim would be at the sacrifice of the bike and run.

Last season I was similar to the OP at about 1:50/100 meters and I ended up on the podium (for my AG) for the majority of my Sprint races - the bike and particularly the run ended up saving me.

To be clear, these are the local Sprint tris and not AG nationals - roughly between 300 to 500 racers.

Looking back at a few races, sure there were guys in my AG swimming 1:30/100 but then they would run at 5:00/km and lose their lead.

Its possible last year was an exception and I won't be competitive this year, but for the time being there is no incentive to drastically improve my swim when I was doing well relative to my AG.