More on the Apolitical Front

51 thoughts on “More on the Apolitical Front”

1. Fabulous post!!!
   I coach Master’s swimming and swam in college.
   I heard about some of the results, but havent had time to go read in debth.
   200 fly in 1:39 is amazing. Truly amazing.
   200 im in 1:41 is likewise amazing. I need to see what his breaststroke split was.

2. My trainer is an ex-college swimmer. He will be delighted that I know something about it for once.

3. 200 fly used to be one of the hardest things there was to swim. Phelps makes it look easy. When I was in high school over 25 years ago, the state record for 200 free was 1:41, which I thought was just absurdly fast.
   Phelps split 29.94 for the breaststroke leg, which means he was absolutely on fire for the other three legs. I could do about 27 flat for a 50 sprint, but in the IM I was more like 34 seconds.
   I swam college for one season. Near the end of that season I had no knees and no shoulders left, so I bagged it. Looking back, I was probably only a few seconds from my best possible performance, which would not have been competetive in Division I.

4. Improved suit technology?
   New Swimsuits
   Univ of Buffalo, but just first search response. Of course, that might predict a wave of record breaking, but should be generally improved times, not one particular individual standing out.

5. What is SCY?

6. First, those suits have been around for a while. I was seeing them rather frequently when I swam Master’s back in 2001. The point about the drag increasing is kind of…well, not well put. The best thing the suits could do is detach the flow from the body, and a good way to do that is to induce some small-scale turbulence at the boundary. Think: golf balls.
   Second, I’ve heard that the suits do more for body position (which changes drag) than for drag outright. As in most things equipment-related, data is in short supply.
   I’m not an aerodynamicist, so I probably worded that imprecisely. Deal.

7. SCY = Short Course Yards. Pool is 25 yards long
   SCM = Short Course Meters. Pool is 25 meters long
   LCM = Long Course Meters. Pool is 50 meters long.

8. Those suits are a cool improvement. Slart is correct that they have been around for 4 or 5 years. Master’s swimmers are eating up those suits. Anything to get an edge.
   When I was in college, 1:39 would have finaled in our conference meet for the 200 free. I think the fastest 200 flyer was 1:46. (Certainly not me!)

9. While I’m always pleased to see records being broken, there’s some things that niggle at me about this. First of all, I wonder if we are getting closer to the limit and we are now going to see even faster times, largely because water can dissipate body heat, which is why we don’t see this this kind of record breaking in track and field. This means that the sport of swimming have to deal with the questions of technology. Already, I read about suits that reduce drag, increase bouyancy, etc. This is not a slam on swimming: this happens in virtually every sport where technology is allowed to play a part.
   Also, when you have high school students breaking world records, you have to wonder about attempts to dictate choices to people in the same age groups. I realize that swimming a 200 yard butterfly shouldn’t be taken as granting certain societal privileges, but it raises questions. In fact, DeLong points out the correlation between menarch and development. (a linked post is here at Fistful of Euros) It’s an interesting discussion, and I’m not suggesting that lowered age of menarche causes anything. But I remember someone pointing out that Mark Spitz’s gold medal times wouldn’t even qualify him for the Olympics. Now, I worry we are getting to the point where his times wouldn’t even get him on the high school swim club.

10. It is an interesting question. At one point in time, Rowdy Gaines was considered an old man by swimming at 23/24. Now, there are a lot of “old” men swimming darn fast.
    I was at a meet three or so years ago where a 50 year old wentr 1:49 in 200 free and 9:49 in the 1000.

11. There was a good article in the the NYT magazine about a remarkable woman swimmer. The details escape me, but she had blown out her shoulder backstroking I think and developed such a strong kick while rehabbing that she posted astonishing results when she came back. Maybe the point was that she didn’t have a good body structure for swimming (except for great flexibility) which made her results especially surprising. Anyway, I think she had a fever at the Olympics and didn’t do well and that was that.
    I’m a very bad swimmer, to the point of being more like a good drowner.

12. Having high schoolers as among the best of the best in world class swimming is not a new thing. Janet Evans, after all, was fifteen years old and barely over five feet tall when she started setting records and stomping the snot out of the East German mutants. Janet may start losing the last of her records soon, but she can take comfort in the knowledge that she held some of them longer than Erich Honecker’s slave state/ongoing criminal conspiracy managed to keep its claws on theirs.
    As for Michael Phelps, it’s hard to see how he can top his performance in Athens when he gets to Beijing in 2008, but it’s going to be a lot of fun to watch him try.

13. Sure Scott (and your post about Olympic swimming at Tacitus, a sport that I have little interest in, was fantastic), but whereas the precocious high schooler was the exception, I think we are moving towards when it will be the rule. Though will’s points out that it may not be so. Since there are so many of y’all who are knowledgeable about this, do you think that we will see the same basic age distribution or a reverse bell curve or a shift?

14. But I remember someone pointing out that Mark Spitz’s gold medal times wouldn’t even qualify him for the Olympics.

    Well, that’s certainly not a new conversation. I think you’ll see that every sport has seen its records edge down quite a bit, except perhaps the long jump. I have no explanation for that one, except Bob Beamon must have done it exactly right.
    Other things have changed than equipment, LJ. Training techniques, training time and intensity, and advances in technique and body position have all brought times down. I remember being a senior in high school, reading in utter astonishment at Steve Lundquist’s times in the 100 breaststroke. No one could possibly ever break those records, I thought. Thought wrong, it turned out. Lunk busted a few paradigms when he quit training swimming in favor of weights, to good effect. I believe John Moffett beat him in the 100, setting a new record, and it annoyed Lundquist so much that he broke that record in the first half of the 200 breaststroke, en route to a new record in that event as well. Amazing guy.
    Also, who could have predicted Return of the Killer Tomatoes?

15. I probably ought to mention that a fairish chunk of our collegiate talent comes from other countries. Ous Mellouli, for example, is a Tunisian whose name is going to be rather prominent at the next Olympics. He just keeps on getting better, and he’s already very, very good. The Aussies and the British mostly don’t come here for college, but we’ve got major talent from many other countries here.

16. I think you’ll see that every sport has seen its records edge down quite a bit, except perhaps the long jump.
    I don’t know. Track and field doesn’t seem to have the kind of record breaking that swimming has now. And you don’t have high school students suddenly popping up and surprising everyone on the 100 meters. Again, Scott might be able to correct me, but the last youngster who made such an impact in track was Zola Budd. But you see this youth movement as an anomaly or a trend?
    It also makes me wonder about how much talent there is out in the world that we just don’t know about.

17. To counter what I just said above, I found this interesting page that breaks down the 2000 and 2004 races into a number of different measures. Though I only understand a fraction of it, I would love to see a longer comparison.

18. I would naively think that people are designed to run and do so well naturally, while we are not designed to swim (pace the aquatic ape theorists) and are still learning how to do it right.

19. Dunno; people are still learning to run better. Swimming better…that should be a gimme.
    Of course there’s always the question of who’s using PEDs, but swimmers are screened with at least as much rigor as other athletes, so: probably no more than what the most tightly monitored other sports are getting away with.

20. “Dunno; people are still learning to run better. Swimming better…that should be a gimme.”
    I think that was my point. Didn’t want to mention PEDs, but did wonder. Of course there’s better nutrition and meds too.

21. Hmmmm, that’s a good point. But if they create a body suit that can effectively channel off body heat, in middle and long distance races, you’ll see records broken by minutes rather than seconds.

22. Actually, sprinting records are still being improved–the 100 meter record for men has actually progressed past the 9.79 mark that Ben Johnson managed with the massive aid of anabolic steroids in 1988, and Asafa Powell (the current record holder at 9.77 seconds) is so far not the target of more than pro forma accusations that he’s doping. Michael Johnson shaved a full third of a second off the 200 meter men’s record (lowering it to 19.32 seconds) less than a decade ago. Women’s records have been a tad more stagnant (thanks to FloJo’s marks from the late 1980’s–which, of course, still suffer from the taint of suspicion of enhancement).

23. Sure Scott (and your post about Olympic swimming at Tacitus, a sport that I have little interest in, was fantastic),
    Thanks. 🙂 I was pretty proud of these two as well. Swimming is always a good place to look if you’re seeking out great Olympic dramas–including morality tales like the East German steroid conspiracy.
    but whereas the precocious high schooler was the exception, I think we are moving towards when it will be the rule.
    Teenage Olympic swimming champions have actually been relatively common over the years among women. Dawn Fraser was 19 when she won her first gold in 1956. Janet Evans was 17 when she won triple gold in Seoul. Shane Gould won three golds in Munich as a 15 yr old, then retired at 16. Shirley Babashoff was only 19 and in her *second* Olympics when she suffered her four magnificent defeats at the hands of the East German cheaters.
    Men have tended to mature later, and last longer. Spitz was 22 when he won septuple gold in Munich. The ever-remarkable Duke Paoa Kahinu Mokoe Hulikohola Kahanamoku (aka The Big Kahuna) was thirty when he won the 100 meter gold for the second time at Antwerp in 1920, and thirty-four when he finished second to Johnny Weissmuller (aka Tarzan, of course) in 1924. Alexander Popov remained a dangerous speed swimmer well after his thirtieth birthday.
    Phelps *has* matured rather young–he won eight medals at a younger age than Spitz was when he managed to win only two at Mexico City. Ian Thorpe also matured rather young–he’ll still only be 25 at Beijing, which will be his third Olympiad. It’s interesting, but I’m not sure I see any patterns significantly at odds with past history.

24. Thanks Scott, and thanks for linking those, though I did read them. I guess my amazement at young swimmers is more based on my lack of abilities as a teen rather than any objective measure ;^)
    I do think that the youth movement in all sports was triggered by the social dislocations in WWII. When Stephen Ambrose was asked what mistakes he found in Saving Private Ryan, he said that you needed to get a 20 year old to replace Tom Hanks…
    Of course, it will be interesting to see what happens in China, which has the confluence of population, nationalism, and a state controlled system. In fact, I think you can see some reaction where some sports associations are putting age limits to participation. In figure skating, a Japanese skater couldn’t go to Torino because she was too young (by a month or two). This was quite fortunate in a sense, because Ando Miki, who had some previous success and had been signed to a large number of sponsorship deals, would have been bumped. As it was, she performed terribly, though with the amount of pressure that Japanese athletes undergo when they are on the world stage, it amazes me when they do do well.
    OT, but I was wondering if you were going to write up something about Kirby Puckett?

25. I thought about doing a lengthy Kirby piece, but I mostly followed his career at a remove (the Dodgers are my team, by geography and choice), and I have no interest in rehashing the sadness of his last decade out of the game. I did make a comment here noting the ironic timing of Kirby Puckett–who was honored greatly after his short career and died young–dying only a week after Buck O’Neil (who has brought a similar joy to his approach to the game as a player, coach, scout, and living historical resource) was denied entry to the Hall of Fame at age 94.

26. On the other hand, perhaps Barry Bonds weight gain over the last few years should not be ascribed to steroids, but instead to eating too many of these.

27. We used to shave down before big meets. Because we believed it made us faster. It was the believing that was important.

28. There are still three big targets for anyone chasing Janet Evans to shoot at–she still holds the records for 400, 800, and 1500 meters–and all of those records predate the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. Looking at the other long-course records for women–most of which were set in the last five or six years–those three marks resemble something carved on the monoliths at Stonehenge by comparison, an astonishing accomplishment for someone who never had a remotely credible accusation of doping directed at her. If one or more of those marks fall in the next year, it will be huge news.

29. If anyone’s going to break Janet Evans’ remaining records, I’m convinced it’ll be Kate Zeigler.
    Anyone else recall the wonderful smell of freshly applied Time-Off?

30. “There was a good article in the the NYT magazine about a remarkable woman swimmer. The details escape me, but she had blown out her shoulder backstroking I think and developed such a strong kick while rehabbing that she posted astonishing results when she came back. Maybe the point was that she didn’t have a good body structure for swimming (except for great flexibility) which made her results especially surprising. Anyway, I think she had a fever at the Olympics and didn’t do well and that was that.”
    Natalie Coughlin? I remember a New Yorker article, not a NY Times article, but I think that’s her. Love her. She won 2 golds, 2 silvers, one bronze. Some of those were in relays, it wasn’t a dominating Olympics, but it was pretty damn great.

31. Natalie Coughlin? I remember a New Yorker article, not a NY Times article, but I think that’s her. Love her. She won 2 golds, 2 silvers, one bronze. Some of those were in relays, it wasn’t a dominating Olympics, but it was pretty damn great.
    [Scott smiles nostalgically, and decides to quote himself]:
    Natalie Coughlin stood on the starting block, waiting for the sound of the tone that would start the women’s 4 by 200 meter freestyle relay. She had been tapped to swim the first leg of the relay for the United States. Though [she was] well-regarded, few could have imagined that as the tone went off and the eight first leg swimmers sliced into the water, the next eight minutes would see the end of a horrid legacy that began before any of the women churning through the water had been born.
    […]
    Coughlin cut through the water like a barracuda, and—after trailing slightly early on—had clearly taken the lead at 150 meters. She had good motivation to succeed—the US men had scored a major victory in the same event the night before, with Klete Keller holding off Australia’s greatest swimmer—Ian Thorpe—in a stirring duel in the anchor leg to clinch gold for America. Tonight, it was the turn of the women to shine. She continued to zip along, and when she touched the wall at the 200 meter mark—freeing Carly Piper, the second leg swimmer for the United States, to dive in for her own 200 meter trek-—she had put up a time that would have won the gold medal in the 200 meter final the night before. Unknown to her, it had also put the US team more than 2 seconds ahead of the pace of the oldest major swimming record on the books—and the final stain left by a monstrous crime.
    […]
    The four women who had accomplished so much in the time consumed by a long morning shower squealed and embraced each other as the crowd began chanting “USA! USA!” They had won the gold medal, and managed to fully live up to the mark that their male counterparts had set the night before. More importantly—they had finished the task of restoring the honor of the sport as far as could be accomplished by the athletes who sustain it can do. There are still legacies of the East German criminal conspiracy to be dealt with in other sports, and honors granted in swimming itself that remain in hands where they do not belong—but those tasks must be taken up by others outside of the boundaries of a 50 meter pool. In achieving greatness for themselves and their country, Coughlin, Piper, Vollmer, and Sandeno have accomplished far more—they have cleansed the legacy of their sport.
    A great Olympics indeed.

32. If anyone’s going to break Janet Evans’ remaining records, I’m convinced it’ll be Kate Zeigler.
    Makes sense–if she can beat the times in the odd distances around the official world marks, she should be able to beat the times Janet set on long courses at the World Championships or in Beijing. It’s just a matter of time, and training.

33. Thanks, Katherine, you’re right. Here’s the article.
    I guess I was set up by “people who follow swimming had begun comparing her to the greatest racers in history” and so forth, and it turns out in fact I was remembering her being sick at Worlds, not the Olympics.

34. We used to shave down before big meets. Because we believed it made us faster. It was the believing that was important.
    I read an interview with Pieter van den Hoogeband (who wants to see his 4th Olympics to prolongate his title on the 100m freestyle yet another Olympic term – though it would be a real unexpected suprise if he managed to do it 🙂 ). he said that all swimmers still shave, not because they believe it makes them faster but partly for tradition and superstition, and partly because the waterflow feels nicer on your body.

35. For Nat, that was underachievement. I wrote about her on my old weblog, which now seems to have finally collapsed entirely.

36. I clipped the post, because, well, I needed to preserve it’s incomprehensibility:

    Not that this is news, but it hasn’t been exactly front-page, so while we’re posting odd bits about gorilla/sand flea crossbreeds and the like, we can certainly make a diversion into the realm of sports.
    One of the older American and US Open) Records (on the books is (was, actually) Janet Evans’ 1990 time of 4:34.39 in the 500 yard freestyle. Seventeen-year-old Kate Ziegler has wiped that record off the books, by taking over one second from the old mark. Way back in December, Kate erased another of Janet’s records from the board, knocking the old 1000 yard freestyle standard down by six-tenths of a second. We’re looking at SCY because at present most swimming at the High School level is done in 25-yard pools, and Kate Ziegler is still in High School. Last month Kate whacked over a second and a half from Sippy Woodhead’s quarter-century-old 800m (short course) freestyle American and US Open record. To understate, this is a name to look for in upcoming competition. Also noteworthy is young (16 years old) Katie Hoff, who surpassed Evans’ 500 free record just a week too late. Katie has wiped a couple of American & US Open records from the books; this performance in the 500 free shows a deepening of talent.

    What I get out of this is that it involves gorrillas and fleas. Something about timing. Swimming is involved.
    Uh, okay. I guess this says things to someone. And I assume it must say a lot to a lot, or it wouldn’t be there. That it’s incomprehensible to others, probably is also the norm. We are all separate sets of people. Weird, though.

37. My take: More people have their kids in the pool for 3 or 4 hours a day. Yet even a tiny flaw in the stroke during this amount of workot can lead to an injury, My son’s old friend was state champion multiple times and twice got to Olympic trials, but now she is off the radar at the age of 19 or 20.

38. That it’s incomprehensible to others, probably is also the norm. We are all separate sets of people. Weird, though.
    Since we are all seperate sets of people either you have gained the ability to enter other people’s mind, or you wanted to state that it is incomprehenseble to you 🙂
    I don’t know the abbreviation but assume it is communicates a lenght of swimming bath. Other than that it was pretty clear to me what the author intendend.

39. dutchmarbel: see here.

40. Anarch: tnx, I assumed it was something like that, though I’m not used to yards so I slightly wrongly assumed he ment the 25 mtrs one.

41. I think Gary’s the first one to have found this post incomprehensible. Or, maybe more likely, he’s the first to have confessed.

42. I don’t mean to gang up here, but it’s really nice to see a post about something that someone really loves rather than the usual fare, and the potential confusion (like the unmatched parentheses) signals a bit of excitement that is refreshing. Not a slam on any other posters (and I think von’s news would be in the things one loves category), just noting that it tends to not be that way.

43. Ah: the light goes on. Fixed, and thanks.
    Oh, the embarrassment.

44. Anarch: tnx, I assumed it was something like that, though I’m not used to yards so I slightly wrongly assumed he ment the 25 mtrs one.
    I wasn’t aware they had SCY pools any more, although being the US I’m not too surprised. Back when I were a lad and training seriously, I swam in a 50m pool — but I can barely make 25m nowadays, sad to say. [At least, swimming a real stroke; I can do it with lazy-breaststroke or backfloat or whatever.] It requires the wrong kind of endurance, unfortunately.

45. There are a great many SCY pools still in this country. If you check, most college meets are SCY, as are nearly all HS pools. Where you live may of course be an exception; I had thought you lived in Wisconsin, and the state meet there is SCY.
    The pool I worked out in back when I was swimming Masters was SCY in width, LCM in length and the diving well was SCM. Pretty flexible, but also very expensive. Occasionally the NCAA championships are done SCM, but not every year. I don’t know offhand with what frequency that is done. Two years ago it was SCM; that’s the only occurrence I can find.

46. As an afterthought, the SCM/SCY/LCM distances seem to be seasonal. LCM meets are mostly held in the summer, while SCM meets are in the fall and winter and SCY meets are held in the winter and spring. Not having been around the national competitive circuit all that much, I couldn’t tell you exactly how this works.

47. I had thought you lived in Wisconsin, and the state meet there is SCY.
    I do, and it probably is, but since I don’t swim any more I don’t know for certain. As soon as I wrote the post, though, I realized how silly it was; of course most high school pools would have been built pre-metric — well, before the general standardization of metric measurements in international (or even most major national) competitions — and wouldn’t have the budgets to build new ones or alter the old. Ditto for many colleges. I’m just so used to (almost) everything else having been converted to metric that I assumed, erroneously, that swimming would have followed suit.

48. Loved the kitty assassin pic… It when looked at openly brings many wrongs crashing home… Or maybe it’s just a funny picture. My jury is still out.
    Latest from Poetic Justice- Tom

49. Back when I were a lad and training seriously, I swam in a 50m pool — but I can barely make 25m nowadays, sad to say.
    I am a very bad Dutch : I like swimming nor skating and love basketball… 🙂

50. My kids aged up right after the LCM season, so they did their best in the state age group championships in the big pools. They were both basicly just breaststrokers, but of course this really helps in the long IM. Had some exciting times at UIC, Fort Wayne Invites and my son even swam in Zones at IUPUI, that was pretty cool. On the other hand, when they gave up the swimming it was kind of nice to have a normal summer vacation.

51. Breaststroke and butterfly have an awful lot in common, as I learned much too late in life for it to do me much good. I’ve a nephew and three nieces that swim the Denver club circuit. There’s some breaststroke potential there; gotta be the same genes that let me point my feet 180 degrees from each other, straight-kneed.
    That, and there’s a couple of updates. When the Division I championships are on, I’ll be putting up a couple of further posts.

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