Was this the race held half an hour after the 200m butterfly?

No, the IM semis were half an hour later, but the final was the next day.

And once again with the hidden jets after the final turn. Even though I knew the outcome, I still was sweating during the breaststroke.

Whoa, this swimming post if far too heterosexual for your usual style.
It seems like Phelps has an advantage in all strokes because his turns kick ass, and you have to turn regardless of the stroke.
Novice questions- 1) Is the order in the medley set by rule, or is it just the order that has been determined to give the best speed based on the transitions? 2) He didn't dolphin at the turn into the breast segment- is that another rule? I thought you could do what you want underwater and only had to go into the correct stroke once you break the surface.

Creepy swim coach beating swimmer daughter at Worlds: frickin' Ukrainians.

The video is uber-creepy.

Sorry, not to imply Ukrainians are daughter-beaters.

Choice quote from daughter: ""It's my fault too. I disobeyed him and he got upset...He would never hurt me. He's a wonderful father. He loves me. He worries about me a lot."

So, are we supposed to believe weight lifting w/out enhancement has put him on top of every fricking world record? Riiiiight.

Huh, the #2 guy wasn't half bad, either.

That Ukrainian story is super creepy, and I didn't even watch the video.

Is the order in the medley set by rule

Yeah, it goes fly, back, breast, free. You're disqualified if you swim out of order.

That's IM, though. For a relay, backstroke is obviously first.

That's IM, though. For a relay, backstroke is obviously first.

Yeah, I mean, obviously. How else would you do it?

I suppose you could have the swimmers running into each other. That could be funny.

11: Backstroke is the only one that start with the swimmer in the water. The other three strokes you dive in.

What's wrong with backward diving off the blocks?

He didn't dolphin at the turn into the breast segment- is that another rule?

Yes; the breaststroke has its own rules about what you can do off the wall, and only one dolphin kick is allowed.

Huh, the #2 guy wasn't half bad, either.

Lochte is fantastic, unfortunately, Phelps is better. (That's also true of Lochte and Piersol in the backstroke.)

Riiiiight.

Are people serious about thinking he's juiced? I'd bet pretty much anything that he's not.

Re. breaststroke, it's been a long time since my swim club days and I was just a kid, but I've always wondered about the height-out-of-water on the stroke question: it seems that higher would slow you down. Except inasmuch as a more powerful stroke would presumably also create (or require) more lift. Ogged?

Are people serious about thinking he's juiced? I'd bet pretty much anything that he's not.

Why? I've got no opinion, but are you working off character, or are there more concrete reasons.

There's a lot of variation on the height of the water in the breaststroke. The Swede (and Swedes in general) was all for coming up quite high, and one reason is that that lets you draw up your knees without dropping them too far in the water, which lets you create less resistance, and the other reason is that some Europeans swim a "wave" style breastroke, which includes a butterfly-like undulation, which they think helps them go faster--and coming up higher lets you get a bit more hip action when you lunge. On the other hand, the person who swims what I think is the best breastroke right now, the Australian woman Liesel Jones, has a quite "flat" style.

are there more concrete reasons

You're almost at the guilty-till-proven-innocent stage when you're breaking world records every other day --- or hour. Character won't cut it except for dreamy-eyed fanboys. To be fair, though, as we were saying before this may be because swimming now is where running was in the 1950s or early 1960s.

(I know, I sound like a troll: which is it, dirty athlete or sucky sport? You pick!)

are you working off character, or are there more concrete reasons

Both. First, he's obviously a freakish phenom: he was fifth in the fly in the Olympics when he was a skinny fifteen-year-old. It's not as if he suddenly became very good. Second, he's been lifting, as I understand it, for about a year, and his body looks about right for someone who's been lifting that long; he doesn't look steroidally put together, and he doesn't have any of the other telltale marks, like a sudden outbreak of acne. Third, he's known for training like a madman, even for a swimmer, and for being very competetive, so again, improvements aren't really surprising. Finally, on the character issue, he's also known for wanting to race and beat the best, and people like that don't get a lot of satisfaction from cheating. (Also, his coach seems like a hardass who wouldn't put up with cheating, and you really need a coach's help to cheat.)

Finally, on the character issue, he's also known for wanting to race and beat the best, and people like that don't get a lot of satisfaction from cheating.

They do if they know the people they're competing against are cheating.

If athletics is any comparison, buzz in the field is usually a pretty good guideline --- people tend to know, roughly, who is doping and who is clean. Certainly the description in 20 doesn't fit the typical bad-guy profile -- especially the early success and so on.

If athletics is any comparison, buzz in the field is usually a pretty good guideline --- people tend to know, roughly, who is doping and who is clean. Certainly the description in 20 doesn't fit the typical bad-guy profile -- especially the early success and so on.

I'm happy as fuck that Ogged doesn't follow curling.

You see, John, the ice might have any one of three grains, and depending on the grain, you should sweep in one of four ways...

18: Cool, thanks. I prefer the flat style myself, obvs: it just seems somehow more in keeping with what I think breaststroke should be "like."

Also you'll be happy to know that I apparently have high cholesterol, so I guess I do need to get more exercise and be less lazy about just ordering delivery food instead of cooking. But I want it noted that I am doing these things for concrete health reasons rather than aesthetic ones.

Oh, and I did buy some bike shorts last week because of aching pubes, so I take that argument back too.

Finally, on the character issue, he's also known for wanting to race and beat the best, and people like that don't get a lot of satisfaction from cheating.

Because Ben Johnson hated kicking the fuck out of Carl Lewis....

Johnson didn't want to beat the best, he wanted to beat Lewis, no matter what.

Lewis was the best at the time, wasn't he?

It's not the same thing!

Inasmuch as Lewis was, by far, the dominant track and field athlete of our lifetime, distinguishing between "the best" and "Carl Lewis" is much more difficult than you're implying. Note also that (not-self-discrediting) reports that Lewis juiced bubble up all the time. Same with Lance Armstrong. I have a hard time believing that we can pick out who ducks competition, or that such behavior is a good predictor that someone uses steroids.

"lifetimes"; I like Unfogged, but I do want to maintain the fiction that I have a separate existence.

It's a little different with Phelps though. In the '04 Olympics, it would have been better for him, in terms of his reputation and the consequent endorsement payday, to win all the events he entered. But he swam the 200 free against Thorpe and van den Hoogenband, in which he was the underdog (and in fact did finish third in) because he wanted to swim against the best. Obviously I can't prove anything about his character, but does that really seem like a cheater to you?

. Obviously I can't prove anything about his character, but does that really seem like a cheater to you?

The sad truth is that, generally, constant and mind-blowing extraordinary performance seems like an indicator of a cheater to me.

Shorter 33: "He's perfect." Picture Ogged swooning.

The whole attitude of Official Sport toward performance enhancers seems a bit schizoid, anyway. On the one hand athletes are expected to supply steadily-escalating displays of excellence from year to year (this after all is what keeps the crows coming back), but on the other hand one of the most reliable means of guaranteeing those displays is prohibited as "cheating." Something's eventually going to have to give.

"crows " s/b "crowds," that's an interesting typo...

Question: how many people think Federer (to pick a dominant example from another sport) is juicing?

36: steadily-escalating displays of excellence from year to year... is what keeps the crows coming back...

Good to know: I'll tell my corn to tone it down, stop showboating.

Question: how many people think Federer (to pick a dominant example from another sport) is juicing?

If I could see an obvious way in which it would help, I would so suspect. It's the same with other obvious skill sports like basketball--apparently there is a benefit, in that they can train more. But you don't see the over-muscled guys as in baseball, and straight power is less obviously valuable.

Maybe my willingness to suspect Phelps is due to my relative unfamiliarity with swimming. It seems like technique would matter, but straight speed (or whatever the quality would be) would matter more.

There's massive incentive for swimmers to dope. Some of the most famous doping scandals have involved swimmers (Michelle Smith in '98 and the ever-notorious Chinese swim team come to mind). Basically, wherever sport is records-driven, there's going to be doping; it wouldn't shock me in the least if Phelps were caught doing it.

The All-Drug Olympics was one of SNL's funnier moment, but I suspect there's a serious argument to be made for bringing doping out in the open, given that keeping it underground is more dangerous to the athletes and prohibiting it doesn't seem to work.

DS: the anti-Pound

I agree that there are incentives to dope in swimming, but I'd still be shocked if Phelps were doping. I think it's much more common among the women anyway.

I think swimming doping has been almost exclusively women (even going back to the East Germans in the 70s and 80s) - diminishing returns to testosterone levels and all that.

Of course, I think that the anti-doping stance is philosophically misguided and arbitrary, and they should let them take what they want, so my opinion may not be the most valuable.

To clarify - I think that explicitly breaking the rules is bad (bending and stretching is fine, and even praiseworthy), but that the rules are dumb. And I always had respect for Angel Martino after she tested positive for steroids (?) and responded with essentially "Dammit... you got me" rather than the pathetic "oh, someone must have spiked my water bottle... poor old innocent me" that you so often hear.

45: I'd probably have an attitude closer to yours if it weren't for the collatoral damage.

42: I array myself against Dick Pound simply on the grounds that he has one of the most egregious porn-star names ever.

45 has it right. And yes, way more women have been caught doping in swimming than men, though whether that means the men's sport is that much cleaner I'm not so sure. (On the state and flaws of drug testing and the possible paradoxical effect of anti-doping regulations, some interesting notes from Tim Ferris.)

The real precedent-setting doping controversy was when the snowboarder got busted for marijuana. Before that point marijuana had not been recognnized as the wonderful performance enhancer it really is.

Get a clue, world: Cheech and Ching were comedians. And anyway, they were already that way before they used dope.

There's a logical explanation for why more women would juice though - it helps them more. After all, neither the East German nor the Chinese men's teams did anything of note during their respective Olympics.

As for the collateral damage argument... I dunno. The effort required to be a world-class athlete in any sport is going to have negative consequences of it's own. The "but it motivates little kids to juice so they can be just like their idols" argument really bugs me in an irrational and selfish way, mainly because I can see the same argument being deployed to prevent me from doing things I enjoy.

Wanna know what always cracks me up? When you see a race where more than one person breaks the world record. I always love the look on the second place dude's face like "WTF? I break the world record and I fucking lose and nobody cares?!"

Schadenfreude at its best, baby.

Wanna know what always cracks me up? When you see a race where more than one person breaks the world record. I always love the look on the second place dude's face like "WTF? I break the world record and I fucking lose and nobody cares?!"

Ryan Lochte is an incredible swimmer. In any normal year, he would be famous. (relatively speaking) Now, he is an after-thought.

I agree that Phelps probably isnt juiced.

And I always had respect for Angel Martino after she tested positive for steroids (?) and responded with essentially "Dammit... you got me" rather than the pathetic "oh, someone must have spiked my water bottle... poor old innocent me" that you so often hear.

She claimed the positive test was from her birth control pills; she may have admitted guilt later.

Huh, you're right. Damn urban legends. That's too bad.

Huh, you're right. Damn urban legends. That's too bad.

Denial is part of the game, too. Think of it as "bending" or "stretching" the truth.

Oh, and I did buy some bike shorts last week because of aching pubes, so I take that argument back too.

It made me happy to drop by and see B walking back that argument. Mmm, crow!

As far as Ogged's purity argument, a lot of the bike racers I know had the same feeling about Landis last year - he's just a really good guy.

I like crows, but I'm not especially ashamed about having been wrong on the bike shorts thing particularly. Nice try, though.

Landis last year - he's just a really good guy

Not quite the same, because I don't think the argument is that Phelps is too good of a guy to cheat, but that he seems motivated for a particular kind of satisfaction that would be undermined by cheating.

I'm torn on the steroids issue, if only because the benefit from steroids doesn't come by just popping the pill, but only if you work at it. It won't turn a mediocre athlete into a champion, but it might turn a middling elite athlete into a champion. And once you're there, there seem to be lots of things that could do that: better coaching, better technique training, better equipment, and none of those things count as cheating.

And the health front I find unconvincing. If you're a top athlete, your body is probably fucked once you stop. The only thing I find convincing is the trickle-down effect, and I don't mean the 'think of the children' arguments, but of the middlingly-okay college athlete who won't go anywhere even if he takes steroids, but now has to just to compete on the college level. The guy with the long successful career who has the overuse injury and the steroid problems I can justify; not so much for a third-stringer Rudy, who probably would avoid the overuse injuries but would reap the steroid problems.

And the other argument is that whichever swimmer left "Benzoylecgonine, a metabolite of cocaine" at their hotel doesn't think of themselves as cheating.

I'm not especially ashamed

File that under things that go without saying. I didn't have time to participate in that thread, but the yupped up shit really got under my skin. The part of me that gets passionately obsessed about my amateurish participation in sports or hobbies is one of the parts I like best of myself, so your needling ogged got under my skin. It's more of a theoretical thing, though, between kids and work I'm mainly passionate for sleep these days. Good luck with the cholesterol, though. I'm in the same boat. Turnin 40 sux.

Ogged, It'd be refreshing if this guy is putting in these performances on amazing genes and hard work. I guess the last few years of sporting news haven't given me much hope in that regard. I used to believe Lance was clean because after cancer, who would do that to their body? But I don't think these kinds of purity arguments really capture much about the experience of competing at these levels.

I agree with you generally, and have come around to thinking that Armstrong is probably not clean, but I was reading just today that Phelps was getting attention in the national swimming community when he was 10, and I've read before that he has freakish lactic acid clearing ability (his body seems to get rid of it at about twice the normal rate) so I'm going to keep believing that he's clean.