Jesus, ogged, ever hear of a little thing called "pacing"?
Fact: 13 year-old girls swim the 100m freestyle faster today than Olympic champions swam it 100 years ago.
No-talent sport.
Authenticity above all, right, honky?
The obvious solution here is to require all competitors to swim naked.
...while staying on and keeping things where they're supposed to be....
Sexist.
all i know about swimming suits, or may be it's diving suits, it has some titanium or some unknown secret material in it and it can normalize any bodily abnormality
recommended for the cancer survivors
http://www.bio-rubber.com/catalog/default.php
A similar trend has occurred in powerlifting with special shirts for bench pressing and such resulting in huge increases.
"It's a bit trickier for women and I'm no clothing designer, but the guideline should be that the suit should cover as little of the body as possible (for the integrity of the sport!)"
What a coincidence. At the moment of orgasm, I always involuntarily shout, "for the integrity of the sport!"
Not too ld itty-bitty brief.
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_8303.html#775862
The girl's suits now are almost brazilian in the cut. It is horrible.
But doesn't your comparison between today's 13-year-olds and the Olympic champions of 100 years ago necessarily incorporate advances in swimwear? Isn't it sort of arbitrary to mandate that those advances be frozen at this particular moment in time?
The girl's suits now are almost brazilian in the cut. It is horrible so very awesome.
I retired before the major advances, so I'm kind of out of date as to the state of things. I know that Ian Thorpe wore the full-body get up, but Phelps I think wears just the waist-to-knee thing. How pervasive are the new-tech suits (both per capita and average body coverage)? Is there any consensus on whether fabric covering arms can help catch water on the pull? How good is the research on whether (and how much) the suits improve performance?
You say that, now, gswift. Will you continue saying it when your girls want to start competitive swimming?
Knowing that someone swam one time in 2005 and then got dramatically better in 2008
Yeah, I wonder how that could happen.
should make us look at training or stroke innovations
...or the innovation that dare not speak its name.
You say that, now, gswift. Will you continue saying it when your girls want to start competitive swimming?
What, think ahead? Never! (snaps TJ with towel)
The Speedo claim that I don't understand is The LZR RACER's unique design also provides swimmers with up to 5% more efficiency in terms of their oxygen intake. I assume this is an indirect benefit of the streamlining and the stabilizing "corset", but it reads as if it were somehow directly aiding oxygen intake.
The technology will march on, per the earlier discussion that shall not be revisited, I cannot see a problem unless a suit is somehow storing and releasing energy.
The real issue and controversy seems to be around the availability and adherence to the following FINA rule: GR 5.6 The manufacturers must ensure that the approved new swimsuit will be available for all competitors.
As I read the article, JP, the problem is that some competitors are under contract to other brands, which means it's not Speedo who is stopping them from wearing the high tech bathing costume.
A number of sports create caps of this sort to prevent the sport from becoming all about technology. Rowing is the one that comes to mind: those spiffy fiberglass boats are not permitted to get too light. (I of course rowed the venerable whaleboat: a couple of tons of solid wood and kelp pontoons.)
My experience with pathological athletes is that men fetishize technological solutions to performance/fitness issues, while women fetishize control over food and diet.
while women fetishize control over food and diet
IIRC, sometimes in women's swimming, it's a man fetishizing control over the women's food and diet. I think the coach at Texas got in trouble for this.
Ogged swims in one of these new fancy suits, doesnt he?
I just remember from the people on track teams I knew a decade ago that the obsessive guys were all investing in heart-rate monitors and eating shitloads of pizza, while their female counterparts had no tech but counted every cheerio.
I remember when lacrosse went high tech. One used to have to travel to Baltimore to select a hand shaped stick. Then the first plastic heads came out, and it has been an equipment war ever since. And I for one, am intrigued by the trailers for "Leatherheads". talk about how equipment changes a game.
eating shitloads of pizza
Dammit. Now I want pizza.
How pervasive are the new-tech suits (both per capita and average body coverage)?
Here's the 50 free record being broken a few days ago: every single guy is wearing a suit that covers from the ankles to the shoulders, with the arms uncovered.
Ogged swims in one of these new fancy suits, doesnt he?
Swim in it? I even wear it to the grocery store.
In addition to pioneering the use of the innovation that dare not speak its name, East Germany used very controversial non-concealing skin-hugging suits in the mid-to-late '70s. Public morals were thought to be at risk, and I think they were banned.
...or the innovation that dare not speak its name.
I realize this is the main outlet for your cynicism, but when a guy is going to meets regularly and drops time right after a new suit comes out, it's not juicing.
32:
I have to wear blue shirts to court so people dont see my new swim suit under my suits.
I finish my cases 10 percent faster.
#34: that's not what Magnini said about Bernard.
If we're going to compare records from 100 years ago, surely the men should be wearing suits roughly the shape of those Speedo racing ones, but made of wool.
when a guy is going to meets regularly and drops time right after a new suit comes out, it's not juicing.
Is that true? I don't know what a chart of the performance of a juiced swimmer (or player) would look like. I didn't think it was a steady increase in performance. Indeed, I thought that one of the ways people identified suspicious performances was by a sudden jump in performance.
4: Swimming would become a very, very popular spectator sport. Though Ogged might feel a bit unnerved by his spectators.
I was wondering why some French guy had set three world records in the past week. SportsCenter did not mention the new swimsuits at all in their minute-long story and were probably unaware of them. Just "Out of nowhere, here's some guy breaking records." Like when it was "some Irish woman breaking records" a few years ago, they seemed to want to say as little as possible about the whole sport, because of a near certainty that it was the result of banned drugs.
As I read the article, JP, the problem is that some competitors are under contract to other brands, which means it's not Speedo who is stopping them from wearing the high tech bathing costume.
Interesting. So it's not that the manufacturer hasn't made the supersuits available, but that some swimmers aren't permitted to buy them.
41: So it's not that the manufacturer hasn't made the supersuits available
That remains unclear. From an article from the time of the launch in February: Speedo is now taking pre-orders for the suit, but according to Speedo's website, "LZR RACER will be available for delivery on or about July 30, 2008,
That article was geared towards "average" swimmers, I suspect that any true Olympic medal candidate not under contract to another manufacturer could probably get one.
Also to expand and correct my take above on the suit itself, there are other considerations than just storing and releasing energy that could disqualify a suit. There are also buoyancy considerations, and no mechanical advantage in moving water around (you could imagine "webbed" suits of some kind.). There may be others as well.
Stormcrow, you're saying the other competitors aren't allowed to wear flippers to neutralize Phelps's advantage?!?
Is that true? I don't know what a chart of the performance of a juiced swimmer (or player) would look like. I didn't think it was a steady increase in performance. Indeed, I thought that one of the ways people identified suspicious performances was by a sudden jump in performance.
Honestly, I don't know Bernard's story. Gary Hall Jr. thinks he's juiced (as does Magnini?) and he's certainly a lot more muscular than I recall him being. But the sudden jump in performance that comes from doping doesn't happen between meets that are weeks apart. Some of these records might be juiced, but it's more likely that the suit if making the difference.
Speedo is just trying to catch up to Spider Tim.
43: Not yet, but don't be surprised if some genetic engineering (or insect-bite induced modification) debuts at a pool near you some time in the next x years....
For very short distances, the fastest I've seen people go is using two smallish kickboards grasped against the forearm and flippered feet. Strong swimmers can almost hydroplane like that for a while ... very tiring of course.
Here is a nice quick review of some of the science of swimming (scroll down the page).
That's interesting, but some of that stuff (like the kick not being very important (at least in sprint events)) isn't really current anymore. My understanding is that the kick is getting more and more attention.
47: Yes, it is a snapshot from 12 years ago. I also have heard of the kick being emphasized more. (I think it was in that NY Times story on Lachte we both derided.)
People can get it wrong. A story (probably apocryphal have found no documentation) that I heard on the Japanese domination of the early 1930s, was that competitors initially focused on and adopted some visible changes in their strokes, not all of which were actually helping. The real "magic" was happening back in training.
competitors initially focused on and adopted some visible changes in their strokes, not all of which were actually helping
This is one of my gripes about the suits: they take the focus away from what the swimmers are doing differently to go faster.
I think it was in that NY Times story on Lachte we both derided
There, and also an interview with Ben Wildman-Tobriner a couple of years back in which he said that in the move from competing against college athletes to the pros, the thing that really stood out was how powerfully the pros were kicking. The 50 and 100 freestyle are going to be insanely competitive in Beijing.
4: The obvious solution here is to require all competitors to swim naked.
Just another proposal designed to differentially slow down the progress of black men.
44: I think this is incorrect. Swimming is very much driven by the taper and shave (though the latter less with the new suits, maybe?). Thus, the right comparison is not between two meets a few weeks apart, rather it is between meets in which the swimmer is fully tapered / shaved. That is, there will be dramatic differences in swims just a few weeks apart that is due to the way training is managed and the swimmer's peak is planned.
That makes sense, except that Bernard says he wasn't tapered.
An article out today with some more detail. In reading up on this it is also apparent that TYR and others are close behind.
What a lame sport. Let's invest tons of money inventing new swimming suit technology so that every 4 years a few people in the world can swim a few tenths of a second faster. If you're going to make the sport so specialized and inaccesible to everyone else, at least the people could be doing cool stuff.