Suspicious Chinese Swimmer

The proper analogy would be a woman (hypothetically) competing in the decathlon, and having a faster 1500m than the male decathlon champion. This is obviously possible, since the decathlon champion may be more of a shotput type than a 1500 type. Similarly, the champion at the IM will specialize in different strokes. Lochte doesn't specialize in the freestyle and Ye definitely does. I bet the fastest freestyle leg in the men's finals was faster than Ye's.

not again wrote:

You clearly don't know anything about running if you think stride technique isn't massively important. Thats why you can take world class endurance athletes like Lance Armstrong and put him in a marathon and watch him fail.

how is running a 2:46 marathon and beating > 99% of the people in the race a fail? it's not even remotely close to a fail and further proves my point. watching lebron james try and swim a 400IM would be an utter fail.

you, too, clearly don't know anything about swimming and should pipe down on this thread.

It is a swimming event, not a run, jump and throw competition.

It has raised legitimate questions simply because no female swimmer has ever come close in the history of swimming in matching a male split in the final leg of the 400IM or any other swimming event. Considering Lochte is one of the greatest swimmers of all time, this is really astounding and people are going to talk. Check the world records in any swimming or running event, men's times are much faster than female times, what happened yesterday is unprecedented.

ho hum wrote:

Lagat would do about as well in a pool as Phelps would do in track. I wonder how many swimmers wouldn't get lapped by Lagat in a 1500?

If you think technique isn't massively important in running, you don't know what's up.

that's simply false. it's why someone like andy potts, who was a world class swimmer, can now run just about as well as any pro triathlete, but there isn't a single even former national class runner who can swim with potts in a triathlon. the amount of ignorance on this board is astounding but not surprising. have you clowns who don't know anything about swimming even been in a pool?

No, now you are comparing them to a different group of people. Are there massive swimming events with 35,000 joe blows swimming at the same time? If there were, Lagat or kiprop would still beat 99% of the joe blows out there so I guess Lagat Is also a world class swimmer. Why didn't he carry the flag for Kenyas Swim team.

Yes. I was a decent swimmer in high school, and I know other decent swimmers who are also good runners. Technique is very important in swimming, and it is also very important in running. It's easier to develop good running technique, since it's a natural motion, but to achieve true perfection like Lagat has takes years and isn't possible for most people. Pointing at some triathlete who can run a mediocre marathon is not proving your point.

lagat would not beat 99% of joe blows if there were a 35K swim race. he would be truly horrible and plenty of fat people would destroy him. fat people with low vo2 maxes but who actually know how to swim. you clearly haven't witnessed a very fit person, who doesn't know how to swim, try and swim. it's comical watching them flail away and fight the water. they lose every time. LA was not flailing away when he ran 2:46 and beat a lot of very fit people (including nearly every woman in the race).

i'll ask again, have you ever been in a pool?

also, the fact that you think lagat is kenyan speaks for itself in terms of how clueless you are.

i didn't say that technique isn't important in running -- it clearly is -- but it's nowhere near as important as in swimming.

excuse me? a former world class swimmer who now is close to a national class runner (and, yes, being about to run probably a 1:06/1:07 open HM is pretty damn good) due to the fact that he races triathlons proves my point much more so than you with your unsubstantiated guesses about swimming and running. potts is exhibit A that shows that running technique isn't that hard to develop. show me a former world class runner who then became a national class swimmer. i'll help you out -- there aren't any. none of the top triathlon swimmers started off as runners and learned swimming later in life. none of the swimmers in the olympics started off as runners and picked up swimming in college. swimming technique is much too difficult to learn as an adult. that is not the case with running as there are a ton of both former and current world class runners who picked up running later in life and not as kids.

Bad comparison wrote:

It's really hard to compare these two races... Lochte's fastest split wasn't even his freestyle. His fly split was somewhere around 57. All his splits were more even than Shiwen's, whose free split was 4 seconds faster. Anyway, Lochte went out like a beast, well ahead of WR pace, and couldn't hold on, nor did he need to because he was so far ahead. Shiwen was coming off a 1:18 breaststroke split.

What a shocker, the male athlete is the better breast stroker here.

Who is about to drop a 66/67 HM?

Thanks for the question. It's loaded and opens up a can of worms, that's for sure...so the answer is a little long,but been thinking it through all day, so I'm indulging that now.

So let me say right upfront, before I go into the pacing stuff, that looking at someone's performance ALONE doesn't tell us whether they're doping or not. It doesn't rule it out either, and so it's really just context. Same thing goes for age - the fact that a 16-year old dominates an Olympic final is not, per se, proof of anything. Swimming has a history of very young women especially doing exceptionally well. And finally, even the 7sec improvement that Shiwen has achieved in the event in the last 12 months is not "proof" of anything.

But collectively, I can appreciate the skepticism, and I share it. I see from the thread all the accusations of "if it was not a Chinese swimmer we wouldn't wonder", and that's true. But sometimes we generalize because we have learned from history. The last time a whole bunch of swimming records fell to Chinese swimmers, history tells us it was doping. So given how we've been made fools of before, I can completely understand why people have doubt now.

But all of this should not allow one to condemn anyone as a "doper" - it's nothing more than an interesting discussion, but not proof. And it is a huge worry. Even in the absence, of doping, I'd be worried, for reasons explained below.

So having said that,some thoughts on the pacing and how a female can finish as fast as a male:

Obviously, in a medley, you have different strokes, so the comparison cannot be direct. You might be comparing an exceptional freestyle female swimmer to a fairly mediocre male freestyle swimmer.

But that's NOT the case here - Lochte is a really good freestyle swimmer. Shiwen, on the other hand is good, but not even among the best in the Chinese 4 x 100m relay teams, for example.

So I think it is safe to say that Shiwen is NOT an outrageously good 100m freestyle swimmer, and certainly she is comparable to Lochte for the specific stroke. THerefore, the fact that they did this leg in basically the same time IS in fact a direct comparison.

Next, you look at what it "typical" in the race. For men, the best swimmers typically close in 57 to 59 seconds (check splits from London). This is about 19 to 21% SLOWER than the best men finish in an isolated 100m freestyle.

For women, the TYPICAL (excluding Shiwen) final 100m freestyle takes 61 to 64 seconds. This is 18 to 20% slower than the best females swim 100m freestyle.

The result is that you have a normal pattern, a typical ratio of medley freestyle to best freestyle - they SHOULD BE between 18 and 21% slower at the end of a 400m IM than in a 100m freestyle by itself.

Yet Shiwen is not. She does a 58.68s leg, which is only 10% off the best 100m freestyle swimmers.

Conclusion: her 100m freestyle leg is disproportionately fast not only by comparison to Lochte, but also to her peers, and to the best 100m freestyle swimmers.

The only way to interpret that is to say that her first 300m was a massive, massive conservative effort. The simple question is "Under what circumstances does a female have the capacity to finish a race as fast as a male?"

To answer this, think of running, and a female 1500m runner. She may, on a good day, be capable of a 54 sec 400m performance. But at the end of a 1500m race, that drops to 59 seconds (9% slower).

For men, the best 1500m men finish in faster than that.

So, it is possible for a female to match a male, but only when the female is completely fresh and rested.

The fact that Shiwen could close as fast as Lochte suggests to me that her efforts over the first 300m of that final took very little out of her. In other words, she must have been swimming with a massive reserve, holding a lot back for the final 100m.

If that is true, then her overall performance is a significant underperformance. To use the running analogy, a guy running a world record is not doing a last lap in the same time as they are when they have jogged through 1100m in a tactical race, but then their final time is much, much slower, the faster they can finish.

So Shiwen then, with that fast finish, is probably betraying that the race is much slower than it might have been. She should be going much faster in the first 300m, which will slow her down in the final 100m (maybe a 61s), but the overall will be 3 to 4 seconds faster.

So now, you have a swimmer who could probably have broken the WR by 3 to 4 seconds. At 16, having improved by 7 seconds since the 2011 World Champs. And with perhaps 3 or 4 more seconds of improvement still to go...

scary thought, and I can see why people are skeptical.

I know the pacing stuff can appear circular, but the reality is that we know what optimal pacing looks like. And to finish with the physiological "reserve" capacity that allows you to close with that kind of speed, you've held back a lot. No doubt about it.

Worrying times. Even without doping, the rest of the world would be worried, because what we saw last night is just about unbeatable, and has the potential to be much, much faster.

Ross (The Science of Sport)

What would happen to this thread if it involved us talking about gay boy Rupp and not a Chinese swimmer?

Offcourse it would be deleted. What kind of question is that?

Sprint Sensation wrote:

What would happen to this thread if it involved us talking about gay boy Rupp and not a Chinese swimmer?

I appreciate this response, but as noted, there's still enough in the past to ask the question. Not to reach a verdict, but to ask the question...

There's no direct comparison for Rupp, because there's no "faster" class to compare him to (female to men doesn't apply, Rupp jokes aside).

But let's say Rupp was able to finish a 5,000m race AT WORLD RECORD pace at a speed similar to a Rudisha in an 800m (51 seconds).

We'd be asking questions, for sure, because if Rupp could close in 51 sec off a world record pace, then what I'd be saying is that he's holding a lot back. And could probably be running a good 5 to 8 seconds faster for the entire race.

And if that's true, then you would be asking whether it's possible to break a strong WR by 5 to 8 seconds. And you'd be right to ask.

Ross -

Nice post. Thanks. Perhaps you could shed some light on the progression of World and Olympic records in the pool. I was under the impression that when the latex suits were banned that we wouldn't see a world record for a long time. Yet here we are 4 years later and records are being broken in prelims at what seems like the same pace as before. Some records, like the 400IM are seemingly super-human.

Do swimmers really progress so fast that they already caught and passed the records induced by the high-tech suits? Are there new suits that slide in under the new rules but are just as effective as what we saw in Beijing? Is the collective record breaking evidence of doping?

It is interesting that doping is not brought up in swimming. My guess it will explode sooner or later.

Surprises nobody has mentioned Shobukhova and some of her amazingly fast finishes in the marathon. They have rivalled the fastest male finishes at times.

No, they haven't.

Old news, but relevant:

http://media.watoday.com.au/news/world-news/chinese-swimmers-were-previously-doping-3496533.html

Back to former ways?