Thurston Howell IV wrote:
Take a so-so swimmer and he becomes the fastest American miler ever.
Name any runner who can swim elite.
Runners are where uncoordinated and unathletic are shunted. They exist only because better athletes choose higher paying and notoriety sports - with rare exceptions.
Right, because Kobe & Brady would be running 3:46 miles and sub 13 5ks if they had only chosen running.
Moron.
smile wrote:
Thurston Howell IV wrote:Take a so-so swimmer and he becomes the fastest American miler ever.
Name any runner who can swim elite.
Runners are where uncoordinated and unathletic are shunted. They exist only because better athletes choose higher paying and notoriety sports - with rare exceptions.
Right, because Kobe & Brady would be running 3:46 miles and sub 13 5ks if they had only chosen running.
Moron.
Nah, the implication is that average swimmers are also better athletes than either of them
sbeefyk1 wrote:
Swimmers are also not real athletes. They can only do one thing, swim. Your typical elite runner can do many other sports. Yes, the typical JV high school runners are unathletic and shunted, but as a whole runners are more athletic than swimmers. Runners can play football, basketball, soccer, baseball, and other stupid "sports" such as whatever that frisbee game is called that's popular now.
Stupid comment. It's the same nonsense that coach d routinely says about distance running.
How many sports one could be good at has no bearing on if participating in the sport one chooses makes one an athlete.
ewww wrote:
lolilol wrote:World record's what?
moron
Seriously he is the dumbest poster.
- swimming has more participation in the us than track
- even if it did not, the fact that swimmers train harder would negate the lower participation and the records would be strong. Participation has nothing to do with the strength of records. Strength of records has to do with the average quality of training by the competitors.
Wrong.
It has the most to do with the talent of the athletes competing, and training obviously plays a part in that, but talent is #1, which is why greater depth of participation is relevant. More depth = more talent.
bad swimmer wrote:
smile wrote:Right, because Kobe & Brady would be running 3:46 miles and sub 13 5ks if they had only chosen running.
Moron.
Nah, the implication is that average swimmers are also better athletes than either of them
No, that wasn't the implication.
Metric Miler wrote:
ewww wrote:Seriously he is the dumbest poster.
- swimming has more participation in the us than track
- even if it did not, the fact that swimmers train harder would negate the lower participation and the records would be strong. Participation has nothing to do with the strength of records. Strength of records has to do with the average quality of training by the competitors.
Posting twice to reinforce yourself is incredibly lame. I am by far one of the most educated posters on this site.
I post from my phone 99% of the time. Nearly all my typos are due to autocorrect. Pointing out small typos and punctuation errors on the internet is extremely childish and shows that you have nothing to counter my arguments.
Swimming has far, far, far less participation worldwide. I don't know or care about the USA. All I see if you winning lots of medals because nobody else does it. It is like hailing China for table tennis.
The second point you made is beyond idiotic; you may want to go and have yourself checked out.
If more countries all had high participation in swimming and all trained as hard as swimmers in the States then we would find more talent worldwide and swimming would be more competitive. And records would fall. As they have in track over the last 40 years.
How is that not obvious to anyone of even mediocre intelligence?
I have to completely agree with metric on this one. Swimming is a joke of a sport compared to running.
From what I understand the oldest WR is 8 years old, despite there being countless events.
Why do swimmers have so many slower forms of swimming? you can argue that the 10k is just a slower form of running compared to the 100m, so in that case just mix up the distances that they swim! It seems as though I've seen nothing but different variations of the same distance.
Also, there just aren't any dynamics to swimming. At least there doesn't appear to be any. It seems to be just a balls to the wall from the start to the finish. Which I guess is the same reason why the 100m is more popular than the distance events. But can the swimmers even see the people 2-3 lanes across from them? No distance events there is pushing and shoving, surges, and just tactics in general. Apparently this isn't desirable I the general audiences, but I enjoy it. And honestly I think it's just a matter of time. People don't want to waste 27 minutes run around a track. If the commentators were better at informing the people of the tactics taking place, and making it more entertaining then the sport would grow. And to be quite honest, I watched the Olympic trials in person and the sprinting events got only a fraction of the attention the 1500 did.
And come on?? Are we kidding here? Track and field is by far more popular than swimming. The fact that the person starting this thread turned into a runner just proves that point. Not everyone can swim, but anyone can run.
Just got back home, and took a while to check the thread, but I just emailed Wejo. He'll give verification. Actually not trolling.
Also, I must say, the majority of these responses have given me a renewed faith in the letsrun message boards. Many people on this thread seem to actually have a decent level of respect for these athletes, and have given some great responses. Even those who may disagree have had some decent contribution...maybe people are just in higher spirits come the olympics.
As someone on one of the other countless threads on swimming, track records are standing for longer periods of time now because the talent has fled our sport. There are more opportunities worldwide to participate in and make money in other sports. Track is dying and the lack of quality runners able to match the times when the sport was at it's apex demonstrates this.
I think that's part of it, but I also would wager that the majority of the word records are pretty doped up. I'm a huge fan of most of the distance greats that have come from Ethiopia, but I think doping was easier to pull off 12-15 years ago.
Wejo, shoot me a response when you get that email.
Letsrun reaches new low wrote:
That thread has become embarrassing for the reputation of the LRC message board. Not that the reputation is already very respectable by any sense, but come on people. 90% of the comments convey a complete lack of knowledge of the sport of swimming by most on here, and conveys bitterness that swimmers in the US are bigger names than US distance stars. I hear girls talk about Ryan Lochte or Phelps, but I never girls even knowing of the distance stars of US track and field.
I grew up in competitive swimming and my father was an all American at Stanford. I can say with 100% confidence that the training involved for the majority of events in swimming is far more time consuming, and generally tougher than distance running. It can be completely miserable sometimes during the heaviest phases of training. I would also say you're average collegiate swimmer has a much higher pain tolerance than your average collegiate runner. I've seen both sides, and the only reason I quit swimming was because I had much more potential in running. I was working hard for little in return while swimming.
Before someone responds questioning my running experience, yes I have run faster and competed at a higher level than the majority of you on this board. No, I will not expose my identity to the LRC board. Many of you are going to be pissed that I have just states some well known facts. Swimming is more appealing, and popular to many Americans. Unfortunately the body type that is necessary to running successfully is not physically appealing to American women. And thank God you don't have to read about male swimmers becoming anorexic.
PS refer to the strokes as back, breast, fly, and free. You'll appear somewhat more knowledgable about swimming the next time someone mentions the olympics in the office.
Yes, exactly.
no you dolt wrote:
purist wrote:The main problem with swiming is that having rules that restrict the way in which your body can move in order to race from point A to point B so that you are not able to move as fast as possible is too contrived for a pure athletic contest. Nothing swimmers can say will change this even though I respect the work that swimmers put into their training which must be horrendously tough swimming up and down a pool for hours on end. It would break me mentally as would running on treadmill or around a track all the time.
Freestyle swimming events are valid atheltic competitions however.
In case you feel that runners are picking on swimming only I would say that the speedwalking contests in track and field are also guilty of the same problems that you have in non-freestyle swimming events.
Another endurance sport in which you have this problem is Cross Country skiing in the Ski athlon event where you have to go over half the course moving your legs a certain way (classic style) and then moving your legs in a free style. This is just as contrived as the swimming strokes because the classic style is slower than the free style. It makes the event no longer a pure race but a style of movement event as well.
Classic technique has been around since the time of the Vikings. It is not contrived you fool. Skating came around in the 1980s. Skating resulted from new, light equipment and groomed trails. To this day, if you are in more than a few inches of fresh snow, classic is the way to go.
Stop trying to sound knowledgeable about something you know nothing about.
You have missed the point completely. Something being around since the Vikings has nothing to do with the argument. In the skiathlon race the rules are restricting someone's style of movement as opposed to just letting the competitors ski as fast as possible using whatever technique they want - classic, skating etc i.e. whatever the competitors feel they need to do to ski over the course as fast as possible. The skiathlon is something equivalent to the medley race in swimming.
There is a 49 year old in our swimming community who does nothing but swim. Well, he works, but he had no other interests, no children and is a total jerk.
At a race last summer, he didn't too well and was passed the last 50 meters by a female Hungarian. At the awards banquet, he was pounding the table in frustration, saying how he was going to "train his brains out and pound her in the ground next year."
If he only saw the people laughing at him. What a joke.
After re-reading my post, I think I was a bit harsh on the running side. There are plenty of competitive athletes that have an equally high pain tolerance and commitment, but I think some people on this board have just provided many comments that have been disrespectful toward many hard working athletes that go through a crazy commitment for sometimes almost no return.
Alan Webb is obviously by far the most high profile athlete to convert from swimming to running, but I know a close footlocker alumni that made the transition too. If I had to guess there are more people that have made that transition, and went on to qualify at footlocker within 2-3 years of transitioning full time. Again, I have full respect for top tier athletes of both sports, but swimming deserves just as much respect.
Letsrun reaches new low wrote:
Alan Webb is obviously by far the most high profile athlete to convert from swimming to running, but I know a close footlocker alumni that made the transition too. If I had to guess there are more people that have made that transition, and went on to qualify at footlocker within 2-3 years of transitioning full time. Again, I have full respect for top tier athletes of both sports, but swimming deserves just as much respect.
You do know that Alan Webb was not that good of a swimmer, right?
You do know he qualifies for senior nationals, right? You may want to do some research. Unless the book had false information then he was supposedly a very high caliber swimmer.
Swimming anything other than freestyle is stupid. What's the point? I also believe anything over the 1500 in track is pointless. I think the athleticism of swimmers and runners(1500 and under) are equal. Any runner over 1500 is not athletic, they can just run real slow for a long time.
purist wrote:
no you dolt wrote:Classic technique has been around since the time of the Vikings. It is not contrived you fool. Skating came around in the 1980s. Skating resulted from new, light equipment and groomed trails. To this day, if you are in more than a few inches of fresh snow, classic is the way to go.
Stop trying to sound knowledgeable about something you know nothing about.
You have missed the point completely. Something being around since the Vikings has nothing to do with the argument. In the skiathlon race the rules are restricting someone's style of movement as opposed to just letting the competitors ski as fast as possible using whatever technique they want - classic, skating etc i.e. whatever the competitors feel they need to do to ski over the course as fast as possible. The skiathlon is something equivalent to the medley race in swimming.
Have you ever done a skiathlon?
It isn't raced much outside of championships a few world cups a year and a rare citizens race. Agree that they should do away with it in the Olympics.
There hasn't been any confirmation from Wejo...odds are you are full of BS.