Swimming being exposed as joke in these Olympic games

some sports are more equal wrote:

Swimming stokes are more comparable to something like race walking except that they are probabaly more ridiculous. A 200m butterfly race is like having an 800m race on the track where the runners are forced to wave their hands around their heads for the entire race and move their legs in a certain way - they are constrained to move using a certain style of body movement. That just seems too contrived for a real athletic competition.

Track and field events that are somewhat contrived in this way are race walking as mentioned, and the triple jump. I would have no problem if these were axed from track and field.

I'd add that if you polled every person who has competed at anything approaching a high level in track and field, I bet over 99% would say that race walking should not be part of a track and field meet--it's counter to the idea of moving across a course as fast as possible. But few if any swimmers would say, "yeah, breaststroke is arbitrary, slow, and ridiculous."

Coming up with arbitrary requirements that assures slower movement is just a dumb idea for any kind of racing, whether that's race-walking or breaststroke.

Random:

Divers have about the lowest bodyfat in the Olympics. Those guys are sick.

Alan

If you consider that swimmers are trained rigorously for hours per day from the age of 5 or so, at which time the ones on the teams are already good enough at all four basic strokes to get on the teams (this is the criterion for the local Y team), then I think that you have to rethink the notion that they would get crushed because they don't compete against poor people, minorities, or people of color from developing countries. Their competition would certainly expand the talent pool, but swimming is the kind of technique sport, like golf, where no success is possible without many years of very well-coached training. Look at Tiger Woods and the Williams' sisters. They had their parents coach them from the cradle--the talent pool was expanded, yes, but they didn't need a lot of money because their fathers were coaching them. Maybe that unseats my argument--better athletes with similar training and opportunities. But at any rate, you couldn't take, say, Tim Duncan or Usain Bolt at 17 and have them dominate. They'd have to start at 3.

To show you how unadvanced swimming is compared to other sports. You think that swimming coaches would teach swimmers to swim with their head out of the water so they could take more breathes to maximize aerobic capacity. You see them hold their breath all the time. It's simply physiology that the higher the oxygen uptake the faster they could go.

Tim Duncan was a competitive swimmer from a young age. His sister made the '88 Olympic team. Tim was nationally competitive, with his main event being the 400m freestyle. He switched to basketball after a hurricane destroyed the pool he trained in.

Could he have become an international athlete in swimming? Possibly, but it is by no means assured. People drop out, switch sports, or fail to develop all the time.

You kind of argued against yourself there.

There are many ways to skin a cat. If many more people had access to pools then the competition worldwide at the elite level would increase. Just a simple numbers game. The high level of coaching required can only develop after the facilities.

Americans weren't born swimming coaches. They learned. And anyone in the world can learn to coach also.

Metric Miler can race me in a mile on the track followed by swimming the 200m Butterfly.

He might beat me down on the track but he'll drown in the pool. So many people here have no clue how hard swimming Fly is compared to Freestyle. How many guys are in both the 200 Freestyle & 200 Butterfly finals? 1 this time Chad Le Clos with Phelps taking a pass. The 200 Fly is loaded with talent and the average of the top 8 may be faster than 2008 when they had the supersuit.

I was watching last night and just couldn't believe how obvious their HGH use is, with their lantern jaws and protruding and gapped teeth. Even the women all have the same big jaw and puffy face. Oh, and most of them have that really small acne that you see with anabolic use. It's like a slap I the face, it's so apparent.

SwimLifer wrote:

Metric Miler can race me in a mile on the track followed by swimming the 200m Butterfly.

He might beat me down on the track but he'll drown in the pool. So many people here have no clue how hard swimming Fly is compared to Freestyle. How many guys are in both the 200 Freestyle & 200 Butterfly finals? 1 this time Chad Le Clos with Phelps taking a pass. The 200 Fly is loaded with talent and the average of the top 8 may be faster than 2008 when they had the supersuit.

I'm sure you would, I never claimed to be a good swimmer.

I just stand by the fact that the competition pool in swimming is small. And records are weak. And they spread the thin talent across a stupid number for events.

jjjjj wrote:

But at any rate, you couldn't take, say, Tim Duncan or Usain Bolt at 17 and have them dominate. They'd have to start at 3.

This is complete hyperbole. Good swimmers start their sport at the same time every other athlete starts his or her sport -- none of these swimmers were doing any material training before age 8, and most weren't going hard until they were 11 or so. And you probably couldn't take a 17-year old and turn them into an elite athlete in any sport.

Some people are acting like golf and swimming are so different, but I've been involved at the youth level of both of those sports, and it's just like running. From ages 8 to 12, you start to see who's talented (including some kids who show up at age 11 or 12 with no prior experience), and you hope to keep as many of those kids engaged in the sport as possible. If more kids swam and played golf, you'd just see better performances up the line.

Drugs in My Water wrote:

I was watching last night and just couldn't believe how obvious their HGH use is, with their lantern jaws and protruding and gapped teeth. Even the women all have the same big jaw and puffy face. Oh, and most of them have that really small acne that you see with anabolic use. It's like a slap I the face, it's so apparent.

Yea it's pretty obvious gals like Ledecky and Lillia King have been using Hgh. I wonder what their parents think, or if they even know. Ironically the Russian swimmer who got beat by Lillia, a convicted "drug cheat", looks far more feminine than King.

"Coming up with arbitrary requirements that assures slower movement is just a dumb idea for any kind of racing, whether that's race-walking or breaststroke."

Like jumping over hurdles and/or barriers?

Most swim clubs won't accept kids 11 and over unless they show serious raw ability or the parents are expected swimmers who know the coaching staff. Penny Oleksiak was rejected at 9 by 2 clubs. Her parents spent 2 years paying for private lessons and she joined at 11. 5 years later she has 2 olympic medals and may get as many as 3 more by the end of the week.

I agree 100%.

No more hurdles, steeple, triple jump, pole vault. Combine throwing events. Choose whatever implement with any configuration that has a fixed weight to throw.

SwimLifer wrote:

Most swim clubs won't accept kids 11 and over unless they show serious raw ability or the parents are expected swimmers who know the coaching staff. Penny Oleksiak was rejected at 9 by 2 clubs. Her parents spent 2 years paying for private lessons and she joined at 11. 5 years later she has 2 olympic medals and may get as many as 3 more by the end of the week.

I agree that there are clubs out there like that, but there are plenty of decent clubs (and coaches) taking on beginners at age 9. It's just like track, soccer, etc.

But the point you prove is that -- just like in every other sport -- it is very possible for a talented athlete to go from a total beginner at age 9 to a serious swimmer at age 11 and an Olympian down the road.

Spitz wrote:

First, as people have noted, if one man can win 19 gold medals, the events are way too similar in their physiological demands. There's no way around this.

Actually, there is.

He was born with an exceptionally long torso relative to his total body-length, which is a huge advantage in the pool. Imagine if, say, someone were born with exceptionally high testosterone, or exceptionally high hematocrit....

Spitz wrote:

But it's the ridiculously small talent pool that irritates me. Only a very small segment of the world's population ever has the opportunity / wherewithall / desire to compete in swimming. Swimming is just not part of most humans' cultural world in the way that running is.

No, actually it's the attention that swimming receives that bothers you, not the small talent pool. If swimming got the same (lack of) attention as badminton or equestrian, you wouldn't have s**t to say.

Richeter wrote:

Spitz wrote:

I'd add that if you polled every person who has competed at anything approaching a high level in track and field, I bet over 99% would say that race walking should not be part of a track and field meet--it's counter to the idea of moving across a course as fast as possible. But few if any swimmers would say, "yeah, breaststroke is arbitrary, slow, and ridiculous."

Coming up with arbitrary requirements that assures slower movement is just a dumb idea for any kind of racing, whether that's race-walking or breaststroke.

I agree 100%.

No more hurdles, steeple, triple jump, pole vault. Combine throwing events. Choose whatever implement with any configuration that has a fixed weight to throw.

True, Let's take the plank out of our eye first.

We have two hurdles events and a steeple event that duplicates existing track events. We have two jumps that are essentially the same (long/triple). Then there are 4 throws - sounds a lot like having 4 swimming strokes. Then we have the stupid decathlon where people who are not good at anything else get to compete. Don't get me started on racewalking.

Camille Lacourt on doping in swimming

He said swimming is becoming as tainted as athletics, “with two or three doped in each final."

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/rio-2016-sun-yang-pisses-purple-camille-lacourt-olympic-gold-medallist-drug-cheat-a7180556.html

Richeter wrote:

No more hurdles, steeple, triple jump, pole vault. Combine throwing events. Choose whatever implement with any configuration that has a fixed weight to throw.

Apples and oranges, my friend.

In track, a course is established and each athlete travels the course as fast as they can. There are almost no restrictions on how you move through the course (except restrictions designed to maintain the integrity of the course, i.e. you can't push hurdles over or run around them).

In throws, you are given an implement, how you throw it is almost entirely your business.

In swimming, in 3/4 of the events you have arbitrary limitations on how you move yourself from one end to the other.

400m is to 400H as pool swimming is to open-water swimming, NOT as freestyle is to backstroke.