Swimming WAY more exciting than track at the olympics

No

You’re no track fan.

Get to swimswam you traitorous fool.

Should you be posting this on LetsSwim?

But seriously, swimming is a bottom 5 event in the Olympics. It's like watching turtles race. It may be a grueling sport, but it's flat out boring.

No direct confrontation in competition. No cultural diversity (read as sport white people can win). Damn no.

It has high TV billing, but has all the boring aspects of running, just worse. No drafting or positioning tactics and can’t see anyone’s faces or emotions until it’s all over. You can’t even see much of their form, body, or what they are wearing.

Plus they all pee in the pool.

I agree. Announcers are into it. One race after another do little dead. The longer swim races are pretty boring but then.....

I don’t say this as a hater, I love the swimming events, but more exciting than track? No way. It’s basically the same eight countries over and over, with a few exceptions now and then, and you can only see 10 percent of the athletes’ bodies so they have to throw all kinds of graphics in the pool so you know who is who. It doesn’t have the color and flair that comes with the rainbow of national team uniforms in a pack either. And the medal totals are massively inflated by all the strokes. If Caeleb Dressel has an off race he can come back in his other nine events or whatever it is. Each track race is much more meaningful for each participant.

Swimming is cool because our ancient ancestors came out of the water. Genetic memory strikes a primal chord when we see elite swimmers doing what came naturally millions of years ago.

We didn't have any ancestors come out of the water. Where did you get that idea.....?

Not sure where I came across that. It isn't true? I see from some older forum posts that you have a biology background, so I'll take your word if my information has no scientific basis.

It wasn't this specific story, but I do recall coming across Tiktaalik in my reading.

npr.org

The Human Edge: Finding Our Inner Fish

One very important human ancestor was an ancient fish. Though it lived 375 million years ago, this fish called Tiktaalik had shoulders, elbows, legs, wrists, a neck and many other basic parts that eventually became part of us...

Open link

I really delved into the topic after years of dismissing evolution. It wouldn't surprise me if some sources I read were not giving a true picture of scientific consensus.

Lobe-finned fish, my friend.

(a) track hasn't started. ergo, trolling.

(b) the poster likely has the network version of the olympics confused with reality/streaming. US networks tend to edit out anything but our own heats. did you not notice it's already heat 3? ok, there were a couple heats the viewer missed while it was in studio or they were setting up the american about to go in heat 3.

i like to watch streaming which is showing all the heats. there then doesn't tend to be a big break.

L take. anyone with half a brain and a casual appreciation of non mainstream sports is going to be far more enthralled by a tactical mid distance race or a sprint footrace or even a long distance footrace than swimming. there is something extremely primal about racing and seeing peoples full bodies / faces

Right! Swimmers can't even see each other in the pool. They're not racing. They're time trialing. Running is better.

There are tons of intricacies, if you pay attention. For example, tomorrow night's women's 200 final could not feature greater contrast among the two heavy favorites. Ariarne Titmus has very little underwater and begins swimming very quickly after each wall. Her Australian teammate and frosty rival Mollie O'Callaghan has exactly the opposite strategy. She stays underwater almost to the 15 meter flag. Titmus will have already taken 4 or 5 strokes by the time O'Callaghan surfaces.

That's just one example. There are countless others. You're nuts if you don't think there is drafting in swimming. It happens all the time. The slightly trailing swimmer will intentionally move closer to the lane line to get a draft from the swimmer in the adjacent lane. That is particularly prevalent in relays.

And there absolutely are positioning tactics. The American Bobby Finke won the 800 and 1500 in Tokyo via a late devastating final 50. The rest of the world has devoted the subsequent 3 years to taking it out fast enough to negate Finke's kick. Sound familiar? Unfortunately the guy most capable of executing that strategy -- Ahmed Hafnaoui -- had personal issues prior to Paris and is not competing.

The organization who put on the US Swimming Trials did a great job. You could feel the crowd excitement while watching on TV.

I enjoyed the US Olympic Trials for Track and field but you didn’t feel the same kind of buzz.

I feel that same sort of buzz watching the swimming at the Olympics. you feel the stakes involved with the crowd and athletes. And you get invested in the races and you don’t worry about the production switching to the diving competition in the middle of a race.

I don’t see any of the swimmers with the cup marks that was the trendy thing in the past.

is that still done or do swimmers do something else that replaces the cupping thing?