Hello, friends,
I've been wondering where to post this message, so I might as well start here.
There is a lot of talk about records broken in the tech suit era and some people want asterisks on those records.
But no one talks about the suit which Thorpe wore in the 2000 Olympics. It sure looks like a wetsuit to me:
media.olympics.com.au/.../20100707_101809625_ian_thorpe_wins_400m_20001.jpg
Why aren't his victories and records tainted by the use of this suit?
Does the rule change about suits help explain why he was unsuccessful in his comeback attempt?
Any thoughts?
a good test to see how much the laneline hurts when you don't swim straight. :bolt:
You didn't say goggles vs eyes closed, although I could do that too.
I can't really do a test using Thorpe's best events, because they aren't my best events.
I think you will find that swimmers produce slower times when not wearing goggles.
I swim in backstroke races without goggles all the time and I think it works out okay. I have done butterfly too.
Goggles mostly help by increasing the amt of time one can spend training.
I do not ever recall seeing backstroke flags when I competed from 1960 to 1970 and the 200 IM was one of my events. I've just been doing a search for pictures of swim meets from those days and couldn't find any that showed the ends of the pool...all the pictures showed swimmers in the middle where there was a rope that they would drop if there was a false start. I do remember that rope at meets.
Former Member
I think in that 1964 picture the rope across the pool (which doesn't have flags on it) was the halfway rope used for false starts.
Look closely. You'll see the flags are there. Also, the red lane ropes lead into the wall (Of course it's a black and white picture though).
Maybe backstroke flags were like touch pads and other equipment, only available at big meets early on, trickling down further as time went on. They represent and obvious safety improvement and are pretty cheap, so every pool eventually got them. In contrast, even today, many swim meets are still hand timed at the lower levels because of the expense of electronic timing systems (and low cost and sheer abundance of volunteer parental units armed with stopwatches).
Former Member
There are backstroke flags in this picture - 1964 Olympics in Tokyo.
They didn't have them at the high school and country club pools were I swam in New England. Two meets were held in artificial lakes with wooden lane lines and docks at each end of the 50 meter course. Good luck at seeing where you were going and finding the walls at the ends.
When I swam in college (as a walk-on at a big time school), I only swam free and fly and I was spending all my time just trying to keep up with other swimmers in workouts so I probably just didn't notice.
