Petite Female Swimmer

As a petite female in her upper 30's is there anything I can do to overcome my height limitation when it comes to competitive swimming? I stand at 5ft. 2 1/2 inches and know that I'm at a disadvantage purely based on my height alone. Are there certain events that would be better geared towards the petite swimmer than other events?
  • Former Member
    Former Member over 7 years ago
    Height is not always an advantage, but it helps. Janet Evans wasn't even quite 5'-5" and she dominated the distance events throughout her entire career. www.youtube.com/watch ...on a side note, there are many excellent underwater kickers who are heads and shoulders above their competition, by simply using every speck of the fifteen meter break-out rule. If one becomes skilled and conditioned to excel on their dolphin kicking, the sky is the limit. She had a hot 400 Im too and her worst stroke was butterfly.
  • Former Member
    Former Member over 7 years ago
    1:01.91 in the 100 free. 1:04.92 in the 100 fly. 1:11.15 in 100 ***. 1:13.13 in the 100 back. 1:04.98 in the 100IM. This kid is a lot like me, fly almost as fast as free. As a 18 year old I did a 1:03.8 100 yard free and a 1:05.8 butterfly. My best breaststroke was at age 14 about a month before I turn 15 at 1:16.1 and my back which was terrible best was about 1:17 at 14 but as an 18 year old it was about 1:22 to 1:24, terrible the speed of lots of folks breaststroke.