Does being tall give you an advantage?

A while back someone linked to a statistical study of elite swimmers that concluded close to what Allan said. (These conclusions are what I remember and might not be complete or perfectly accurate. Sorry don't have time to find the link.) - Height helps, particularly among male sprinters. - Wingspan really helps, particularly among sprinters. - Height makes less of a difference in breaststroke and IM. - I think there was something about short legs helping in backstroke. (That said, I'm 6'2" with a 75 inch wingspan and just about everybody who posts could beat me, because I'm lacking in just about everything else - flexibility, upper body strength, technique, etc.) Now I've always thought that your kick was helped by wide feet - though I've never seen it studied. That would help me rationalize having a lousy kick with a 12B foot. not short legs, per se. that comment was in relation to IMers. backstrokers tended to have a longer torso compared to IMers, but we're talking about an average of 5cm for women. for men, it's 13cm. the only reason that backstroke is mentioned is because, when compared to IM, the difference is statistically significant... comparing backstroke to the other strokes, the difference is not significant... this study was done on 2000 OT qualifiers. who knows what kind of data would show up with more recent qualifiers, or for masters... but here's the link, if anyone is interested... www.usaswimming.org/.../DesktopDefault.aspx

A while back someone linked to a statistical study of elite swimmers that concluded close to what Allan said. (These conclusions are what I remember and might not be complete or perfectly accurate. Sorry don't have time to find the link.) - Height helps, particularly among male sprinters. - Wingspan really helps, particularly among sprinters. - Height makes less of a difference in breaststroke and IM. - I think there was something about short legs helping in backstroke. (That said, I'm 6'2" with a 75 inch wingspan and just about everybody who posts could beat me, because I'm lacking in just about everything else - flexibility, upper body strength, technique, etc.) Now I've always thought that your kick was helped by wide feet - though I've never seen it studied. That would help me rationalize having a lousy kick with a 12B foot. not short legs, per se. that comment was in relation to IMers. backstrokers tended to have a longer torso compared to IMers, but we're talking about an average of 5cm for women. for men, it's 13cm. the only reason that backstroke is mentioned is because, when compared to IM, the difference is statistically significant... comparing backstroke to the other strokes, the difference is not significant... this study was done on 2000 OT qualifiers. who knows what kind of data would show up with more recent qualifiers, or for masters... but here's the link, if anyone is interested... www.usaswimming.org/.../DesktopDefault.aspx