lefty!

Very interesting discussion on the timing of Olympic Trials. My semi-informed take on this that it depends on whether you want the best swimmers or the best olympic competitors on your national team. Let me explain what I think the difference is. There are some swimmers who have distinguished careers, with multiple National or World Records to their credit, but none in the biggest meet of all--the Olympics--and decidedly disappointing Olympic performances relative to what they were expected to do. Franze Van Almsick would be an example of this; Tracey Caulkins another (of course, she was robbed of her best chance to shine in 1980). They are what I would call great swimmers. Great Olympians are those who have a distinguished career, AND their best performances in the Olympic Games. Let's be honest; the publicity, the attention and the fact you only have a chance once every four years makes the Olympics unlike any other meet, even if all the same competitors show up for a meet like World Championships. Some great swimmers wilt in that atmosphere, others feed off of it. I call those people great olympians. So do you want your team to have the very best swimmers your country has to offer, regardless of whether they do well under pressure? If so, you want a selection committee and no Olympic Trials at all. If you must have a Trials Meet, then you want it as close to the Olympic Games as possible. That way, if you have a talented 15 year old who's just gone through a growth spurt, and figures out how to use his/her new body to set a National Record six weeks before the Olympics, you will get that athlete on your team. That is the "fairest" way to pick your team based on the best performance each swimmer has to offer. On the other hand, do you want athletes with the best chance to medal once they get to the Olympics? If so then you want a high stakes, high pressure Olympic Trials meet. Exactly when that happens is not so important. So what if you have an early Trials, and then Buffy the Butterflyer takes fives seconds off of her personal record 2 months later? Where was that when the pressure was on? If she really is full of youthful potential, she will still be around in four years, and if she is not still around, what does that say about her ability to handle pressure? In contrast, an early Olympic Trials meet means that the people who prove they have what it takes in a high stakes meet can back-off, reset their training, and have the best chance to do their best again for the Olympics. Lefty has a valid point: what coach in their right mind would have a taper plan that called for a mini-taper for a peak performance three weeks prior to the big enchilada? There is no school of thought I've ever heard from the coaching ranks advocating that practice. On the other hand, maybe that is in fact a better way to do it, and we simply have not made the connection yet. As I understand the lore of swimming, the whole idea of a taper was discovered accidentally. So the legend I've heard goes that some college swimmers used to participate in a meet pitting teams from fraternities against each other, and this meet happened a week or some after the varsity team's big conference championship meet. At the time, the practice was to train hard every day up to the actual day of the big meet. Some of the varsity swimmers noticed that they were going faster for the fraternity meet, after a week off, than they did for conference championships. They decided to explore that apperant discrepancy, and now as they say, you know the rest of the story. So, is it possible that you can go faster by peaking for the Olympic Trials, and then riding the high of making the team all the way through the Olympics themselves? Maybe. Anyone have any ideas about how we could test that hypothesis? Matt

Very interesting discussion on the timing of Olympic Trials. My semi-informed take on this that it depends on whether you want the best swimmers or the best olympic competitors on your national team. Let me explain what I think the difference is. There are some swimmers who have distinguished careers, with multiple National or World Records to their credit, but none in the biggest meet of all--the Olympics--and decidedly disappointing Olympic performances relative to what they were expected to do. Franze Van Almsick would be an example of this; Tracey Caulkins another (of course, she was robbed of her best chance to shine in 1980). They are what I would call great swimmers. Great Olympians are those who have a distinguished career, AND their best performances in the Olympic Games. Let's be honest; the publicity, the attention and the fact you only have a chance once every four years makes the Olympics unlike any other meet, even if all the same competitors show up for a meet like World Championships. Some great swimmers wilt in that atmosphere, others feed off of it. I call those people great olympians. So do you want your team to have the very best swimmers your country has to offer, regardless of whether they do well under pressure? If so, you want a selection committee and no Olympic Trials at all. If you must have a Trials Meet, then you want it as close to the Olympic Games as possible. That way, if you have a talented 15 year old who's just gone through a growth spurt, and figures out how to use his/her new body to set a National Record six weeks before the Olympics, you will get that athlete on your team. That is the "fairest" way to pick your team based on the best performance each swimmer has to offer. On the other hand, do you want athletes with the best chance to medal once they get to the Olympics? If so then you want a high stakes, high pressure Olympic Trials meet. Exactly when that happens is not so important. So what if you have an early Trials, and then Buffy the Butterflyer takes fives seconds off of her personal record 2 months later? Where was that when the pressure was on? If she really is full of youthful potential, she will still be around in four years, and if she is not still around, what does that say about her ability to handle pressure? In contrast, an early Olympic Trials meet means that the people who prove they have what it takes in a high stakes meet can back-off, reset their training, and have the best chance to do their best again for the Olympics. Lefty has a valid point: what coach in their right mind would have a taper plan that called for a mini-taper for a peak performance three weeks prior to the big enchilada? There is no school of thought I've ever heard from the coaching ranks advocating that practice. On the other hand, maybe that is in fact a better way to do it, and we simply have not made the connection yet. As I understand the lore of swimming, the whole idea of a taper was discovered accidentally. So the legend I've heard goes that some college swimmers used to participate in a meet pitting teams from fraternities against each other, and this meet happened a week or some after the varsity team's big conference championship meet. At the time, the practice was to train hard every day up to the actual day of the big meet. Some of the varsity swimmers noticed that they were going faster for the fraternity meet, after a week off, than they did for conference championships. They decided to explore that apperant discrepancy, and now as they say, you know the rest of the story. So, is it possible that you can go faster by peaking for the Olympic Trials, and then riding the high of making the team all the way through the Olympics themselves? Maybe. Anyone have any ideas about how we could test that hypothesis? Matt