Been watching the Olympic swimming tonight on generator power.. Fla. ..Anyway. the speed of the swimmers is incredible..I remember posting a question here on how fast world speed was.. I found out my times were snail class. These swimmers go like they have outboard motors powering them! Several records broke.. Just was watching Jenny Thompson..go girl .Second to Austrialia. .in the relay.
Former Member
yes, that little jap got away with it...and did you see how close it was? dang it! who knows what would have happened without that little bursting kick.
;) (no offense, my best friend, is jap.)
Did anyone see the men's 100 ***? Did the Japanese swimmer (don't remember his name) do a dolphin kick off the turn? It sure looked like one to me. Was it enough to win him the race or not - we will never know!
Paul, yes he did! And if you watch the replay from the start, he did one on the start as well! Don't know what that ref was looking at, but of course, they don't have the benefit of underwater cameras! Looked pretty obvious to me though!!!
A dolphin kick at each end of the pool? Absolutely, that's why it is illegal. A couple of hundredths of a second each or more! Difference in the race! Should have been DQ'd. IMHO of course!:D
You'll notice that his pullout off the start and pullout off the wall was the difference in the race. Hansen got off the blocks at about the same time as Kitajima and touched the wall before him but when they surfaced Kitajima was ahead.
Re the call. It's a tough call for stroke/turn judge to make. It is legal to break the legs up in a dolphin-like recovery but the no-no is a downward dolphin movement. HOWEVER, swimmers at this level have a slight downward dolphin like motion when they pull down hard and this not a violation.
Remember that the judge can only make the call if he/she is 100% sure of the violation. If I had access to the tape, and I did replay it, I'd make the call since it appeared on the turn that he added a downward dolphin just before his *** kick. That's two violations--dolphin and two kicks with one pull. Obviously it wasn't called, and can't really blame the judge, and so it's academic. However, the judges will now be looking for kick off the walls in the 200.
At the end of the day, if Hansen swims as fast in finals as semis he wins anyway and, much to Hansen's credit, he is focused on winning the gold in the 200. He swims as well as he did at Trials he should win the gold.
What blew me away was watching how powerfully they come out of turns. The way they undulate under the surface for about 3x te distance I do is fantastic to see. I'm really enjoying the olympics this year, hope we have it in N Y in 2012.
