I was able to watch some of the swimming from the Olympics while attending the Long Course Nationals in Savannah - GREAT meet by the way- and although I was impressed by many of the swims, I couldn't help but wonder if the trials were held too close to the Games and as a result compromised the taper of the US swimmers?
The competition at the trials was fierce. Many world records were set. Many had the swim of their lives at trials (I was lucky enough to attend several sessions). But there was only one month after trials until the games. For that elite level it seems to me that many of the swimmers would be into a four week taper following the trials. But inorder to swim their best to make the team in Long Beach, they would have had to taper for trials. Look at Brendan Hansen with two world records or come from nowhere Katie Hoff.
My understanding is that if you hit your taper you can expect (about) a 2% drop in time. Did anyone do that in Athens? My question is why do we have trials so close to the Games? Seems to me we should have had trials two or three months before the Games.
Any comments?:)
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Former Member
I don't think there will ever be any consensus on when to hold trials. I can see advantages to holding trials earlier. Holding the trials 3-4 months earlier than the Olympics gives the swimmers enough time to go through another training cycle before tapering again. However, there is no guarantee that the people swimming the best 4 months ago will be the best come the Olympics.
Having the trials a month before the Olympics pretty much guarantees that you are taking the fastest swimmers at this particular moment. It's not the easiest thing to hold the taper for a month but it's certainly not something that's impossible. I think anything in the 2-3 month period before Olympics is not a good idea. You would get to the point where you can't get into another training cycle and it would be hard to carry a taper through that long of a period.
Good arguments can be made for either case but I would lean towards doing it the way we did it this year. You'll often see age groupers taper for a meet, make a junior cut, and then go to nationals a few weeks later and swim even faster. Same thing in college swimming with the time difference between conference meets and NCAAs - excluding the few who get A cuts during the season.
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Former Member
I don't think there will ever be any consensus on when to hold trials. I can see advantages to holding trials earlier. Holding the trials 3-4 months earlier than the Olympics gives the swimmers enough time to go through another training cycle before tapering again. However, there is no guarantee that the people swimming the best 4 months ago will be the best come the Olympics.
Having the trials a month before the Olympics pretty much guarantees that you are taking the fastest swimmers at this particular moment. It's not the easiest thing to hold the taper for a month but it's certainly not something that's impossible. I think anything in the 2-3 month period before Olympics is not a good idea. You would get to the point where you can't get into another training cycle and it would be hard to carry a taper through that long of a period.
Good arguments can be made for either case but I would lean towards doing it the way we did it this year. You'll often see age groupers taper for a meet, make a junior cut, and then go to nationals a few weeks later and swim even faster. Same thing in college swimming with the time difference between conference meets and NCAAs - excluding the few who get A cuts during the season.
