Simple. You have absolute power to change any technique rules, start/finish rules, age up rules, sky is the limit as long as the rules pertain to swimming. What would you change and why?
Former Member
Drafting is similar to holding your opponents swim trunks.
From the way that you've described some of the races you were in, this would be a minor offense.
-LBJ
From the way that you've described some of the races you were in, this would be a minor offense.
-LBJ
True like lending Capsicum grease to an opponent and telling him if you rub it in vigorouslly before the race it wil keep you warm. Or give Exlax to another swimmer and telling him it is an energy bar. I did not like swimming behind him.
1. 50's of every stroke in the olympics.
2. No more 1500/800 meters or 1650/1000 yards. If your swimming that long it may aswell be open water.
3. Choose order of IM. but with two rules is: you can't start with backstorke becasue you have to use a dive. And no crossover turn.
I'd like to see barf-bags at each end of the pool for all of us nauseated backstrokers. I'm trying to improve my underwater kick so I can spend less time swimming on my back. I don't get it. I used to love it, but I also used to love amusement parks and now I can't even look at some rides without getting sick to my stomach.
I like the no high-tech suits approach & not just because I'm uneasy with some claims of performing enhancing qualities. We've talked about the extra expense before (and some of our resident plutocrats have pooh-poohed that notion) but one could consider the talked-about problem of recruiting boys these days. Could it that if they watch the Olympics, instead of seeing the slim, muscled six-packed specimens that they might desire to emulate, they see a bunch of guys looking like (to their eyes) wearing leotards?
If I were the Rules Dictator...
--The water in the pool would be kept at a constant temperature of 81 degrees, no matter whether we were swimming indoors or outdoors. Well, except for those occasions when I'm doing my birthday swim (my age x 100 yards/meters), or doing some sort of distance swim, in which case the water would be 79 degrees.
--The showers at the pool would always have hot water.
--My goggles would never leak.
--My lycra suits would never disintegrate.
Anna Lea
I would get rid of those so called “high tech” suits (full body or leg coverage) and mandate going back to the old briefs that have been successfully used over the past 35 years.
These new style suits are extremely uncomfortable and instead of experiencing the wonderful aquatic sensation that you get from swimming in briefs, the new suits give you an icky “taking a bath with your clothes on” feeling. However, because a lot of team coaches think they are faster and more competitive, they make everyone wear them despite the discomfort.
Based on independent research, they are more of an artificial athletic aid and really don’t do much for increasing speed.
forums.usms.org/showthread.php
As I heard one swimmer in France say: “Viva a la Speedo!”. :applaud:
Happy Swimming
Dolphin 2
Leonard:
I think one of the reasons why Women have different events in the Olympics such as not having a 1500 Free and having the 800 Free instead is the old thinking that Women cannot handle the physical stress in athletics that men can handle. I remember back in the 1960's society did not want women participating in sports. Thats why you very rarely saw women past 18 in competitive sports. It was a myth perpetuated by society back then and today the IOC has moved very slow in getting events changed at the Olympics because of this old thinking. I do not think any of the swimming nations or anybody for that matter believe this at all. Look at what FINA has done with the World Championships and having a 1500 Free for women.
Also you have to remember the times back then. This was before the passage of Title IX and the congressional acts that allowed equal opportunity in High School and College sports. The attitude was pretty male chauvinistic back in those days. Why I even remember that swimming workouts for girls/women should not be as hard as boys/men when I was about 10 years old because they could not handle the physical stress that boys/men could. This theory and myth started to go out the window as the 1960's progressed but you still had people that actually believed this.
The other day on the TV station ESPN classic they had a show that was taken from 1972 or 1973 and had an interview with Bobby Riggs, the old tennis player that really believed this theory and myth. He said that in no way was a women equal to a man in anything and that man is the king of everything. And to proof his point he as an old man would play a tennis match and guarantee the superiority of man over women in sports. He said he would take on all women challengers. He played against Margaret Court and won the match as an old man and said see I told you so.
One of the networks got suckered into buying into this myth and they paid lots of $ to stage a challenge match against Bill Jean King at the Astrodome in Houston. It was sold out and on worldwide TV. Everyone knows what happened to Bobby and he had to eat his words on the world stage. The bottom line of all this is not just the tennis match but the attitudes that people had back then. This story would be a joke today and no network would go near this.
1) Women get a 1500 in Olympics.
2) 25 km open water added to Olympics, not just the 10 km.
3) Addition of a swim "decathlon" - 10 events (including a 1500 free and the 50 free, BTW) done over 2 days with the overall winner determined by the average percentage of their time for each event as compared to the world record.
4) Just for sadistic kicks, add a 1500 fly.
posted by Leonard Jansen
I totally agree with #1 Leonard......The fact that women don't swim the 1500 in the Olympics is similar to other previous (and current) rules in women's sports like not playing more than 3 games in a WNBA finals??.....Women are tough enough to handle the same rules and events as men.....Try and keep up with Janet Evans or Katie Ziegler in a 1500!
I really like #3 as well! Who can do it all? .....50 free, 1500 free, 200 fly, 200 back, 200 ***, 100 fly, 100 back, 100 ***, 200 IM, and 400 IM would make a good Decathalon.
Newmastersswimmer
