Change the last sentenceof 101.3.2__Stroke to read " Both arms shall be brought forward in an overarm manner and pulled back simultaneously". .
Change the second sentence of 101.3.3__Kick to read, "A scissors kicking movement is never permitted in the Butterfly Stroke".
Since these two proposed changes are being proposed only because of the widely differing interpretation encountered in the last couple of years, they can be incorporated without further ado other than the agreement of the rules committees before the meet, whether it be tomorrow, next month, or next year.
George, you are correct with the dates of the change. Michael, I did not know about Paul Wolf being credited with the change. I have read many different stories about who takes credit for inventing the butterfly stroke. Names like Jack Sieg, Henry Myers and Eric Rademacher have been mentioned and now Paul Wolf will have to be added to these three. I am going to provide a link to the discussions we had about this a while ago.
forums.usms.org/showthread.php
Skip,
To your list of “inventors” of the butterfly include David Armbruster, swimming coach at the University of Iowa,
From en.wikipedia.org/.../Butterfly_stroke
History
The butterfly style evolved from the breaststroke. David Armbruster, swimming coach at the University of Iowa, researched the breaststroke, especially considering the problem of drag due to the underwater recovery. In 1934 Armbruster refined a method to bring the arms forward over the water in a breaststroke. He called this style "butterfly". While the butterfly was difficult, it brought a great improvement in speed. One year later, in 1935, Jack Sieg, a swimmer also from the University of Iowa, developed a kick technique involving swimming on his side and beating his legs in unison, similar to a fish tail, and then modified the technique afterward to swim it face down. He called this style Dolphin fishtail kick. Armbruster and Sieg quickly found that combining these techniques created a very fast swimming style consisting of butterfly arms with two dolphin kicks per cycle. Currently, the entire style is referred to as butterfly, but sometimes still also called dolphin, especially when referring to the dolphin kick.
This new style was considerably faster than a regular breaststroke. Using this technique Sieg swam 100 yards in 1:00.2. However the dolphin fishtail kick violated the rules of the FINA and was not allowed. Therefore, the butterfly arms with a breaststroke kick were used by a few swimmers in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin for the breaststroke competitions. In 1938, almost every breaststroke swimmer was using this butterfly style, yet this stroke was considered a variant of the breaststroke until 1952, when it was accepted as a separate style with a set of rules by the FINA. The 1956 Summer Olympics were the first Olympic games where the butterfly was swum as a separate competition, 100 m (women) and 200 m (men).
Burwell Bumpy Jones a favourite of mine. He swam at Camp Chicopee in all the summer events in The Hamilton and Toronto Area. Coach was Matt Mann at the camp. Matt's son was a very good flyer. Those were the guys I raced against.
Rob:
Actually, I mentioned David Armbruster in the link post I provided from November 30, 2006. Jack Seig was the swimmer that was coached by David Armbruster and so I probably should have mentioned both of them together like I did in that other post. In that regard Henry Myers was the swimmer and was coached by W.W. Robertson and so I should mention his name as well. I don't know who Eric Rademacher was coached by but he was from Germany when he did the over arm recovery in 1927.
Butterfly and Breaststroke two strokes. In 1955 Pan Am Games and 1956 Olympics butterfly had already been seperated. Butterfrog eliminated and no longer accepted. The fishtail stroke introduced which became the 2 beat dolphin in 1952 (this is why the change took place).
The Butterfrog a terrible memory from the past is Peter Cruise's favorite stroke.
Now I have found that Paul Wolf scored (Second place) only on the Men's 4 x 200 Free Relay with Jack Medica, John Macionis and Ralph Flanagan. From what I have found, These four swam together for this race only and either did not score individually or did not swim any other event. More digging to be done. Just in! Jack Medica won the 400 Free and placed second in the 1500 in the '36 games.
BTW, the Japanese team won the event, Hungary, France and Germany rounding out the top 5.
