That may be the most interesting and useful tool I've ever seen. Do you have it or find it? If I could video tape each swimmer like this, I'd be reanalyzing it a few times a month. Wow! I did notice that Sullivan has a much less conspicuous EVF than Adlington's. Awesome post.
The YouTube page had a link to this article:
www.sciencewa.net.au/index.php
Excerpt:
How oil and gas technology is helping Australia’s Olympic Swimming Team
Written by Marcia Van Zeller
Thursday, 22 May 2008
A TECHNOLOGY used to improve flows of oil and gas through pipelines may help elite swimmers win Olympic gold.
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is the science of understanding fluid flow. It has many applications for WA's oil and gas industry and, increasingly, for sport.
A research project by the Western Australian Institute of Sport (WAIS) and the University of Western Australia is looking to enhance the performance of Australian Olympic Swimming Team members by using CFD to model stroke performance.
“From an energy cost perspective, it is more efficient to change a swimmer’s technique to reduce drag forces rather than solely increase the force applied by the swimmer,” said WAIS sports biomechanist Dr Andrew Lyttle.
“In this respect, the more informed a swim coach is on the propulsive and resistive mechanisms of swimming movements, the greater the potential for performance increases....”
Lindsay,
Thanks for posting this link... Another example of the value of this forum. The second part of the video, on the bottom half, that is very interesting to me. I've been watching it for several hours now... If you pause it in sequence you can see how his forearm does pull very close to the body, but not only that, it's as if he is pulling toward the opposite side of the body (left hand pulls past right armpit) and then pitching down the body line.
This is pretty interesting for those into stroke analysis:
www.youtube.com/watch
