Well -- the numbers are in -- it's pretty close to the "Schubert number" of 2%. I took prelim times from the last 4 years as a baseline -- picked places 4-13 for the Men -- they have to go all out. I just took the average time for those 10 swims for each of the events (500 Free / 50 Free / 200 IM). There is a very small drop in times - from 2005 - 2008, as one would expect.
This year -- the 500 Free times down 1% -- the 200 IM 1.9% -- the 50 Free 1.7%.
For example - average time for 50 Free places 4-13:
2005 19.45
2006 19.44
2007 19.40
2008 19.50
2009 19.12
Former Member
Interesting calculations. Wouldn't we expect more benefit in freestyle than IM? I thought a lot of IMers were choosing legs-only.
A watched the women's meet on ESPN2 today and noticed most of the girls in the breaststrokes were wearing knee-length suits. But, yeah, I agree that you'd be foolish to wear legs only at this point. With these suits you want to cover as much surface area as possible!
Hmm, 2% - didnt I read somewhere that the LZR was supposed to be 2% faster than the next best suit? Hmm....
Kirk, as to the kneeskins on breaststrokers, there is some discussion of the legs vs knees in this thread. My experience swimming breaststroke in legs is that I feel like my legs are slipping, whereas no slippage feeling with jammers. Ande seems to think that amongst the elite breaststrokers, the other benefits of the legs outweigh the slipping feeling. Now my BR swims with legs are part of 100s IM for what it is worth.
