I was looking over the high school records and noticed one glaring disparity. The oldest record on the books is the boys public 500 yard free, set in 1983 by Jeff Kostoff at 4:16.39. The next oldest boys record is in 1991. The oldest girls record is the 100 fly set in 1996 by Misty Hyman. Any ideas as to why that one has stood for so long?
www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/.../USA_High_School_Records.pdf
I should also point out that Misty Hyman was more than a one trick pony. Her defeat of O'Neill at Sydney in 2000 proved she was a pretty capable swimmer on the surface, too.
I want to say that Misty also had the HS 100 yard backstroke record for a while as well, largely because of her amazing underwater skillz. It really is too bad she was never the same swimmer after her shoulder surgery post-Sydney.
We did an interview with Jeff Kostoff on the 25th anniversary of his record swim. Find it here.
He talks about his physical condition the day of the race and why no one has challenged the record.
That's really amazing, but... wasn't there a post that Phelps and Vendt did a set last year on :53 base interval? Maybe the Phelps/Vendt set was shorter?
In order to do any set on a 53 base, you have to swim a 1650 in 14:34, ie if you hold 53.0's in the mile you will go a 14:34. So I think we can safely say that noone, not even Phelps, can do a set longer than, I don't know 800??? on a 53 base interval. I bet Phelps could do 4x200's on 1:45 if he got to leave from the block on the first one. But I doubt he could do even 5 of them.
The most ridiculous set I heard about was Vendt doing 6 400 IM's and he went 3:43 on the last one. There is a floswim video of Klueh doing 15 100's on 1:00 and holding 53's (going by memory here, was that the set?).
