If they go back to true regular suits and Jammers, we may never see the times of the last 2 years again - well at least not until they change the rules again.... I went back to look at the World Rankings for 10th Place and 25th place for the last 7 Olympic years. The Olympic years have always been the fastest years (except of course for 2009 - thanks to you know what). I used the 10th and 25th spot to avoid the "freak" factor and good a good average rate of improvement. Also - I used Freestyle to avoid the impact of rule changes and the emergence of dlphin kicks.
1984 50.36 50.93
1988 50.13 50.54
1992 49.83 50.43
1996 49.74 50.27
2000 49.15 49.67
2004 49.08 49.45
2008 47.83 48.5
2009 47.77 48.27
A couple of things jump out:
- rate of progress has slowed down to maybe 1 to 2 tenth per Olympic cycle
- Big drop in 2000 with arrival of Fastskin suits - about half a second ! and of course a full second and more in 2008.
- In a 1996 suit, I would guess the current times to be just a little slower than the 2000 times.
They are going to have trials next year for the 2011 Worlds - I am guessing a 49.7 or 49.8 will make the US team in the 100 Free ....
It will be very interesting to see what going back to the "old" suits will do to the elite swimmer's times. I think there have been a number of possible "innovations" in swimming that might account for a larger percentage of the time drops than we all give credit, such as SDKing off the walls, high elbow catch free, etc.
My guess is that we will see times slow down by less than a second in the 100s and less than 2 seconds in the 200s.
I suspect that we will see more variance among Masters. I know from personal experimentation last year that I was only about half a second faster in my B70 compared to swimming shaved in 100s. I didn't swim shaved in the 200s so I don't have a comparison there...
It will be very interesting to see what going back to the "old" suits will do to the elite swimmer's times. I think there have been a number of possible "innovations" in swimming that might account for a larger percentage of the time drops than we all give credit, such as SDKing off the walls, high elbow catch free, etc.
My guess is that we will see times slow down by less than a second in the 100s and less than 2 seconds in the 200s.
I suspect that we will see more variance among Masters. I know from personal experimentation last year that I was only about half a second faster in my B70 compared to swimming shaved in 100s. I didn't swim shaved in the 200s so I don't have a comparison there...
