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 ....
I am soooo tired of nobody being to able to stop this kind of stuff from happening ...
Why don't they settle this prior to the meet ?
Why is Jamaica all over sudden the sprint mecca of the world and everybody is celebrating the "head clown"?
Why do we have to look at a women's 400 dash record from an athlete where I can tell you the doping regimen she was under (or 100 or 200 or 800 or Long Jump or ....) ?
One thing that intrigues me is that swimming was able to surpass the world records set by dopers, but women's track hasn't been able to break many of the doping records from the 80s. Why do you think this is so? I know swimming has had a few things like rule changes in *** and back, technique changes and SDKs, and tech suits. Track hasn't had any real changes other than maybe the surface that they run on has gotten better, but so have the pools we swim in. However, I think most of the records of the dopers were broken before many of these apparent differences were used. Would you say that coaching and training has just evolved more in swimming than in track since the 80s? Were the women that doped in track just that much more effective than their swimming counterparts?
Tim
I am soooo tired of nobody being to able to stop this kind of stuff from happening ...
Why don't they settle this prior to the meet ?
Why is Jamaica all over sudden the sprint mecca of the world and everybody is celebrating the "head clown"?
Why do we have to look at a women's 400 dash record from an athlete where I can tell you the doping regimen she was under (or 100 or 200 or 800 or Long Jump or ....) ?
One thing that intrigues me is that swimming was able to surpass the world records set by dopers, but women's track hasn't been able to break many of the doping records from the 80s. Why do you think this is so? I know swimming has had a few things like rule changes in *** and back, technique changes and SDKs, and tech suits. Track hasn't had any real changes other than maybe the surface that they run on has gotten better, but so have the pools we swim in. However, I think most of the records of the dopers were broken before many of these apparent differences were used. Would you say that coaching and training has just evolved more in swimming than in track since the 80s? Were the women that doped in track just that much more effective than their swimming counterparts?
Tim
