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 not a track person, so I humbly suggest the following two explanations, knowing fully that they may be complete BS.
To my understanding, swimmers traditionally train significantly longer hours than most track athletes. This has always been explained to me that track is a harder sport -- in the sense of pounding the body more -- than swimming. Regardless of the reason, if the average training time is much longer them there is more "room" to play around with -- and optimize -- the type of training that is done.
About technique, I can't claim to know that running technique is more straightforward than swimming. But as a medium, water is more dense and so perhaps small improvements in stroke can have a proportionally greater effect on swimming speed than in running.
On a related matter, look at this op-ed piece:
www.slate.com/.../
I disagree with most of what the author says, but I wonder about the assertion that interest in swimming among the hoi polloi will flag without world records. Being a lifelong fan and participant in the sport, I really can't get a good perspective on the effect of a relative dearth of WRs that might last through the next Olympics and beyond.
I am not a track person, so I humbly suggest the following two explanations, knowing fully that they may be complete BS.
To my understanding, swimmers traditionally train significantly longer hours than most track athletes. This has always been explained to me that track is a harder sport -- in the sense of pounding the body more -- than swimming. Regardless of the reason, if the average training time is much longer them there is more "room" to play around with -- and optimize -- the type of training that is done.
About technique, I can't claim to know that running technique is more straightforward than swimming. But as a medium, water is more dense and so perhaps small improvements in stroke can have a proportionally greater effect on swimming speed than in running.
On a related matter, look at this op-ed piece:
www.slate.com/.../
I disagree with most of what the author says, but I wonder about the assertion that interest in swimming among the hoi polloi will flag without world records. Being a lifelong fan and participant in the sport, I really can't get a good perspective on the effect of a relative dearth of WRs that might last through the next Olympics and beyond.
