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 ....
Yeah, we realize people might cross-dress or even surgically alter their physically sexual characteristics, but unless I'm mistaken you still can't genetically alter one's sex.
For most people, XX maps pretty accurately to "woman" and XY to "man." But the Slate article Chris S. linked to earlier explains several reasons why one's phenotypic sex might not match one's sex-chromosome genotype. It also explains why, for sports such as swimming and track in which the general consensus seems to be that fair competition requires distinguishing "women" from "men," just looking at people naked or looking at their chromosomes might not tell you everything you need to know to assign people to categories.
Yeah, we realize people might cross-dress or even surgically alter their physically sexual characteristics, but unless I'm mistaken you still can't genetically alter one's sex.
For most people, XX maps pretty accurately to "woman" and XY to "man." But the Slate article Chris S. linked to earlier explains several reasons why one's phenotypic sex might not match one's sex-chromosome genotype. It also explains why, for sports such as swimming and track in which the general consensus seems to be that fair competition requires distinguishing "women" from "men," just looking at people naked or looking at their chromosomes might not tell you everything you need to know to assign people to categories.
