The Backstroke Lane

It seems to me that during my "former swimming life" nearly 30 years ago toes curled around the lip of the gutter *was* allowed and I seem to remember the coach even instructing us to do this so our feet would not slip on the start. Then, when I was in high school or so, the rule changed, toes curled over the gutter lip was no longer allowed. Do I remember correctly? If so, does anyone know why the rule was changed? It seem to make the start a lot harder, and curline the toes over the gutter lip certainly does not make the pool shorter. A long time ago, "toes curled around the gutter" was allowed for SCY but in meters (and in international meets) the foot had to be completely submerged. Heck, in HS and college I used to do stand-up starts...which I surely do miss... I don't know why exactly they were changed, I was out of "serious" swimming by that point. But I suspect it was to keep the rules uniform between the courses. Almost every European pool I ever swam in (there were pretty many but I certainly can't claim it was exhaustive) did NOT have gutters at the end, they had flat walls (there were usually gutters on the sides of the pool). So maybe the rule that the feet had to be under -- with no toe curling -- was originally done so that backstrokers at pools with gutters at the end wouldn't have a huge advantage over the ones at pools without those gutters. But that is pure conjecture.

It seems to me that during my "former swimming life" nearly 30 years ago toes curled around the lip of the gutter *was* allowed and I seem to remember the coach even instructing us to do this so our feet would not slip on the start. Then, when I was in high school or so, the rule changed, toes curled over the gutter lip was no longer allowed. Do I remember correctly? If so, does anyone know why the rule was changed? It seem to make the start a lot harder, and curline the toes over the gutter lip certainly does not make the pool shorter. A long time ago, "toes curled around the gutter" was allowed for SCY but in meters (and in international meets) the foot had to be completely submerged. Heck, in HS and college I used to do stand-up starts...which I surely do miss... I don't know why exactly they were changed, I was out of "serious" swimming by that point. But I suspect it was to keep the rules uniform between the courses. Almost every European pool I ever swam in (there were pretty many but I certainly can't claim it was exhaustive) did NOT have gutters at the end, they had flat walls (there were usually gutters on the sides of the pool). So maybe the rule that the feet had to be under -- with no toe curling -- was originally done so that backstrokers at pools with gutters at the end wouldn't have a huge advantage over the ones at pools without those gutters. But that is pure conjecture.