Fina rulemaking: How to run swimming into the ground
Former Member
Modern competitive swimming throughout its history has upheld standards of athletic purity and fairness that have been the envy of the sporting world. Of course there have been occasional lapses–some serious, like performance-enhancing drugs or abusive coaches–and some not so serious, like spitting in competitors' lanes or bonging in front of cameras. But the greatest threat to swimming's integrity as a sport isn't posed so much by lamentable incidents or individuals, as it is by the very rules that govern the sport. The embarrassing fiasco around performance-enhancing bodysuits is only the tip of the rules iceberg, but let's start there, because that problem isn't solved. FINA half-solved it, a pattern of behind-the-curve improvisation that has become all too familiar.
HALF A BODYSUIT IS STILL A BODYSUIT
Why do we wear swimsuits anyway? Well, to cover our private parts in public, or as FINA puts it, to "not offend morality and good taste." A swimsuit should neither impede nor enhance our progress through the water. In other words, we as swimmers should be solely responsible for the speed we achieve. There are many ways to artificially improve our times in the pool: we could wear fins, or leg floats, or caps with foils like cycling helmets; we could design pools with springy starting blocks and end walls. None of these artificial aids are permitted, and for good reason. Once you permit performance enhancers, it never ends: helium belts and jet packs and who knows what else. Swimming is not NASCAR.
When bodysuits first appeared a few years back, FINA was romanced by the excitement of falling records and rising corporate influence in the sport. However, by not taking a principled position against artificial speed aids of any kind, FINA failed to anticipate just how bionic those bodysuits could rapidly become. As things got really ridiculous, FINA panicked, taking half-measures. Literally. Rather than full-length bodysuits, males and females are now permitted to wear genderized versions of half-length bodysuits. So the sawed-off half-suits enhance performance, only about half as much as the full bodysuits. Problem solved?
Not until it is generally acknowledged--by FINA and the swimsuit makers and the swimming community at large--that competitive swimsuits should not enhance performance. And they very much do, in a variety of ingenious ways. Bodysuits compress and reshape the body, making it more like a torpedo fuselage. Their surface is more hydrodynamic than human skin, lessening drag. The tightness and wetsuit-thickness of bodysuits minimize muscle vibrations and the resulting turbulence. Bodysuits are allowed a degree of buoyancy, which makes them (sorry, no gentler way to phrase it) flotation devices. And finally, they are allowed enough impermeability to trap air within the bodysuit. This is a snap solution to the age-old problem in swimming of keeping the lower half of the body high in the water, so you don't drag it behind you like an anchor.
Unlike the design of bodysuits, the solution to this rules crisis is not rocket science. Suits for males should not rise above the navel or cover any part of the leg. Suits for females should not cover the arms, neck, or legs. All suits should be single-layer woven textile fabric, non-buoyant, permeable to air and water, and gossamer thin. Tightness? That's up to you.
COMPETITIVE SWIMMING INVOLVES STROKES (THAT MEANS ARMS)
Another classic example of FINA having a broken rules compass is the issue of underwater swimming. The technique popped its head into living rooms around the world during the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, when two swimmers medaled (gold and silver) in the 100M backstroke using a streamlined underwater dolphin kick for much of the race's distance. Because the new experimental underwater technique had not previously been very successful, FINA backstroke rules had not addressed its use.
After Seoul FINA reacted by improvising a series of rules changes over the next few years that variously permitted, but limited, underwater streamlining. As the rules stand today, the head must break the water surface within the first 15 meters of any pool length. Streamlining is disallowed only in the breaststroke.
Why 15 meters? No reason. For awhile FINA had it at 10. Why the same rule for all size pools? Good question. Why would streamlining be allowed for 30% of a long-course meters pool, and 66% of a short-course yards pool? 15 meters is about 49 feet, which for most American school competitions means you have to swim a mere 26 feet on the surface. For a decent swimmer, that means two or three strokes to the end wall. The NCAA men's short-course championships this spring felt like whale-watching. Then there's the question why breaststroke gets left out of the streamlining party. Maybe for FINA it just didn't feel right. Yet.
The real question is why FINA didn't see the basic principles that streamlining violates, and respond accordingly. Was it, like bodysuits, the siren song of more records falling?
Competitive swimming has long applied a separation-of-strokes principle: events are divided into different strokes, each with defined kicking and arm movement requirements, which (with the exception of butterfly) streamlining obviously violates by introducing an alien kick. Breaststroke is defined as a whip kick and a double-arm pull with a below-surface recovery (to the elbow). Backstroke requires an alternating kick and single-arm pull on one's back. Freestyle is largely 'free' in name only: you can't use any of the other three strokes in medley events (what's left?). Freestyle is of course also confined by the streamlining rules among many others. Might as well rename it 'frontstroke,' defining it as an alternating kick and single-arm pull on one's front. The only stroke where underwater dolphin kicking can possibly be considered consistent with the stroke definitions is butterfly, with its dolphin kick and double-arm pull with above-surface recovery.
Is that the solution then, to allow streamlining only for butterfly events? Only if we are comfortable abandoning a second principle that competitive swimming is built upon: events are contested using different strokes, with defined arm and leg movements performed in coordination with one another. Sure, streamlining is fast, and it rests the upper body. But it's not a stroke or a part of a stroke: it's an underwater kick or body undulation done in the absence of an accompanying arm stroke. Besides, the rules for streamlining will always be stuck choosing an inevitably arbitrary distance limit (or no limit at all).
Instead of forever ditching the long-held principles that swimming is competed in a quartet of different strokes using distinct arm-and-leg propulsion techniques, let's take a reality break and consider returning to a modernized version of the pre-streamlining rules. After an entry dive or pushoff, swimmers should be required to surface after performing one kicking sequence associated with their stroke (one whip kick for breaststroke, two dolphin kicks for butterfly, six flutter beats for backstroke and 'frontstroke').
The bottom line is that there were some extraordinary performances in the last years of the pre-bodysuit, pre-streamlining era–Janet Evans's distance feats come to mind–that deserve our utmost respect. Would her 20-year-old world records have finally fallen without bodysuits and streamlining? Wouldn't everyone like to find out?
Former Member
*First, everyone, thank you for showing interest in my opinions. Second, I swim corrected on the backstroke rules: seems you can do most anything on your back. Now I'm going to return to a couple of my basic points.
1. Here's an excerpt from FINA's swimming rules, off their website, today:
"SW 10.8 No swimmer shall be permitted to use or wear any device or swimsuit that may aid his/her speed, buoyancy or endurance during a competition..."
I quote this principle, which has been stated in some form or other in every set of swimming rules I've ever seen, because it's a bedrock principle competitive swimming is neglecting at its peril. When Speedo names a current (FINA approved) line of bodysuits the "Recordbreaker," we have a problem, Houston.
2. IMHO, the streamlining rules are an inconsistent mess. Other posters make a good point: if freestyle's going to be truly free, might as well allow unlimited streamlining. Same logic applies for the backstroke, as long as you stay on your back. Since butterfly uses the same kick, allow it unlimited there too. The camel's nose is already in the tent on breaststroke, since a first dolphin kick is now allowed. Pretty soon we have a whale-watching trip with no flukes, where spectators get the next trip free!
Athletically, separate underwater events (can't break the water surface any time after the entry dive and before touching the finish wall) would be fascinating. Might make all those new underwater cameras provide a little more entertainment value.
Sure you might have a very slight point with regards to that 15m rule applying to all 2 (3 if US) competitive courses, but I would think that's more for the lane line manufacturers and officials benefits.
I sure wish the backstroke flags were at 5m for all 3 courses. It always annoys me to be switching between 5 yd and 5m.
Who said anything about doing it wrong? We're just saying there is more than one legal way to do it. You can use double-arm if you want. You can just kick if you want. You can use a frog kick rather than a flutter kick...
I know. I was being cynical
current 'tech' suits, but of course all textile (engineered, high tech, pricey), are designed and advertised to increase buoyancy, compress and decrease drag, ie enhance performance, more for one gender than another
almost certainly, a lot of male masters swimmers would like to have the coverage/compression of the female suits in the abdominal area. if female suits' legs were cut off, more controversy would ensue.
things are a mess
should suits be briefs (males) and small 2 pieces (females) only?
(while you make a strong case, IMHO let the suits be what they may for vanity, sponsorship, comfort or whatever reason that gets more people swimming....our sport will still be about the cheapest sport as far as personal equipment)
how much suit and rule phraseology do we need?
further tinkering with rules to constrain underwater performance enhancing maneuvers would be another Pandora's box
regarding FINA rules, or rather their interpretation because the rule itself is more clear, one caught my attention recently, so I contacted top rule folks, including a couple in the video room at Nationals....
the rule for breaststroke start (and off the wall) says that the pull must begin prior to the kick. see videos (2 of many such examples from this past Nationals)
however, it turns out that ANY sideways or downward movement of the hands or arms suffices......however brief, however slight, however discontinuous
quoting from a 12/2008 rule interpretation..."we have been informed that FINA's intent is now different from our previous understanding of what constitutes the beginning of the first arm pull" and then goes on to include ANY lateral or downward movement of hands or arms.
thus, to illustrate the matter...a swimmer may move the hands or arms a half inch, or even less, purposefully or because the dive in or push off moved their hands/arms, pause there for a few to several feet, then dolphin kick, then the full pull (back to the hips if desired)
you may notice the swimmer in the top video nicely gets a great propulsive dolphin kick immediately off the blocks (see the water vortex, akin to what many produce as part of their butterfly stroke, followed by another dolphin kick)
because it is near impossible to say with certainty that the hands/arms didn't make a tiny movement officiating from above the water through bubbling eddying water while usually watching several lanes, the rule is needless, open to wide variation and inconsistency in interpretation/application
Here's an article in today's washington post on the state of the sport post high tech suits - www.washingtonpost.com/.../AR2010081402646.html
It appears that most are satisfied with where we are today.
Modern competitive swimming throughout its history has upheld standards of athletic purity and fairness that have been the envy of the sporting world. Of course there have been occasional lapses–some serious, like performance-enhancing drugs or abusive coaches–and some not so serious, like spitting in competitors' lanes or bonging in front of cameras. But the greatest threat to swimming's integrity as a sport isn't posed so much by lamentable incidents or individuals, as it is by the very rules that govern the sport. The embarrassing fiasco around performance-enhancing bodysuits is only the tip of the rules iceberg, but let's start there, because that problem isn't solved. FINA half-solved it, a pattern of behind-the-curve improvisation that has become all too familiar.
HALF A BODYSUIT IS STILL A BODYSUIT
Why do we wear swimsuits anyway? Well, to cover our private parts in public, or as FINA puts it, to "not offend morality and good taste." A swimsuit should neither impede nor enhance our progress through the water. In other words, we as swimmers should be solely responsible for the speed we achieve. There are many ways to artificially improve our times in the pool: we could wear fins, or leg floats, or caps with foils like cycling helmets; we could design pools with springy starting blocks and end walls. None of these artificial aids are permitted, and for good reason. Once you permit performance enhancers, it never ends: helium belts and jet packs and who knows what else. Swimming is not NASCAR.
When bodysuits first appeared a few years back, FINA was romanced by the excitement of falling records and rising corporate influence in the sport. However, by not taking a principled position against artificial speed aids of any kind, FINA failed to anticipate just how bionic those bodysuits could rapidly become. As things got really ridiculous, FINA panicked, taking half-measures. Literally. Rather than full-length bodysuits, males and females are now permitted to wear genderized versions of half-length bodysuits. So the sawed-off half-suits enhance performance, only about half as much as the full bodysuits. Problem solved?
Not until it is generally acknowledged--by FINA and the swimsuit makers and the swimming community at large--that competitive swimsuits should not enhance performance. And they very much do, in a variety of ingenious ways. Bodysuits compress and reshape the body, making it more like a torpedo fuselage. Their surface is more hydrodynamic than human skin, lessening drag. The tightness and wetsuit-thickness of bodysuits minimize muscle vibrations and the resulting turbulence. Bodysuits are allowed a degree of buoyancy, which makes them (sorry, no gentler way to phrase it) flotation devices. And finally, they are allowed enough impermeability to trap air within the bodysuit. This is a snap solution to the age-old problem in swimming of keeping the lower half of the body high in the water, so you don't drag it behind you like an anchor.
Unlike the design of bodysuits, the solution to this rules crisis is not rocket science. Suits for males should not rise above the navel or cover any part of the leg. Suits for females should not cover the arms, neck, or legs. All suits should be single-layer woven textile fabric, non-buoyant, permeable to air and water, and gossamer thin. Tightness? That's up to you.
COMPETITIVE SWIMMING INVOLVES STROKES (THAT MEANS ARMS)
Another classic example of FINA having a broken rules compass is the issue of underwater swimming. The technique popped its head into living rooms around the world during the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, when two swimmers medaled (gold and silver) in the 100M backstroke using a streamlined underwater dolphin kick for much of the race's distance. Because the new experimental underwater technique had not previously been very successful, FINA backstroke rules had not addressed its use.
After Seoul FINA reacted by improvising a series of rules changes over the next few years that variously permitted, but limited, underwater streamlining. As the rules stand today, the head must break the water surface within the first 15 meters of any pool length. Streamlining is disallowed only in the breaststroke.
Why 15 meters? No reason. For awhile FINA had it at 10. Why the same rule for all size pools? Good question. Why would streamlining be allowed for 30% of a long-course meters pool, and 66% of a short-course yards pool? 15 meters is about 49 feet, which for most American school competitions means you have to swim a mere 26 feet on the surface. For a decent swimmer, that means two or three strokes to the end wall. The NCAA men's short-course championships this spring felt like whale-watching. Then there's the question why breaststroke gets left out of the streamlining party. Maybe for FINA it just didn't feel right. Yet.
The real question is why FINA didn't see the basic principles that streamlining violates, and respond accordingly. Was it, like bodysuits, the siren song of more records falling?
Competitive swimming has long applied a separation-of-strokes principle: events are divided into different strokes, each with defined kicking and arm movement requirements, which (with the exception of butterfly) streamlining obviously violates by introducing an alien kick. Breaststroke is defined as a whip kick and a double-arm pull with a below-surface recovery (to the elbow). Backstroke requires an alternating kick and single-arm pull on one's back. Freestyle is largely 'free' in name only: you can't use any of the other three strokes in medley events (what's left?). Freestyle is of course also confined by the streamlining rules among many others. Might as well rename it 'frontstroke,' defining it as an alternating kick and single-arm pull on one's front. The only stroke where underwater dolphin kicking can possibly be considered consistent with the stroke definitions is butterfly, with its dolphin kick and double-arm pull with above-surface recovery.
Is that the solution then, to allow streamlining only for butterfly events? Only if we are comfortable abandoning a second principle that competitive swimming is built upon: events are contested using different strokes, with defined arm and leg movements performed in coordination with one another. Sure, streamlining is fast, and it rests the upper body. But it's not a stroke or a part of a stroke: it's an underwater kick or body undulation done in the absence of an accompanying arm stroke. Besides, the rules for streamlining will always be stuck choosing an inevitably arbitrary distance limit (or no limit at all).
Instead of forever ditching the long-held principles that swimming is competed in a quartet of different strokes using distinct arm-and-leg propulsion techniques, let's take a reality break and consider returning to a modernized version of the pre-streamlining rules. After an entry dive or pushoff, swimmers should be required to surface after performing one kicking sequence associated with their stroke (one whip kick for breaststroke, two dolphin kicks for butterfly, six flutter beats for backstroke and 'frontstroke').
The bottom line is that there were some extraordinary performances in the last years of the pre-bodysuit, pre-streamlining era–Janet Evans's distance feats come to mind–that deserve our utmost respect. Would her 20-year-old world records have finally fallen without bodysuits and streamlining? Wouldn't everyone like to find out?
Reads like a John Smith type rant: pro-tradition, anti-innovation, anti-streamlining.
And does competitive swimming just = arms?! Quite odd.
I will leave John Smith out of it. I agree with Leslie. It IS a rant. When "woofus" (why do folks come up with such weird names?) says competitive swimming is "just arms" he clearly doesn't "get" competitive swimming. Does he compete? I wonder. I have been thinking about the shift away from the tech suits as we knew them but will start a different thread to talk about it.
We also now have those cursed FLIP turns in backstroke! What is the world coming to?
All in all, though, I don't mind the lack of tech suits, but I completely disagree with the OP that swimming technique should not evolve. To me, the nice part about swimming and masters swimming in particular is that I can continually change my technique, try new things and improve. This guy obviously doesn't know how hard dolphin kicking off backstroke turns is -- if you try to go 15 meters every time in a short course 200, you will probably go a lot slower. It gives you another degree of freedom to play with, both in practice and in races. Its fair to go 15 meters irrespective of pool length, that way your count doesn't change and you can train one thing. But I think it is great, and we should continue to refine our technique and training.
I agree with you and Leslie, Greg, this is very much a rant and is not very rational.
Berkoff brought a major innovation to the sport even if it seemed a bit outlandish at the time. 35 meters underwater from the start.
*
Athletically, separate underwater events (can't break the water surface any time after the entry dive and before touching the finish wall) would be fascinating. Might make all those new underwater cameras provide a little more entertainment value.
Interesting suggestion, but underwater events might not be all that exciting for spectators (even if it's incredibly fast).
YouTube- Ryan Lochte 50m underwater in 25 seconds!
Not satisfied with the huge step backwards that the sport has already taken, reactionaries continue their push to undo every shred of progress that's ever been made.
Why adapt to a changing world and progress when you can just ban change and progress?. That's much easier!
Edit: Oh, the OP has one whole post. I got baited by a troll alt. Well played, troll. =\
