I thought Wally Dicks held the record for oldest OT qualifier (100 ***) at 40 until SVDL beat him out by a few months at the last trials.
To my knowledge, Wally was the oldest swimmer to swim in Trials when he swam in 2000 (he was 37). I think Rowdy may have qualified when he was older than 37, but didn't actually swim in the meet. So you have to be careful using the phrases, "oldest to qualify" vs "oldest to swim." In 2008 Susan became the oldest male or female to swim in Trials. Vlad Pyshnenko also swam in 2008 Trials and was older than 37, so he moved up to become the oldest male to swim in Trials.
I don't have a recollection like Skip, so this may not be accurate. Hopefully somebody can correct me if I am wrong.
Jeff
This would be so cool. You always see sprinters/stroke specialists in their late 30s/40s making back to the elite levels. She would be the first distance swimmer(?) to make it back to the elite levels.
Really? Name one besides Dara Torres.
Susan (Rapp) von der Lippe won Silver in the 200 *** in the 80's then qualified for the most recent Olympic Trials in the 100 *** and the 100 fly.
It depends on how you define elite. I think there is a pretty wide gulf between making OT cuts and winning an Olympic medal. And SVDL hardly attempted a "comeback," she just tries to fit swimming in "around the edges" (like most masters swimmers).
Like Tom, I do kind of wonder if DT's comeback success has as much to do with her events as with her talent/determination. If Janet Evans does seriously go after it, then it would be an interesting test case.
Dennis Baker's oh-so-near-miss of the OT in the 200 fly while in his upper-40s deserves mention in this regard. I guess I intuitively feel we mere mortals lose more in an event like the 200 fly (or the distance frees) with age than we do in the sprints. But maybe not.
I guess I intuitively feel we mere mortals lose more in an event like the 200 fly (or the distance frees) with age than we do in the sprints. But maybe not.
I'd like to think that too, but I think other sports prove otherwise -- such as the 38 year old winner of the 2008 marathon gold (en.wikipedia.org/.../Constantina_Diţă-Tomescu). I think what really happens is that we either don't have the time or the inclination to do the training for distance swimming events like we did when we were younger.
You mention Dennis Baker and I hear stories that he does still train like an age grouper. Most of us don't and to do really well at the 800/1500 and even the 400 requires a kind of training I know I'm just not able/willing to do these days. If Janet makes a comeback and has the drive to do that, I think she's got a realistic shot at making the team ... beating the British women and some of the other d-stars, though, is a taller order.
Really? Name one besides Dara Torres.
Mark Foster of Britain is in his 40s, right? I saw a clip of him in the 92 Olympics final.
There is that Australian 100 fly Geoff, but he might be in his mid 30s?
Mark Foster of Britain is in his 40s, right? I saw a clip of him in the 92 Olympics final.
Yes, but did he ever take off any extended time from high level swimming? There's also Mark Warnecke who specializes in the 50 ***. He's 40.
To put it in perspective, Janet Evans's best-ever 1500LCM was 15:52. Someone could break the current USMS W40-44 record for 1500LCM (17:56.52) and still be lapped almost twice--in long course--by someone swimming as fast as Janet Evans did at her peak. I don't think there's any way a 40-year-old can train the way a 20-year-old distance swimmer trained in the late '80s/early '90s, but I agree that it will be interesting to see how close she can come to her earlier speeds with whatever way she can train now.
I actually can think of someone for whom the USMS record in the 1650 for W40-44 would not be a ridiculous goal. I would love to see that person come to Arizona and race Janet Evans in the 1650. If the field for the W40-44 1650 at 2011 SCY nationals were like the field at 2010 SCY nationals, we would not give Ms. Evans much of a challenge, unless the challenge were whether or not she could lap the second-place finisher four times.
I agree that more quality and lower yardage can be better and produce good to great results in shorter events. I think it can be applied to the 500-1650/400-1500 to some extent, but that some measure of pounding out some serious pace work is required for those distances. Given time constraints now (early 40s), a GREAT week of training is around 20,000 yards. When I did my best 1500 time back in my youth, 20K could be a single day of training ... not every day, but weeks were more in the 70,000 to 90,000 meter range during the intense parts of training. I don't think I'd need to go that high now, but I think I'd need to be training 50K a week consistently to contemplate times that approached my best HS & college 1000 and 1650 times.
Well, I just made top 10 in the 400 IM and just missed it in the 400 free (only swam it once at an age group meet). Due to ankle surgery, I didn't do the 800 or higher this summer. I'm not a sprinter by any means and my distance is getting faster as I get older and get wiser and more targeted training. I usually only do about 17k in a week and that's a full week. But I think as I've gotten older, my training has gotten wiser. I do dry land which I didn't do when I was younger and I do ART stretching now (getting it done in about an hour in fact since I have a meet tomorrow). Plus our team has a nutrition program that we follow. So maybe it can be done now with the new techniques in training that weren't around when Janet was younger without her having to pound out the higher yardage.
