I am writing a story for Swimmer magazine on where USMS records are likely to be 50 years from now and would truly appreciate your help in predicting these!
There are a total of 1800+ individual pool records possible, so to narrow things down, I'm concentrating on two events in two age groups: the 100 yards free and the 400 yard IM in age groups 45-49 and 65-69.
The current records here are pretty amazing, and the curves showing the trajectories since USMS began 50 years ago suggest there is likely plenty of room to drop.
If you could send me your email address to jamesthornton1@comcast.net , I will send you my little prediction form plus graphs of the record trends. Thanks in advance.
Alternatively, you could just post your predictions here. In any event, I need to have my story in by the 15th, so please act with some alacrity! Again, thanks so much in advance.
PS if you could include any rationale behind your predictions (mathematical analysis, guess work, gut feeling, whatever) that would be fantastic!
Note: current records and record holders are in red below.
Name: _______________________
Your predictions for records by 2070:
Men 100 Free
Now:45-49 (N. Grainger: 46.21) 65-69 (R. Abrahams: 49.42)
By 2070 _________________ _________________
Women 100 Free
Now: 45-49 (E. Braun: 51.99) 65-69 (L. Val: 57.88)
By 2070: _______________ _________________
Men 400 IM
Now:45-49 (N. Grainger: 4:01.32) 65-69 (R. Colella: 4:30.64)
By 2070: ___________ _____________________
Women 400 IM
Now: 45-49 (K. Pipes-Nielsen: 4:32.87) 5-69 (L. Val: 5:21.70)
By 2070: ___________ __________________
Rationale for your choices:
It has taken me awhile to really think about the question and my definitive answer is that it is totally unpredictable. Look at 50 years ago and what has happened since. In 1976 Sports Illustrated had their usual Olympic prediction article. They noticed that the record progression for the 1500 M free was nearly linear and made their time prediction. I laughed because I knew the 1500 WR at the time was way under their prediction. I knew about one of, if not the, greatest, invention in competitive swimmng history,goggles, had made ultra-long workouts feasable. Suddenly distance swimmers in the US and Australia were going 20,000M/day.Since then we have had State sanctioned doping, UDK, ultrafast pools, breaststroke rules rewritten majorly once and minorly more times, shiny tech suits, fabric suits that are almost as fast as the shiny suits, EVF(remember the S pull) fins on starting blocks,wedges for backstroke,etc. etc. The next breakthrough is unpredictable, because if we could predict it someone would be doing it now.
It has taken me awhile to really think about the question and my definitive answer is that it is totally unpredictable. Look at 50 years ago and what has happened since. In 1976 Sports Illustrated had their usual Olympic prediction article. They noticed that the record progression for the 1500 M free was nearly linear and made their time prediction. I laughed because I knew the 1500 WR at the time was way under their prediction. I knew about one of, if not the, greatest, invention in competitive swimmng history,goggles, had made ultra-long workouts feasable. Suddenly distance swimmers in the US and Australia were going 20,000M/day.Since then we have had State sanctioned doping, UDK, ultrafast pools, breaststroke rules rewritten majorly once and minorly more times, shiny tech suits, fabric suits that are almost as fast as the shiny suits, EVF(remember the S pull) fins on starting blocks,wedges for backstroke,etc. etc. The next breakthrough is unpredictable, because if we could predict it someone would be doing it now.
