Wet and Wild: The iPhone is Genius [Part 1]
Intro, aka Technical Swimming Talk
Well, laid up after surgery on my snapped Achilles’ tendon, and now awaiting this weeks’ operation, my second surgery in three months, to put my shoulder back together after a ski crash in January. I had little to look forward to but the Tour de France and the Olympics. Since I captained both my high school and college teams and grew up with the sport, I watch competitive swimming with a much more technical eye than the average viewer.
When people talked about Michael Phelps being at risk to lose the 400 Individual Medley to fellow American, Ryan Lochte, I laughed long and hard. Phelps trained through the Olympic trials, while his opponents tapered for it. I had no doubt he’d win by more than a body length and smash the world record. The talking heads on TV forget to mention he’s one of the worlds’ top three backstrokers, he is the best butterfly swimmer in the world (though prior to the Olympics, he held only the 200 meter world record in that event), he is the best freestyle swimmer at 200 meters, and is certainly one of the top two or three at 100 meters and, despite the fact that people criticize his breaststroke, he likely is among the top six swimmers in the U.S. in that event. All strokes are required in the Individual Medley races, and I feel the 400 IM is the most brutal race in swimming because it systematically exhausts every muscle group. But Phelps is in better condition than any swimmer in the world, practicing 365 days a year. He once went five years straight without missing a single day.
I also figured that the biggest liabilities to Michael Phelps winning eight gold medals would be the relays. Indeed, the Americans were underdogs to the French team in the 400-meter freestyle relay, but the French team made the grave mistake of telling the press they were going to “…smash the Americans…” Not smart. While the American’s comeback in the final 25 meters is the greatest relay swim I’d ever seen, — and I’ve seen thousands of relays in my day — people lost track of the fact that Michael Phelps, who led off the U.S. relay with only 68 minutes of rest from his 200 meter freestyle semi final, came within 0.1 seconds of the previous world record in the 100 meter free … and he’s not known as a sprinter. I guess he is now. The problem was that Australian swimmer, Eamon Sullivan, did break the world record leading off the Australian relay, and that made people think Phelps was slow … he wasn’t, swimming the third-fastest 100-meter free in history. Because the Australian was leading off the relay, his swim actually counts as a world record since he came off a dead start, and not a relay start.
People have been talking about the Speedo Lazr swim suit worn by Phelps and hundreds of other swimmers. I don’t recommend it if you aren’t an elite swimmer, because, unless you are, the suit will cost you $500 and lasts only about five races, 10 if you’re lucky. I might add that, if you look in the mirror and can’t count every line in your six-pack abs, you probably are going to look patently ridiculous in the suit after you spend 20 to 30 minutes pulling it over your bloated body. It’s been thoroughly documented how it lets water slip past its hydrodynamic seams and surface panels, but I was a little surprised that none of the commentators addressed why Phelps didn’t wear the suit in the 400-meter Individual Medley. If you watch carefully, not a lot of swimmers wear the suit in the IM or in the breaststroke. That’s because the breaststroke forces the swimmer to hunch up his/her shoulders when the hands are drawn together under the chest every stroke cycle. Many swimmers believe that full suits “bind” the swimmer in the breaststroke, and thus wear “jammers,” or suits that go from the waist to either the knees or the ankles. Because the Individual Medley has breaststroke as the third stroke in the race, many swimmers in the IM don’t wear the full length Lazr for that reason.
It’s hard to compare swimmers of today to those of yesteryear because of key rules changes. For one thing, backstrokers were freed from having to touch the wall with their hand before turning in 1991. This was huge because now they could flip on their stomachs just before the turn, and perform a more or less conventional freestyle flip turn. This, combined with strong underwater dolphin kicking off the turns, brought backstroke times even with butterfly times. If backstrokers were allowed to start from on top of the starting blocks, rather than in the water as they do now, backstroke would be faster than the butterfly for sure. And that’s even with the “15-meter rule.” David Berkoff, a Harvard backstroker in the late 1980s, found that, by kicking on his back underwater, he could beat those swimmers who were on the surface. In the NCAA championships, for the 100-yard backstroke, he’d swim the first length almost entirely underwater, coming up for the turn, swim the second length about three-quarters underwater, the third and last lengths, about halfway underwater. He cooked everybody at the NCAAs, and also set a world record for the 100-meter backstroke (world records can only be set in 50-meter long course pools, or 25-meter short course pools … only we crazy Americans swim in 25-yard pools). Figuring that Berkoff’s submarine swimming violated the spirit of the backstroke, the rule was changed that swimmer must surface by the 15-meter mark (now true in all races, but irrelevant in the breaststroke due to the “one stroke, one kick” rule).
Finally, there’s the breaststroke. The motion you see now with swimmers recovering their hands on the surface of the water was initiated by the fabulous Hungarian swimmers of the 80s, but allowing breaststrokers to completely submerge their heads during every stroke cycle allows more underwater streamlining. When I was swimming, the swimmer’s head could not completely submerge. Breaststrokers are also now allowed to execute one dolphin kick off the start and the turn, after their initial pull and before their one allowed breaststroke kick before surfacing. I was hyped on adrenaline in the Mid-American Championships in 1974, and dolphin kicked off the wall on the second turn of the 200-yard breaststroke … oops, the rule had not been changed at the time; so I was disqualified, one of only two in my college career.
All swimmers remember long ago races like pro golfers remember every swing during a tournament. I recall one race, now 36 years ago, where I took an outside lane in the 100 breaststroke to reduce my opponent’s view of me. This was the first meet ever in the new Kalamazoo Central pool, and was against a cross town high school that had dominated KC for years. In those days, teams had three lanes next to one another (soon thereafter, teams were given alternate lane numbers so each swimmer is next to the other team’s swimmers). I had lost by a touch out to my opponent earlier in the year at his home pool and wanted revenge. Our times were within 0.1 seconds of one another.
Going into the last turn of the four-length race, I saw a flash four lanes away and I knew my opponent was leaving the wall as I was turning. I remember the lights underwater made for an eerie effect. All sound was muffled by the water, and I knew being a half body length behind coming out of the turn was not good. I thought, ‘you’re in a daze, get with it now!’. Long story short, I ran him down, and although we both had the same time, it was a judge’s decision that I’d won. We won the meet by five points.
Before I forget, swimmers don’t ever talk about “laps” if you want to sound informed as a swimmer. If anyone ever does mention that they swam X many laps, you know they aren’t (or weren’t) serious competitive swimmers. Swimmers talk in terms of yards or meters when discussing workouts, so you’ll never hear a competitive swimmer saying, “yeah, it was a tough practice, we swam 200 laps.”
My worst ever practice in college was 15,000 meters, swum in two practices, in the same day. In a 25-meter pool, this would have been 375 lengths of the pool, and let me tell you, they were not leisurely lengths either. The upside was that, when we went out for pizza, we’d each order a 16-inch pie, this on top of cramming candy bars and Cokes at every break between classes … all without gaining an ounce. Nowadays, swimming science generally indicates that shorter workouts, but at faster speeds, are better than the grueling swims of my era.
Enough technical swimming talk for you?
Okay, let’s talk about the iPhone…
Part 2 – Biding my Time
Part 3 – i-Day
Part 4 – Worth the Wait?
Part 5 – Movies, TV and More
Part 6 – Surf’s Up
Part 7 – Conclusion
