 "Rio Ready?")
The Olympic swimming meet is setting a new standard for shattering records.
American Katie Ledecky knocked nearly two seconds off her world record in the 400-meter freestyle. Adam Peaty of Great Britain set two world records in two days in the 100-meter breaststroke, dropping his previous record of 57.92 to first to 57.13 in the process. Kantinka Hosszu of Hungary took 2.07 seconds off the 400-meter individual medley record. Australia's Cate Campbell set an Olympic record in the 100-meter freestyle in the semifinal Wednesday night, which was broken one night later by two swimmers who tied for the gold medal, Simone Manuel of the U.S. and Penny Oleksiak of Canada.
The run of records is especially surprising because in 2009, swimming world governing body FINA banned high-tech suits that helped swimmers float and cut through the water and allowed them to swim faster. Many predicted decades would pass before records would fall again.
Since then, records in 14· individual Olympic distances have fallen, several of them multiple times. Another may fall Friday night, when Ledecky swims the 800-meter freestyle final.
So why are elite swimmers suddenly getting that much better at their sport?
The continuing performance evolution in the pool is a stark contrast to track and field, where world records are set once in a blue moon, and usually by just fractions of a second. There was a rare exception at the track Friday as Ethiopia's Almaz Ayana smashed the world record in the 10,000-meter race by more than 14 seconds.
Swimmers, coaches and scientists say that humans have indeed gotten better at learning how to swim fast. Humans have been swimming for thousands of years. But Adrian Bejan, a professor of mechanical engineering at Duke University who has written extensively about evolution in sports, says swimming is still a "young technology" because, unlike running, humans have always had to learn how to swim.
"In a young technology, the improvements are first dramatic, then significant, and only much later marginal and insignificant," Bejan said.
They may also be getting some assistance from an unlikely source-the pool itself, which calms and circulates water in a new way. Of course, that doesn't sit well with swimmers and coaches, who like to take credit for achieving times that were considered impossible without the old line of flotation, and drag-resistant swimsuits.
"Hard work is a big part of it," said U.S. swimmer Townley Haas, whose second leg in the 200-meter freestyle relay was nearly a second faster than anyone else's in the race on the way to his group of four's gold medals.
A big factor pushing faster times is changing training methods.
Todd Schmitz, who coaches Missy Franklin, and Bruce Gemmell, Ledecky's coach, said swimmers have dialed back on volume and focused more on intensity.
This keeps them sharp and healthy, especially in the weeks leading up to a championship. And they don't pile up thousands of unnecessary strokes. Gemmell likes to make a distinction among training for the sake of training, training to race and training to win. The last one happens when a swimmer starts out each practice set fast, stays fast and finishes with good technique. Also, the increasing accessibility of underwater video has made instantly correcting mistakes far easier. "Anyone can buy a GoPro and stick it on the end of a stick and dip it in the water, then play it back right there on the deck during practice," he said. "You can't beat that immediate feedback."
During the past 15 years, swimming has experienced a mini-revolution in the understanding of how a body can most efficiently move through the water, especially during turns, deep under the water where the water resistance is lower. Nothing like that has happened in running, where "the fundamentals are essentially the same," said John Smith, one of the leading sprint coaches in the U.S., whose pupils include medal contenders Tyson Gay and English Gardner. Swimmers, on the other hand, have nearly universally adopted the super-powerful, full-body dolphin kicks Michael Phelps made popular after he burst on the scene in 2000. Since it's a relatively new technique, swimmers are still getting better at it.
That's similar to the way high jumpers added 17 centimeters to their world records in the years following the popularization of the Fosbury Flop-the revolutionary approach created by 1968 gold medalist Dick Fosbury, in which the jumper leaps backward over the bar. It's part of the trend in swimming to emphasize technique rather than power. Breaststrokers, who have broken world records at the Olympic distances 10 times since 2009, have learned the importance of holding their bodies in that arrow-like pose as they glide.
Jim Pawelczyk, a professor of kinesiology at Pennsylvania State University, said 90% of the energy expended in swimming goes toward overcoming drag and reducing the resistance of the water. That is achieved mostly through technique, so no matter how hard swimmers work on strength and endurance, the impact will only affect 10% of the performance.
"We need to think like fish instead of motorboats," he said. Of course as anyone who has ever driven a motorboat knows, the calmer and clearer the water, the more efficiently the vessel travels. Engineers have gotten better at making what swimmers refer to as a "fast pool. Rio's Olympic pool is a temporary facility constructed of stainless steel by A&T Europe Spa's Myrtha Pools. The company incorporated a series of recent innovations to help calm the water. The pool circulates water through a series of inlets on the side of the pool that send water spiraling back into the pool at almost exactly the same rate that swimmers splash water out of it. That keeps the water at constant level at the top of the walls, which limits waves and resistance. Improved filtration removes impurities as small as a micron, compared with previous filtration systems that couldn't get anything smaller than nine microns. Myrtha has also built temporary pools for the U.S. Olympic Trials and the past two World Championships.
"It all contributes to having super-clean, super-calm water that makes the swimmers feel good, which helps them go fast," said Trevor Tiffany, a former Olympic coach who is now president of Myrtha. Track and field hasn't experienced similar advancements in its track. It also never produced the running shoe equivalent of the flotation suits, though many of the women's records that still stand were set in the 1980s in an era of widespread performance-enhancing drug use and nearly nonexistent testing.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
