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Ryan Lochte is smiling, but what about everybody else?
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I am suffering from a bit of Olympics withdrawal, and getting quite a bit of pressure from someone, so I thought would write one more thing about an Olympic sport before they go away for four years.
Setting a world record in swimming is extremely tough these days. At the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing the eight 100 meter events (Free, Back, Breast and Fly for men and women) saw six world records set – three in the Men’s 100 Free alone. By comparison the 2012 London games witnessed only two world records in the same set of events. Factor in the 4x100 relays (Medley and Free) and the 400 IM and Beijing gets an additional six records for a total of 12 while London sees only two more to bring the total to four.
Of course back in Beijing swimmers could wear full body suits made of polyurethane, reducing their drag relative to bare skin and providing buoyancy. In the summer of 2009, as swimmers were setting records by the poolfull (get it?) at the World Championships in Rome, swimming’s governing body banned the suits effective January 1st 2010.
So what has all this done for the state of swimming world records? Were these suits responsible for the success or have swimmers found new ways to train that make those records achievable.