1. How come they break world records at every world champs and Olympics I’ve ever watched? I that was any other sport everyone would shout doping.
2. Why so may events? It’s apparent that one swimmer can dominate several distances and disciplines so why have so many? In athletics you wouldn’t have 100m, running forwards, backwards, hopping, and on your hands. So why swimming? 1 race (maybe 2 with medley) for every distance.

I’d love to see a backwards race in the olympics. That or running like a crab.

Gervais would be good I reckon.

1. technology and technique advances.
2. Because they can.

humans are, on average, getting taller. this means that their fingers reach the end of the pool faster every year. they’ll have to make the pools longer soon.

2. I agree! they go on about how great Mark Spitz was cos he won loads of golds, but yeah – he had loads of events he could enter! I mean if they had boxing, blindfold boxing, one armed boxing, body punch only boxing… then Teofilio Stevenson could’ve won 30 medals!

don simon – Member
1. technology and technique advances.

But they got rid of the PU suit and they are still beating the records. I admit that technique is probably being improves but that could be said for running and they don’t break records at every meet.

I’d love to see a backwards race in the olympics

Backstroke swimming
Rowing
High Jump

All done backwards

They already high jump backwards 😆

they go over back first but they are moving forwards

Water is not what it used to be.

I think there’s been huge advancements in hair removal.

But they got rid of the PU suit and they are still beating the records. I admit that technique is probably being improves but that could be said for running and they don’t break records at every meet.

Technique and coaching mainly I guess, running will always be right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot, etc, cycling will always be pedal, pedal, pedal, pedal, and a big dose of luck. Look at the swimming finals and there’ll be 8 different people doing 8 different interpretations of the same stroke, and it’s the coaches job to try and match the swimmers with their perfect stokes, tweaking them untill they’re fastest, so every year they’ll find a new way to measure and tweak it.

Agree there are fat too many though, compare to track cycling and even if you just count distances and relays they have more events than the cyclists, then multiply by 4 strokes!

Rowing isn’t done backwards.

Madness the disparity in medal
cycling has the same as Canoeing/Kayak but you need to combine all the cycling events to get them equal 🙄 and 16 medals for both [ 32 swimming]

High jump isn’t a race.

I actually meant track racing, like 100m backwards running. That’d be amazing.

backwards canoe would be good, bloody tough though i’d guess.

reverse archery could be a cracker aswell

backwards canoe would be good, bloody tough though i’d guess.

reverse archery could be a cracker aswell

Jedi mind pull the arrow out of the target and back into the bow before it hit you in the face.. 😉

FINA (swimming governing body) are probably very powerful.

If the aim is to cover x distance, surely the idea is to do it as fast as possible.

They are actually setting far less records this time round due to the suits being banned. There was a comment the other day by Mark Foster that some records will now stand for years.

Same is true for Athletics as a lot of records were set by Soviet states etc and are “morally questionable”. Is it the womens 10,000m that is minutes better than anyone has run for years?

Also there is some confirmation bias going on. The mens 100m world record has actually been lowered 9 times in the last 10 years.

FINA (swimming governing body) are probably very powerful.

This

The UCI are to blame for Track Cycling being shafted, not the IOC.

stuey – Member
I think there’s been huge advancements in hair removal.

Funny how no-one told otters etc…. 😉

Supposedly the Chinese training method for swimming works like this:

1)have a huge population
2)Find the kids in that population who are most genetically advantaged in ways that make them likely to be good swimmers (both they and their parents have big hands, big feet, are taller than average etc.).
3)Train that small number of genetically advantaged athletes to swim really well, in an extremely focused manner.

Whereas most training systems work from a much smaller population of people who are interested enough in swimming, and then take those who demonstrate ability through clubs, racing etc. and promote those. Meaning that we may miss out on many people with the genetic ability to be jolly good, but who don’t show early commitment to swimming, and that the people who do get good, may not be as perfectly matched to swimming as people who are selected for exactly that aim and trained up.

Something about it in here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/london-2012-olympics-blog/2012/jul/29/london-2012-china-ye-shiwen?INTCMP=SRCH

backwards canoe would be good, bloody tough though i’d guess.

We used to do this as a training exercise on an moving water slalom course, albeit a relatively easy one

Same is true for Athletics as a lot of records were set by Soviet states etc and are “morally questionable”.

I was all ready to jump in and question this claim, but I’m actually quite shocked at how old some of the women’s records in particular are, eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world_records_in_athletics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world_records_in_athletics

And there’s probably a few names on there I’d prefer not to see.

I’ve noticed that some of the swimsuits capture a thin film of air over the surface; I wonder if that gives a slightly more’slippery’ surface when moving through the water?
Also I read that it’s been discovered that spreading the fingers gives an advantage, compared to the tight fingered stroke that swimmers have used for years.

reverse archery could be a cracker aswell

trap shooting would be a killer though…………

IGMC

I think spreading the fingers comes in and out of fashion. I remember being taught it when I was 12 which is, ahem, a while ago now.

The records were reset when they got rid of the pu suits, those records are still a fair bit faster than the current world records. I suspect that the clothing companies are still trying to improve performance within the current rules but the impact isn’t as great.

In athletics tracks technology tends to be laid to improve sprint times, the distance runners have complained at previous major competitions that the track is too damaging for the longer events and leads to injuries.

The UCI are to blame for Track Cycling being shafted, not the IOC.

Not totally sure about that, certainly before the 2004 Olympics I remember reading about pressure on the individual federations to limit the number of events (and by extension, the number of athletes) – there are already more than 10,000 athletes, if the number of countries competing in the cycling grows I wouldn’t be surprised if the pressure on the UCI grows to cut the events again.

Out of interest, how often are the sprint events (running or swimming) won by different people? For example, does the winner of the 100m running usually win the 200m, too? 50m vs. 100m breaststroke? I’m sure they could cut down on the events there…

That Russian/Ukranian polevaulter (Bubka?) a few years admitted he only raised the pole vault world record by 1cm at a time because he got paid $1m each time he broke it!