Swimming

Olympic Swimming

Rules: First swimmer to touch the wall, wins.
- Each race is started with the swimmer on the starting block and ends with their hands touching the wall (time pad)
  - An athlete can start up in the air (pictured above – thanks Dana) or by gripping the block
  - Backstroke is actually started in the water on with their hands gripping a bar on the block and feet on the wall that the swimmers use to throw themselves into the water

AR – American record
Backstroke – swam on the back with long straight arms and flutter kicks
- Rowdy Gaines recently said the ideal reach back on the backstroke is at 1 & 11 o’clock (if your head is noon)
  - Reagan Smith does more of a 12:30 & 11:30 stroke
Breaststroke – swam on stomach with frog kick. In this stroke you can breathe every stroke as the head comes out of the water every time.

Butterfly – swam on stomach with dolphin kicks (feet, knees and thighs together). The arms sweep forward and around in a shape that would look like wings
CR – Championship record (think of this like meet record)
- This will change to OR in the Olympics for ‘Olympic Record’ and CR will change to ‘Country Record’
DNF – did not finish
DNS – did not start
DQ – disqualified
- Ways to be DQ’d (there are more but here are the most common): touching the floor at any point, pulling on the lane line, doing a kick over than the frog kick during breaststroke, >1 pullout stroke at the beginning of the breast, flutter kicking during the fly and a false start, two hands must touch the wall in the breast and fly
Flip Turn – summersault turn used in freestyle and backstroke
Forward Crawl – a swim style swam on the stomach, flutter kicks and reaching arms over
Freestyle – technically this means you can swim any style you want but it has become synonymous with the ‘forward crawl’ as that is the fastest stroke
IM – individual medley (all 4 strokes)
Negative Split – when the swimmer is faster during the second half (or whatever time period you’re judging by: 50ms, 100ms, etc)
Open Turn – two handed touch turns seen in breaststroke and butterfly
- opposite of flip turn
US – US Open record (meaning American record swam on US soil)
WR – World record

The USA usually gets 2 swimmers in each event, but both swimmers have to hit an Olympic Qualifying Time.
- For a country to get an athlete into each event, someone in the country has to have hit the Olympic Selection Time (slower of the two).
- Each country can have 1 man and 1 woman even if they haven’t hit any of the times in a ‘Universality’ clause.
  - This will be based on a points table due to the COVID delay and 2 year gap between the Olympic and Worlds.
- FINA (the governing body for swimming for the games) will analyze the total number of athletes that hit the OQT until all 878 swimmers have been filled.
Relays: 12 top finishers at the 2019 World Championships & 4 fastest teams (not previously qualified) in the 15 months before the Olympics.
- The USA has qualified in every relay event. Along with ROC, GER, JPN & AUS
There are also the Open-water events which are less popular and longer distances.

Ryan Lochte, Michael Phelps and Jason Lezak

How often do swimmers breathe?
- Most elite swimmers breathe every 2 strokes. Breathing on both sides is called bilateral breathing which keeps your swim consistent and smooth.
- In the sprint events (like the 50m), it’s once or twice total!
What is the order for the IM?
- Order: Fly, back, breast, free
- Order for relay: Back, breast, fly, free
  - Because back stroke starts in the water
How long is the pool?
- The pool is 50m long so each 100m is down and back.
How far are the backstroke flags from the wall?
- 5 meters (16ish feet)
How cold is the pool?
- An Olympic pool must be kept 25 degrees Celsius – 28 degrees Celsius (77 – 82 in Fahrenheit)

What lane is best?
- Lane 4 and 5 are the preferred lanes (the fastest qualifiers)
- You will notice though that the outside lanes have almost what looks like a road shoulder; that is so those athletes don’t get hit with two much ripples from rebounding waves
Can you be DQ’d for hitting a lane rope?
- No, unless you grab it and pull. But it is definitely not a positive thing to hit the lane rope. Think of this as hitting a hurdle, it doesn’t penalize you technically but it’ll show in your time when we’re talking about these tight races.
How do you get times down to 0.001 seconds?
- The wall has a timing system in it that gets the most accurate touch reading to get those minuscule differences.
What ever happened to those suits Phelps used to wear?
- Suits from the 2008 Beijing Olympics (which includes the one seen in the Greatest Race documentary that just came out) have been banned since 2010. This is because the suits basically ripped apart the swimming record books with over 200 WR records falling (43 WRs alone in 2009 Worlds) due to the increased buoyancy and speed, lower fatigue the polyurethane suits provided.
- Exactly half of the men’s long course records were set in those suits and have yet to be broken. Only 2 on the women’s side still stand and Titmus almost made it one.