You just made me snort very loudly in the office, and my suppressed giggling made my desk wobble so much that my underling asked if I was OK.
I can tell you what they mean. The long yellow ones down the middle of the pool are for the fastest two lanes. Never seen them at normal meets. The red parts at the beginning of every lane line is the 5 meter line, this lets the back strokers know how much further the wall is. Next is a small red marker that’s the 15 meter mark for coming up. The next longer red mark down the middle is the middle of the 50 meter course. The green lines are the lane lines for the outer lanes that are not used.
I didn’t see any rope at the 15 meter mark, though there was a judge standing there.
Does the OP realize that this is exactly what did happen once already in swimming?
The butterfly stroke was invented in the 1930s and while it met the existing rules for the breast stroke category, it was overwhelmingly faster. Because everybody who wanted to win adopted it, after a few years the swimming associations created a new category for the butterfly and changed the breast stroke rules to forbid the butterfly.
coughpost 11cough
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23343185-5001023,00.html
Do we count the suits.? They have come up with a new suit that is causing controversy.
Seems like something identical was happening in golf; the technology of the balls and clubs were making courses too small, so they set limits on coefficients of restitution for both.
So, what exactly makes these new suits so special?
I remember the stuff about the super hyyyyydrdromatic greased lightnin’ suits a while ago, those were just lower friction than skin, right?
I’m in the US and I’ve seen them. At some pools it was literally a rope, at others it was flags (a bit smaller than the 5 meter flags and generally more colorful). IIRC they were also used after a false start if the extra buzzes didn’t catch someone.
I do remember that rope from high school, but haven’t seen any at the colleges Masters swim at, doesn’t mean they’re not there, they might not put them up. Though I only remember having one for false starts. I’m going to look this weekend, but I don’t think that there will be one as the pool is oddly shaped because of the diving end.
ETA: That doesn’t mean they don’t use them in other parts of the country, just haven’t seem them in the DC area in the past few years.
Have a look at the video again. At the top of the pool are the two 15 meter judges. When the race starts you can see the pole between them with the rope stretching toward the foreground. After the swimmers pass, they walk down to the other 15 meter mark. When they come back for the turn into the third lap one judge is standing so that the pole runs up the middle of his body.
What I’ve been wondering about recently is whether it’s legit to have your feet surgically extended until they’re the size of flippers. It would surely give an advantage.
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23343185-5014066,00.html Here have a nice controversy .