That wasn’t the breaststroke, it was the IM.
The Russians asked Spitz that, and he jokingly claimed it was actually the secret to his speed. Next event, every Russian sported a mustache.
You referred to the picture in the link, in which he was swimming the breaststroke. That’s what I was referring to. Most men don’t wear the suit in the breaststroke or backstroke, and since that was the Medley they logically wouldn’t wear the full suit since it includes those two strokes.
Why does making the pool deeper affect speed?
From the NPR article linked above:
There might be some other more complex flow physics at work there to but my AAE 220 class is a distant, foggy memory.
Cool, thanks, I never knew that.
OK, so why don’t they? It looks like the women do.
Well, it would certainly improve ratings if the women didn’t.
All this talk about high tech suits and stuff, but did anyone catch that Arkady Vyatchanin won bronze in the 200m backstroke last night with a full head of hair not covered by one of those tight little caps?
I was under the impression that the swimmers switched to faster suits in the prelims, heats, and then into the finals?
Never heard that one. But they certainly don’t go out as fast in the earlier races because they are conserving energy. In the earlier heats the goal is to do enough to make the next round. Only in the finals is the real goal to go as fast as you can.
I haven’t noticed it, and they’ve been showing a lot of the prelim heats that Phelps is in and pretty much everyone is wearing the same suit from heat to heat within each discipline. Additionally, I’m pretty sure that they all train with the suits on and have their movements videotaped and dissected by computer, so it seems unlikely that they’d want to divert from how they trained.
I can’t say why they don’t, it’s personal preference I’m sure. Maybe the hydrodynamics that benefit the freestyle hurt the breaststroke. Perhaps they restrict certain ranges of motion. I guess only the swimmer can answer that question. The vast majority wear the suits in the freestyle and about 25% wear them in the breaststroke, so it seems that not every swimmer agrees on the topic. All in all, it seems like it further reinforces the idea that the suits aren’t that decisive.
They certainly don’t train in the LZR suit – those cost ~$500 apiece, and last for ~10 races. They might train in older-style bodysuits, but I rather doubt it. Those have limited lifespans, too. And the general routine in training is to add more drag during training, then drop that in events.
The LZR suits squeeze; it’s kind of like a swimming corset. Quite a few of the swimmers don’t like the feeling – particularly in strokes with big arm motions, like breast and fly – so they don’t wear the full LZR bodysuits. And some of them wear the LZR for finals, but not in the heats (Phelps, IIRC, does that most times).
I suspect the real reason for all the crazy times really is that we’re in kind of a new era of swimming. These Olympians and their training have been studied more than any other Olympiad, I think. We’re seeing improvements to the science of swimming in action.
I know you’re joking, but for the naysayers out there . . . Phelps volunteers for extra testing. He’s not on the juice unless he’s on some future juice we can’t test for yet.
I don’t recall the exact comments (and even which race it was), but one of the races in which Libby Trickett raced and medaled, she was in lane 8, and one of the reasons given for her (relatively) poor qualification was that her trainers made a mistake and gave her one of the older suits to wear. Either because it’s a real effect, or there’s a superstition attached to it, there was the feeling that it made a difference during the semi-final.
Gotta call bullshit on that one, for the same reason baseball players put donuts on their bat in the warm up circle.