Please forgive me if there is already another thread discussing this (I checked but didn’t find anything), but why isn’t anybody discussing how odd it is that the winner of the gold medal in almost all of the olympic swimming events I’ve watched has also simultaneously broken the world record. No way humans have gotten that must faster in the past 4 years, so it must be the conditions, which brings me to 2 questions:
How would this even be done? (Thinner water? Manipulation of the currents?)
Given how sacred we hold world records to be, why isn’t every precaution taken to make sure the conditions are standardized? Because politics and bias clouds the purity of every judged event, only the sanctity of a man-against-man race remains unadulterated. What good are these records now and forever more?
Obviously, the technology helps. But there’s no doubt that Phelps, say, did in fact swim his race faster than anybody else ever did. So that is a world record.
When they have improvements in ice skating rinks allowing for smoother ice, and therefore faster races, there have been similar startling improvements in speed skating times. Nobody questions that nevertheless those world records are still legitimate.
Fair enough, unless not all of the swimmers wore the Speedo LZR Racer in which event the playing field in a given race may not have been fair (regarding medals, not world records)
All the swimmers had the opportunity to wear the Speedos. Many of the national teams had contracts with competing suit manufacturers so they didn’t.
Not much different from previous Olympics when our basketball team wore the sneakers they had contracts with, even if that wasn’t the official Olympic brand (they used tape to cover up the logos).
And exactly the same as golf, in which various golfers have contracts with different club and ball manufacturers.
Or baseball or ping pong or air rifle or any other sport that uses individual equipment.
As long as the suits meet the same set of Olympic standards, which they do, then everybody has the same chances.
It’s the other way around. It would be manifestly unfair if you required everybody to use the same equipment when it’s not the equipment they would normally use.
The pool is the peak of racing technology. It is deeper, has a great system for regulating wave effects . There is rumor of chemicals added to help. That plus the suits all helps make records.
The track is supposed to be very fast too. One announcer who was a former sprinter tried it out and said it was terrific.
The Chinese build from scratch for most events , so they used the best technology possible.
There’s always something ridiculous about comparing the records of today’s sport with the “same” sport a decade or more ago, when conditions were very different.
Every sport changes with the times and technology. New shoes for sprinters, new suits for swimmers, new graphite fibers for golfers and bicyclists.
(And, unfortunately, new steroids and new drugs for almost everybody.)
It’s perfectly natural that an “unbreakable” world record gets broken almost every year.
(silly example: the high jump. The now-standard technique of “jump-backwards-and-land-on-your-head” became possible in 1968. All because of a new , exciting, “high-tech” invention–a pile of soft mattresses to fall onto, instead of a hard sand pit.)
The record breaking phenomenon isn’t limited to the Olympics. In the run up to the Olympics, during individual country’s trials, dozens of swimming records were also broken. Many blamed the LZR suits for this, and the suit does undoubtedly help the athletes, but it is also just a general improvement in skill, training, and form that is causing the records to sink away.
Not every nation allowed their athletes to compete with the LZR during Olympic trials - Canada did not. This was mostly because the suits were so new at that point that not everybody had one or the opportunity to train in one. By the time the Olympics began, every Olympic competitor had ample time to acquire and train in the new suit. It is most certainly a level playing field in Beijing. The records are as legitimate as any other previous record.
As a side note, not everybody likes the new LZR’s. My housemate, a serious competitive swimmer, does not wear one because it does not fit him properly. He says that in a few months when a new and improved model comes out the sizes will be better and he’ll probably switch to one then.
Actually in many cases, people who were breaking the previous world record were not winning golds, because other people were breaking them even more. The fifth place team in the men’s 4X100 broke the previous world record.
There was at least one of those as well. That is, the second place finisher beat the old world record. Imagine how that feels; swim a race faster than anyone ever before and come in second.
Even more odd, in 1984 Thomas Fahrner didn’t make the top 8 in the 400 freestyle, but broke the world record in the ‘B’ final (they don’t have those anymore).