The philosopher Bernard Suits once described sports as “the voluntary acceptance of unnecessary obstacles.”
Exactly what those obstacles are is up to the particular sport.
I think a lot of the rules are there to protect the athletes from over-zealous coaching. Sadly, petty dictators tend to become obsessive about their teams winning olympic medals. Likewise, for people who started out poor, olympic gold can mean a lifetime of relative ease. (Or at least higher level employment.)
So the temptation to put off breathing too long could get dangerous. It’s the same with doping. They made it impossible to win that way, in order to counter the incentive for coercive doping strategies. East Germany is by no means the only example, but it’s a matter of record.
Anyone see the 200m womens’ backstroke that Maya DiRado won just at the end? The announcer said she “threw herself to the finish” or something. To me, it looked like she stopped backstroking at least a stroke or 2 before the finish, did a dolphin kick and submerged her upper body. They were dead even or she might even have been slightly behind up til then. I wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t read you folk say underwater is faster. So are you allowed to break form near the end of the race?
That’s quite typical for backstrokers to lunge at the wall at the very end. Sometimes one will end up about a half stroke away from the wall, happens in all strokes but you can adjust for it in the other strokes. Typically a backstroker will reach with one hand and dolphin kick at the same time right at the end. The dolphin kick gives that extra bit of speed and they will dive underwater a bit. I don’t think being underwater helps at the very end, it’s just the reaching and bending of the back that puts them underwater. One could get a DQ if they were totally submerged, which is why sometimes you’ll see someone lift a foot out of the water. I don’t think it gets called that often since it’s so quick and hard to see.
Dolphin kicks might be faster over all, but the reason they wouldn’t be used throughout the entire stroke is because the rotation of the body is where a lot of power comes from and kicking like that would get rid of the rotation. At least that’s my opinion. Maybe no one’s tried it yet.
Thanks for the answer. To a casual observer, it looked odd/improper. Seemed to clearly make up a lot of ground just at the end, yet most of the other competitors did not seem to do it. With all the talk around here about maintaining proper form and such, it jumped out to me.
So why is bottled oxygen forbidden?
The fish kick isn’t really the fastest swimming style. It’s a way of losing less of your momentum from your kick off the wall or dive into the pool to drag than other methods.
Basically your kick off the wall and/or your dive into the pool from the blocks are by far your fastest movements. The fish kick, and the dolphin kick, are just ways of maintaining that speed for as long as possible before it gets bled off by the drag of the water.
The fastest way to swim(meaning without the aid of a kick off the wall or a gravity assist from a dive into the water from the starting platforms) is probably freestyle. Using just your body to push against the water your best bet is doing like boats do and get up on a plane with as much of your body out of the water as possible. Runners do the same thing and minimize their time in contact with the ground by striking very hard with their feet and essentially bouncing through the air as much as possible and not letting the ground slow them down much.
The fish kick and doplhin kick are a way of minimizing the drag on the body and letting the momentum from the wall kick/dive do the propulsion. That may be why the swimming bodies limit you to 15 meters, because they’re not actually “swimming.”
Enjoy,
Steven
I don’t know, why is an underwater motor forbidden?
Swimming races are about propelling oneself through the water. A motor obviously violates that principle. But there’s no principle that a racing swimmer must breath open air. Furthermore, it was suggested that some restrictions are in place for the swimmers’ safety, but bottled oxygen could improve safety. One could argue that lack of bottled oxygen is a limitation similar to hurdles, which is fine, except that there are races without hurdles, but no races with bottled oxygen.
Similar arguments can be made about fins, webbing and low-drag suits. The arguments against them boil down to “tradition”, but no rational argument.
That’s not really right. The fish kick is a faster way of swimming than freestyle; it isn’t just maintaining momentum from the push off the wall. Swimmers can go faster with the fish kick than freestyle without a push off the wall to start. It’s difficult to do well, so this might not be true for 99% of swimmers out there. But if you know how to do it, it’s definitely faster.
So why not allow roller blades or bicycles in the 10,000 meter run? Why can’t you grab the swimmer in the lane next to you? Because that isn’t the event. Sports have certain rules for how they are played. It’s not just tradition; it’s the rules of the game. Why is that not a rational argument?
It’s like asking why basketball players have to dribble while moving with the ball – if the point of the game is to put the ball through the hoop the most times in a game, why not just run with the ball? Isn’t that more efficient? This, of course, is ridiculous because it would no longer be basketball. The point of the game is not to put the ball through the hoops – it’s to do so within the rules of the game, which requires one to dribble the ball when moving with the ball.
It’s the same with the different events in swimming. The goal is not to swim the fastest – instead, it’s to swim the fastest within the rules of each event, be it the backstroke or the butterfly.
Talking about “rules of the game” is a canard. This is a race, not a game. The analogue to basketball would be water polo.
In what we would call running races, presumably there is no prohibition against walking, or even crawling. You are asked to get from start to finish as fast as you can, under your own power, without using wheels. In some shorter formats you are expected to stay in your lane; even in longer ones you must stay on the course.
I would like to see an event in swimming in which you are expected to stay in your lane and not use machinery, but other than that, you can walk on the bottom if you like (not that this would be helpful). Another event that allowed flippers and such would also be interesting. How would this harm the events with more restrictive rules? Is the fear that it would no longer be impressive to swim more slowly than an elderly person can walk with luggage?
Can you see the problem answering the question “why does this sport have that rule?” with “because sports have rules and that is the rule it has”? It’s non-responsive circular reasoning. And it’s especially dubious when the discussion is about the entire universe of possible sports.
There’s nothing wrong with saying a rule exists because of tradition. But it is not a rational explanation of the rule.
It’s not a canard – just because a sport is a “race” doesn’t automatically make it devoid of rules.
Look at racewalking – it’s certainly a racing event, in the sense that the point is to get to the finish line faster than your opponents. Yet, the sport also has its own set of rules restricting the participants’ movements (e.g., the loss of contact rule). Could you move faster if you ignored the rules and instead moved your legs in a way that both feet are off the ground at the same time? Sure, but you would then be running and no longer racewalking.
Lack of rules does not a race make. If you want to go outside of human powered events, look at motor racing. Even the top level of motorsports, Formula 1, has rules dictating the size of the engines, the dimensions of the aerodynamic parts, etc.
It’s not conceptually that hard. A sport is what the rules make of it. The rules of the backstroke are what define the sport. Can you go faster any other way? Sure, but then it’s no longer the backstroke. If the point is to go fastest, technology be dammed, why even bother swimming under your own power? Just get on a jetski.
Crawl is already the fastest way to swim, even over being submerged. Honestly I only think the 15 meter rule is there because backstroke has it and it makes it that much easier to have the same rule across the strokes. Though breaststroke doesn’t have a 15 meter rule, it’s one kick, one arm pull and one kick before you have to come up.
I don’t know why swimming seems to get so much flack for having different strokes. Track has a number too but I’ve never seen anyone suggest getting rid of the hurdles or steeple chase because they could run faster without all that stuff in the way. Or why does the shot put have to stay in that little circle? Why not allow them to run up to the line? Why can’t they throw it between their legs instead of at the head?
I don’t know much about running, but do they have tools that allow people to run faster? Fins and paddles are to help teach proper stroke, they do make one faster, but that’s not under your own power. It would be like saying runners could use springs on their shoes to help them run a bit faster.
You might want to think about that some more.
You know what I meant. Or should we allow people to run with the artificial legs and springs that amputees run with? That would still be good right? Still under their own power and all.
This is a fine argument, and if you want to push for new swim events with these rules, I won’t argue against it. I personally don’t think they would be particularly interesting, I don’t have to like every event out there.
But your OP asked why these aren’t allowed in breaststroke and butterfly, and other posters are arguing things like
“Because that’s the event” is a perfectly appropriate reply that doesn’t require additional justification.
Interestingly, though, if you’re in the middle of running a marathon, and you for some reason feel like racewalking for a couple of minutes – that’s cool, right? They don’t care, you’re not breaking any rules; just head for the finish line. And if you want to do two-thirds of a triple jump on your approach for the long jump, I’m guessing that’s okay, too. If so, then I figure it makes sense to ask of swimming what we do of track: shouldn’t there also be a just-do-what-works version of this oddball event?
I don’t see a problem with those in an “unrestricted” event. It might be that the fastest unpowered humans are those without natural legs.
And I don’t have a problem with saying the fastest swimmers use flippers, etc.