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Top 100 Memories: 2000-09 - No 5
Mar 3, 2010 - Craig Lord
In our countdown of memories from the past decade, we look at some of the big themes and moves that shaped the sport
No 5 - Seven Waves That Washed Through The Decade
1. Understanding man's relationship with water
Forget the suits. What they set asunder for a while was far more important. The question is not what so-called technology has done to deliver speed to swimmers but what swimmers, coaches and other gurus have done to deliver speed to the sport of swimming. Man's understanding of human interaction with water, the symbiotic nature of the element when handled by those blessed with a feel for H20 and those who have gone in search of deeper understanding of that matter: by far the more fascinating theme, a theme that sets swimming apart as a unique sport, one that renders all those comparisons with pole vaults, blades, engines, lane ropes, goggles and the like all the more farcical and lacking in intellectual rigour. I was lucky enough to be in the room when Alexander Popov spoke to the European media on his comeback from being stabbed in the gut on a Moscow street. Among the many splendid things said that day, the Russian Sprint Tsar said this (in words not so relevant in the past two years at a time when water was rendered somewhat redundant in terms of its critical relevance to performance in the sport of swimming): "The water is your friend. You don't have to fight with water, just share the same spirit as the water, and it will help you move."
The theme has occupied the minds of some of the most inquisitive pioneers of the past 160 years (at least). Flying Gull taught freestyle to the world when he winged his way past a fellow Native American Indian who went by the name Tobacco - in a race with Englishman Harold Kenworthy, doing breaststroke - down one length of a 130-foot pool in London on April 2, 1844. The time? 30 seconds for the equivalent of 39.6 metres.
The Times newspaper archive holds a report from a nameless predecessor of mine, a correspondent who may well have been the first newspaper swimming writer.
It reads: “Their style of swimming is totally un-European. They lash the water violently with their arms like the sails of a windmill and beat downward with their feet, blowing with force and performing grotesque antics.” Freestyle, the fastest way found so far for a human to travel through water at the surface unaided. North American Indians, South Sea Island natives and Hawaiians had gone forth and back in such style for a while before the Cavill brothers spread "crawling" across the globe. Johnny Weissmuller (USA) broke the minute using a not-too-dissimilar but perhaps smoother style in 1922.
Through the decades, leading coaches have pondered man's best handling of water. From Louis de Breda Handley, Bill Bacharach, Bob Kiputh, Soichi Sakamoto and Matt Mann to James "Doc" Counsilman, Peter Daland, George Haines, Don Gambril, Forbes Carlile, Sherm Chavoor, and on through to the likes of Doug Frost, Bob Bowman, Jacco Verhaeren, Paul Bergen and many others in the past decade, all have prayed for the moment that a Schollander, a Gould, a Spitz, a Matthes, a Mary T, a Gross, a Biondi, a Popov should walk through the door of their pool ready and able to be honed.
The work of the Counsilman Centre and the likes of Brent Rushall, Jonty Skinner and others has served to challenge and enhance understanding of how to make man faster in water, the likes of Cecil Colwin, among others, and publications such as SwimNews and Swimming World there to record it. Leading coaches and swimmers (whose knowledge has never been more accessible to the wider world ranks of their peers) have turned to nature to find answers, the likes of Gennadi Touretski, Popov's mentor, keen to understand the flight of birds and the mechanisms that make passages of many thousands of miles possible, the likes of Shane Gould keen to show children how "to swim like a fish" and to so in a way less prone to leave you unable to lift your shoulders by the time you are 50.
And Gould leads us to a world beyond all of that, to the realm of the swimming whisperer, among whom her partner Milt Nelms is a leader. Understanding angles of buoyancy and how those differ in different people and the effects of such angles on different strokes at different speeds plays to a private audience of swimmers and coaches whose work goes largely unseen but is so critical to the end result come the big day. No coincidence that the likes of Natalie Coughlin, Ian Thorpe and many more pioneering swimmers have been found heeding the whisperer.
And then in Melbourne 2007 we were treated to a glimpse of how science and technology had been put to fabulous use in the pursuit of swimming speed in a way that left man and woman the stars of the show. We will hear more on the Fifth Stroke in our top 3 memories.
Then came shiny suits. Apparel changed much throughout the long years noted above, as did much else that improved the race environment, but nothing had ever been a part of swimming that lived on the human skin as a second skin, that bound the core, that reduced fatigue, that altered angles of buoyancy instantly at each squeezing in, that affected different people in different ways, that had the potential to alter human response systems. Equipment became king in 2008-09 and had the shiny suits remained equipment would have played an ever greater role in performance but 168 nations voted against that direction and opted to return swimming to swimmers and coaches in time for the next decade to begin. Water under the bridge.
Suffice it to say that the importance to all of the above to the sport of swimming, its historic thread and its future came under serious attack in 2008-09. As those now charged with the task of guardians against suits that enhance performance to a point where the swimmers is in danger of becoming a tool, a vessel, set about their work, they will doubtless wish to keep the unique nature of swimming in mind at every turn and honour it.
2. The Seventh Wavers: men and women who showed the way into uncharted waters 2000-09 (with a nod to some of those critical to the voyage)
Men:
Women:
(what binds all the above are performances that told the rest of the world "see - it's possible")
3. Money.
Amateur rules were finally sunk for good at a time when a swimmer could earn US$100,000 in one World Cup series, about ten times the value of the entire assets of FINA as reported to Congress in Melbourne 1956. As Julio Maglione, then Honorary Treasurer of FINA and now president put in in 2007: “FINA is proud to say that 2007 represented a ‘turning point’ in the recognition of its athletes’ performances in our five aquatic disciplines. The glory of winning the gold or being on the podium and the pride of participating in a competition are the pillars of the Sport engagement. But in modern times the payment of prize money to the best athletes on the planet is part of a strategy to enhance the visibility and prestige of the Sport.” In 2007, FINA paid out US$5.29 million to athletes: $2.3 million at the 2007 World Championships; $1.124 million at the swimming World Cup; $717,500 in the water polo World League; $544,000 in the diving World Series and Grand Prix; $450,000 in the open water swimming series; and $154,500 in the Synchronised swimming World Trophy event. In 2009, at the height of the shiny suits crisis, FINA was obliged to pay out more than $1m in world record bonuses as 43 global standards fell in eight days at the Rome world championships because of the use of non-textile bodysuits that enhanced performance to a truly significant degree.
4. Proliferation
In 2000 FINA voted to expand the World Championships programme in a way that brought equality for men and women for the first time in swimming history: from Fukuoka 2001 onwards, women would race 1,500m freestyle as well as the traditional 800m (first seen at the Olympic Games in 1968), and men would race 800m freestyle as well as the traditional 1,500m (a 1,200m open water swim was held at the 1896 Olympic Games in Athens). In addition, 50m sprints on backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly would also begin in 2001.
The additions took the number of events on the programme to 40, from the 32 that had existed since 1986. On October 27, 2005: the IOC Executive Board decided “to include in the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games competition programme the 10km event for men and women in marathon swimming.” FINA now has five sports in the Olympic programme and in each of those competitive activity has never been so prolific. The quality of some of that activity is dubious, with many leading names electing to stay away from all but the biggest of occasions. The Olympic Games and World l/c Championships, held every two years since 2001, after a period of more than 20 years of them being held every four years. Rationalisation of the calendar is one of the most important issues on FINA's table at the start of the next decade.
5. Doping
In 2002, an Extraordinary Congress in Moscow agreed that blood and urine samples would be used to test for the presence of the synthetic hormone erythropoietin (EPO), darbopoietin (dEPO) and/or related substances. Blood tests became part of the out-of-competition testing procedures for aquatic sports from February 26, 2002, making FINA the first international federation to make such a move. The 14th FINA World Sports Medicine Congress was held in Moscow in 2002, and an extraordinary Congress was called in Barcelona in 2003 for FINA to debate the harmonisation of its rules with those of the World Anti-Doping Agency in preparation for accepting an international WADA Code. In January 2010, FINA returned to a commitment to launch a bio-passports/blood passports scheme with a view to ensuring clean sport.
6. Age no barrier
The world (the wider one included) has changed and in a way that allows swimmers to remain in top-flight training and racing for much longer than had previously been the case. In 2003, Mark Warnecke (GER) became the oldest world champion ever, at 38; the tale of comeback mum Dara Torres was one that started in 2000, faded, and returned in 2008-09; while the consistent excellence, season-after-season, of the likes of Therese Alshammar has inspired others to try, try and try again. Alan Thompson, head of the Dolphins in 2008, noted in Beijing the challenges that arose from managing a team of swimmers that included young teens and a father well into his 30s.
7. World records
We all know the story of suits, and this note refers back to our first point in this list of seven. Suffice it to say that where 92 new global standards were set in the 1990s, 145 long-course records fell between 2000 and 2007. And 55 in 2008 and 73 in (5 discounted in the chaos) 2009, so just about as many in the last two 22 months of the decade as had fallen in the 98 months immediately before. FINA, for now, has opted to do nothing on world records, just as it did with GDR records that owed much to steroid use and abuse. All those standards remain and in some quarters are still celebrated as valid points of reference. Time will tell whether the decision on world records was wise. Meantime, the world rankings were savaged and the thread of history shredded in 2008-09, in a sport where the clock has always been a cornerstone of measuring quality. From January 1, 2010, non-textile suits that turned the sport from technique-based to equipment-based were banned in a return to textile-only rules that also banned the use of bodysuits. Race conditions have changed, but the record books do not yet reflect that fact.
The Top 100 Memories:
Part I: 91 - 100, the year 2000.
Part II: 81 - 90, the year 2001.
Part III: 71 - 80, the year 2002.
Part IV: 61 - 70, the year 2003.
Part V: 51 - 60, the year 2004.
Part VI: 41 - 50, the year 2005.
Part VII: 31 - 40, the year 2006.
Part VIII: 21 - 30, the year 2007.
Part IX: 11 - 19, the years 2008-09.
Part X: No 10 - the best 20 swimmers of the decade
Part X: No 9 - the top 10 nations
