Originally spotted in an email alert from Lane 9 News, I zipped over to Universal Sports to go see Peter Marshall's WR; It is indeed a spectacular swim and worth a look. Then I noticed that they posted it on YouTube an hour ago and with permission I am able to post it here. Here is the YouTube description: "...2008, Berlin, Germany, FINA, Swimming World Cup, American Peter Marshall smashes his five day old record in the mens 100m backstroke, by .31 seconds. With a new time of 49.63 seconds, he chasing down Cameron Van Der Burgh for the world cup...." [Link]
So, where was this guy in Beijing? From AP News: "...Marshall, an Atlanta native who starred on the Stanford swim team, set a world record in the same event in 2004 but was denied a spot on the Athens Olympic team by a mere four-hundredths of a second ...
Believing that would be his final meet, Marshall didn't train at all for the next two months. He went camping at Yosemite National Park. He visited family in Georgia. He hung out with old friends and did a little surfing.
"I didn't even touch the water unless I was on a surfboard," he said.
After the layoff, Marshall made a slight revision in the rest-of-his-life schedule. He decided to swim a handful of World Cup events in the fall before retiring. [Link]
Peter Marshall swims for TYR.
12 comments:
Sounds to me like another case of severe overtraining....
I felt the same thing but didn't feel qualified to say it!
im not sure if peter marshall is a great LCM swimmer. he swam at the US national meet in 2007, and placed 9th (1st in the consolation finals). peter is an awesome guy with a great personality, but i'm just not sure if he is made for long course.
Therese Alshammar may have the same issues. She is untouchable in SCM yet in Beijing she received won no medals whatsoever.
Therese has one little flaw for long course sprinting. If you look at the race analysis, her starts (reaction times) are typically the slowest against top competition. When she broke the WR two summers ago in the 50 meter long course fly, she had one her best reaction times. Since the mean swimming speed for most of these swimmers is virtually the same, this small difference once everyone is in the water, doesn’t allow her to ever catch up.
In the last year I've watched more swimming than I have previously watched in my whole life. With the Olympics giving more hours to swimming than ever before and with Universal Sports coverage of FINA World Cup.
Now with that said it seems that a pool of difference between those who swim LCM and SCM. I wonder if this is because of our Imperial STandard Yard Swimming Pools. Is America with it's Age Group and High School Pool's raising generations of short course swimmers? Could this be why the Aussie's have dominated swimming as they train year round in meters?
I think you nailed it. I was that Europe does not have as many long course pools either and consequently they do well in SCM and bad at LCM as well.
Clay Evans told me once that if you ever were going to build a pool, SCY is profitable, LCM is a money pit because the energy costs and the resources it takes to operate it grows exponentially.
You think that it would only costs twice as much but like an airplane, when you double its size, you quadruple the weight.
It's time America switches to the Metric System. Builders of pools could build 25 Meter pools and lap swimmers and noodlers would never notice. Just let the real swimmers know! It would be our little secret!
I agree. When a national record is set in a SCY pool, it's a national record because nobody else but the United States uses yards any more.
I like LCM for the pure brutally of storming it and SCM for how technical it can be Yards is like a bathtub when you get into the elite levels of swimming.
I'm a fan of the bathtub myself, but I imagine to elite swimmers it's sort of like me swimming laps in a hotel pool - lots of flip turning and streamlining, not much swimming. Still, SC gives us the fabulously awesome 100IM, and for that I respect and love it.
On a serious note, the US has an infrastructure of SCY pools from parks to schools to colleges, to change that now to SCM would be roughly impossible. It is what it is.
I also love watching top swimmers swim short course -- you really see the technique in that environment. Blew my mind to watch people like Coughlin, Crocker, and Lochte in Long Beach the past couple years, they are so fast off the wall, every turn is completely perfect.
its not exactly the distance of the pool that makes better swimmers, its the number of turns.
a shorter pool requires more turns. pushing off the wall after a turn is faster than swimming. this is why SCM world records are faster than LCM.
fewer turns means the swimmer has to work harder because they cant take advantage of the wall.
most LCM swimmers dont swim SCM meets because these meets usually arent as competitive.
can you imagine if phelps, peirsol, etc would have swam this meet?
I guess the money wasn't good enough. :-(
Post a Comment