The most innovative and coolest start dive I saw at the '2008 SPMA Short Course Meters Championships!'

In a breaststroke heat there was this gentleman with a "plushy tummy" in lane 8 who owned everybody on his start dive by two or three body lengths. It was so cool, so innovative, and funny that everybody in the grandstands sitting near me did a collective "WOW!"

When this gentleman got up to the start blocks he was "amped" and ready to "attack" in his full bodied, "old school," speedsuit. When the bell went off, he leaped off the blocks more straight-up in the air rather than out towards the flags and when he reached the apex of his dive, he did a pike, frog-leg style, and then made this freakishly loud "ker-plunge" into the water. The kind of sound five bags of cement would make if dropped off a 3-meter diving board!

Then the swimmer went down, down, down, seemingly to about 9-feet-deep where he sort of leveled out and then did his dolphin kick-out at a 45-degree angle upward using both the oxygen in his lungs and his "plushy tummy" as a float. I was completely baffled as to what he was doing down there till I saw him emerge 2-3 body lengths ahead. I have never seen someone travel that far from a dive

When he popped up out of the water he had traversed three-quarters of a pool length. It was Epic! Now, I want to do a 50-breast next year just to do that crazy entry dive.

The jumping frog photo comes from National Geographic: [Link]