Rowdy Gaines states that swimmers swim faster on their side when underwater - Not True, Rowdy!

Imagine you have a square cube of water and you want to make it smaller or more compressed. To do so would take astronomical amounts of weight to complete that task. The water at the bottom of the ocean is compressed but not really that much. The water would be as thick as pancake syrup if it was easy to compress but water is not that much "thicker" at the bottom of the ocean.

With that in mind, when you are surrounded by water, you are surrounded by dense atoms that have no "secret shortcut" to swim through. When I do a flip turn I swim on my side because it's fun and I can look down the line to see where I am on the food chain of a race.

When you are swimming on your side when doing freestyle, you do go faster since both air and water are involved.

[Reference: Link]

Thoughts on Pellegrini's world record swim!

I love watching great swimmers in slow motion and Pellegrini is a great swimmer.

1) She wore two suits
2) A long stroke, nice catch
3) She looks up when she swims
4) Straight-up-and-down flipturn - left leg is lower than her right on the push-off
5) Dolphin kicks
6) Takes her first freestyle pull with her left arm underwater and makes a 360 degree rotation with it as her first pull above the water and breathes on the second pull
7) Loving that Tattoo (Enough about my problems)
8) Looks at her opponent at the finish instead of streamlined.

I am seeing athletes wear two caps and this is the second one I saw wearing two suits. Does wearing pairs of suits and caps create buoyancy?

Jason Lezak - "Most valuable player" on the United States Olympic Swim Team!

From the New York Times: “...I think it had a lot to do with why we did so good,” Walters said Tuesday night after the Americans broke an Olympic record in the relay preliminaries, delivering Lane 4 to Phelps and Company for Wednesday’s final. “That really was the race of the century.”

It was as if the American men’s upset victory over France — and Lezak’s blistering anchor leg of the freestyle relay that made sure it happened — started an outbreak of endorphins on the United States team.

“We gained a lot of momentum,” Natalie Coughlin said after winning her second consecutive gold medal in the women’s 100 backstroke. “It was probably the most amazing swim I’ve ever seen. It got a lot of us pumped up for the rest of the meet.”

Matt Grevers, who placed second behind his teammate Aaron Peirsol in the 100 backstroke, said, “The way Lezak finished that race, it really moved me. ...” [Link]

A "sudden death" swim-off we didn't get to see! - Just two girls only fighting for a chance!

From the site, Bleacher Report: "... In the second semifinal race, which was highlighted by Coughlin winning, Kitagawa and Verraszto both finished with a time of 2:12.18.

Normally not a huge deal in swimming, if two swimmers tie for third, then two bronze medals are awarded. If the two swimmers are out of medal contention, then it's recorded as a tie.

However, this time the two swimmers were fighting for the final spot in Wednesday's final.

Therefore 35 minutes after the second semifinal the two swimmers had a swim-off. They were the only two swimmers in the pool, winner moves to the finals, loser goes home (back to the Olympic Village).

Both women looking to move on, both from entirely different backgrounds, and yet both a part of Olympic history. The excitement of having two swimmers compete in a swim-off in which they finished with exactly the same time not even an hour before, but Verraszto held a slight advantage: Rest! [Link]

Go to the site and read the article. They put a lot of effort into it.

More nude photos of Manaudou leaked - The timing is obviously to strategically hurt her!

"... now her ex-boyfriend has been accused of posting naked photos and a video of her on the Internet. [Duh!]

The former champion cannot find solace in the water or on land. After two disappointing defeats in two days, Manaudou says, "I'm asking myself if it's worth continuing. I don't even have the desire to swim anymore."

It is difficult enough to rebound after finishing last. The scandalous photo incident is a further additional burden and demotivating factor for the young Olympian during this important period in her swimming career. ..." [Link]

The guy who leaked these photos should be jailed.

Tearful Manaudou ponders future BBC Sport
Pellegrini sets world record in 400IM Los Angeles Times
Manaudou considering quitting International Herald Tribune

Speedo wants to sell us 10,000 - 15,000 LZRs before Christmas!

A particular "Bebop-Hipster-Marketing Assassin," (I can't tell you who because I forgot to ask.), sent me this link early this morning. It's Interview over at CNBC with the CEO of Warnaco. They have a video there too:

Darren: The U.S. Open maybe five or six years ago, Serena Williams comes out in a Puma catsuit. They put it out and it only sells 50. Yeah it was a fashion statement and yeah it got the buzz, but it only sold 50. You guys are taking pre-orders for the Speedo LZR Racer right now. It's going to come out in October.

Gromek: Hopefully early September.

Darren: OK, how many of them do you expect to sell?

Gromek: I would be disappointed if we didn't go through 10 or 15,000 pre-Christmas. [Tony: That's could be as high as five-to-eight-million-dollars.]

--•--
Warnaco not only owns Speedo which accounts for 15% of it's business, Calvin Klien is also Warnaco's B**** which accounts for 65% of it's business.

I will admit Speedo makes a damn fine product and I am going to close my mouth right now and not say anything nasty about the LZR and nor will I say anything good.

Clay Evan's and Erik Hockstein on Katie Hoff being out-touched in the 400-meter free.

Clay Evans: "... Katie Hoff gave away the 400 free with horrible beginner's finish/ touch. She looped down and up touching with almost a completely flat hand like she did not want to break a nail. Meanwhile the Brit lunged forward plunging in a direct STRAIGHT line to the electronic pad making up at least one foot. It was plain as day in the under water shot. I was dumbfounded at that error.

Erik Hockstein: "... This Katie Hoff finish will be replayed by American coaches for the next decade - yes, even a world-class swimmer can lose a 400 Free on a finish. This type of finish is actually more common than expected - I have seen this quite often at the elite level in the last few years.

--•--
My take: I am seeing people breathing off the walls, looking at each other under water, and people looking up as they glide into the wall for their touch. Is it hubris or coaching issues?

Here is an article from the Baltimore Sun regarding the 400 meter free: [Link]

Illegal turns: I saw three swimmers in the 100 back kick while on their stomachs to the wall during their turn!

I thought you couldn't I checked the FINA rules and you cannot do any forward movement type of work with your legs or arms when making your backstroke turn. If you have a TIVO or a DVR, please review. I have done so 5 times. I saw three swimmers kick into the wall on their stomachs. Is that It is NOT legal? Perisol was one of them. He took two kicks and a dolphin. Seriously!

FINA rule:

SW 6.4: During the turn the shoulders may be turned over the vertical to the breast after which a continuous single arm pull or a continuous simultaneous double arm pull may be used to initiate the turn. Once the body has left the position on the back, any kick or arm pull must be part of the continuous turning action. The swimmer must have returned to the position on the back upon leaving the wall. When executing the turn there must be a touch of the wall with some part of the swimmer’s body. [link]

Rowdy Gaines did not bring this up last night! What sucks is that I just accused the gold medalist of breaking the rules and I can't post a video illustrating it!!! Anybody want to come over to my house and see for themselves on my DVR? ;-)

The New York Times regarding last night's swims:

Less than 10 minutes later, Peirsol threw himself backward in Lane 2, touched the wall on the turn in second place and then took control for good.

His reward for holding off the younger set for another Olympiad was a world record of 52.54 seconds, a significant improvement on the mark he set most recently at the qualifying trials this summer.

Matt Grevers, Peirsol’s towering, 6-foot-8 teammate, took the silver medal in 53.11 seconds: quite an achievement for a man who had had no intention of swimming the 100 backstroke in Beijing when this Olympic season began.

“Hands down the best backstroker ever,” Grevers said of Peirsol, who is just 25 but already in his third Olympics.

“He is a great guy; he gave me some private lessons during our training camp,” Grevers said. “I don’t have the shoulder strength that he does, so I can’t pull the amount of water he does.” [Link]

Rada Owen in a 'McDonalds' commercial

Rada Owen; Screenwriter, Olympian, NCAA champ, featured swimmer in the David Marsh swim video: Swimming Faster: Freestyle. She also holds a management position at SCAQ and now a billion people or so have seen her in this McDonalds commercial.

She is the pretty one with the nice smile and GREAT dive!

Life sucks for her, huh?

Remember the "morning finals scandal" when the Australians and the Europeans were throwing tantrums about them?

Moving forward, maybe all Olympic swim finals should be held in the morning if the men's 4x100 relay is any indication.

"THIS IS SPAAAAAARTA!"

They ought to give Jason Lezak two gold medals, a sword and shield for that effort! What a hero! From Associated Press: "... When his veteran teammate touched the wall, Phelps let out a scream of triumph, punching his arms in the air as teammates Garrett Weber-Gale and Cullen Jones joined him in the celebrations.

"Unbelievable! Jason finished that race way better than we could have even asked for," Phelps said. "For that last 50, I was thinking 'this is going to be one close race'.

"The last 10 to 15 metres were incredible. I lost my voice, and I was definitely pretty emotional after that."

Trailing at the final turn, Lezak relentlessy pursued Bernard, but it wasn't until the final 10 meters that the American was able to pull level and, finally, edge ahead as he touched with an astonishing split of 46.06sec. ..." [Splits at Swimming World]

AP newswire: Cullen Jones will swim the 4x100 relay final with Michael Phelps!

Also, a Freudian slip on the part of the French?: "... The French believe they can ruin Phelps' hopes of going eight-for-eight in a country where eight is considered a lucky number. They've certainly got reason to be confident, putting up the best time of the year until a backup American squad broke the world record in the preliminaries on Sunday night.

The French also went under the old mark — just 13-hundredths off the U.S. time of 3:12.23 — and that was with Bernard and their other top 100 man, Fabien Gilot, resting up in preparation to join Amaury Leveaux and Frederick Bousquet in the final.

"We want to be the best," Bernard said. "It will be one of the toughest races for Michael to win. [That's the Freudian slip because he all ready is the favorite in their minds.] The world record will be in danger." [Link]

Cullen Jones should swim in the relay final, period!

Watching the profile on Cullen Jones and one of his first experiences in a pool was sinking to the bottom with a pint of water in his lungs. He was unconscious, lifeguards administered CPR, and now he one of the fastest swimmers that ever lived.

Whoa! I bet there is an Olympic gold mine worth of swimmers in the inner city. USA Swimming has got to tap that mine.

WR in the 4x100 relay prelim! Was that epic or what?! - "Give them nothing - take from them everything" --Lionidas in the Movie 300!

Dara Torres receiving electronic muscle stimulation?

During the Dara Torres profile I noticed she had Frankenstein-like electrodes attached to her quads and her muscles were twitching at what seemed like 100s-of-times-a-minute via the electronic stimulation. It was during the warm up part of her stretch routine while all of her "yoga ninjas" were walking on her quads, rolling their feet over her shoulders and doing all sorts of "dark arts" stretching stuff to her.

I wish I could afford all that. It would probably add 10-years to your life too. More stretches here [Link]

I wonder what the scientific validity of electronic muscle stimulation is. Does it make her muscles bigger or just warm her up.?

Why these Olympics have been so good for China, the Athletes, and the Olympic ideal!

The Olympic ideal has just received an investment equal to a defense budget of the third largest country on earth thus giving it's mission statement sublime credibility.

Estimates are that China has spent 40-billion-dollars on these Olympics. Now contrast that to the Chinese defense budget which is estimated at 44.7-billion-dollars. (The United States spent 481-billion-dollars on our defense budget.)

Obviously the Chinese felt that the 2008 Beijing Olympics are so important to their nation's image and morale that it was equal in importance to their ability to defend themselves.

Imagine if the United States spent 1/3-of-a-trillion dollars on a summer Olympics? The figure is so large that it is absurd and incomprehensible. Athens and London have and will spend perhaps 10% of what the Chinese paid. Obviously China wants to demonstrate they have arrived on the world stage and want to be considered credible, reliable and innovative. I suspect my feelings are shared by many now. The Chinese are also humble about it by outsourcing this endeavor to western firms.

The experience these 2008 athletes will have will be perhaps never be surpassed. For instance, If Michael Phelps blasts 8-golds, these Olympics will be the IOC's finest 16 days in the history of the movement. i.e. The great achievement of any Olympic athlete, the most medals garnered by an Olympian and the biggest, "swankiest," Olympics ever.

As for human rights, pollution and political rights: I know nothing about political science but perhaps these are the growing pains that a totalitarian society goes through as it makes its transitional to a democracy?

I am not happy about their environmental and human rights havoc but I am not happy about the United States environmental and human rights havoc as of late either.

Edited to fix grammar and add the last sentence: [8/18/09]

USA defense budge reference: US Dept. of Defense [Link]
China defense budget reference: Info-Wars: [Link]

Mark Spitz's on Speedsuits

On Friday's; I swim with Dean, he is a writer for Reuters. Dean is witty, charming, a snappy dresser and has a commonwealth accent I can never place. He has a good breaststroke too but he won't race. I may try and rope him into a relay.

Recently he did a very thorough interview with Mark Spitz for 'Reuters' and he is letting me post it.

Snippet from Dean's MySpace page:

DEAN: WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE SPEEDO LZR BODYSUIT THAT'S BREAKING ALL THESE WORLD RECORDS?

Mark Spitz: I had long hair, I didn't wear goggles, I had a little suit that was nylon that wasn't even clingy and yet I broke world records. If you really thought that that swimsuit really made you faster then I'm buying Tiger Woods' golf clubs because I think I can be competitive.

The reality is, it's not the swimsuit that's taking the swimmer across the pool fast, it's the guy in the swimsuit stroking that suit fast. What they don't tell you is that you need to go about 6 miles per hour to break the actual drag co-efficient and that means you have to swim a 50 freestyle. Those are the only people that can actually swim fast enough to get anything out of that suit. Any thing more than that in distance, the suit starts to become smaller. If you look at Michael Phelps when he swam the 400 individual medley, he basically wore a suit from his waist to his knees. So he's not wearing that full-length bodysuit in some of those events because of the drag factor.

So it's a marketing tool. At about $700 a copy -- and they basically give them away and they only last for about 2 hours and I think you rip about one out of every 4 you're trying to get on -- it's not something that I think an age group swimmer's parents are going to be too happy about buying ... It's a psych. If everybody was wearing those suits, I'd want one too ... It's all psychological at that point. ..."

(And I just made a promise this morning I would leave the subject of speedsuits alone too. Sigh! Note that the above is Mark Spitz's opinion so don't shoot the messenger.)

Bob Bowman describes each of Michael Phelps Strokes

Snippet from ESPN: "... Breaststroke: This is the closest thing Phelps has to a chink in his individual medley armor. It's the only stroke he's not capable of dominating, but he's hardly bad at it.

"It's so much better in every way," Bowman said. "What we worked on is coordinating his arms and his kick, and activating his core muscles in every way."

The breaststroke is all about timing and rhythm, keeping the pull and kick working in synch. And Phelps' dry-land weight training, which he'd never done prior to last year, has enhanced his core strength. ..." [Link]

16 screws and two plates later, Emily Silver will be swimming in these Olympics!!!

Emily Silver will be swimming in these Olympics!!! From SeattlePi.com: "... BEIJING Forty-eight hours before the first official race, the U.S. swim team kicked off its Olympic meet with an impromptu event Thursday night.

Emily Silver versus the clock.

Coming back from surgery after breaking her right hand during the U.S. trials, the Bainbridge Island resident did her own time trial at the end of a training session to show the coaches she was fit enough to swim on a relay team.

The stands at the massive Water Cube were largely empty, but more than two dozen of Silver's teammates lined the pool to cheer her on, including Kara Lynn Joyce, who stood to claim Silver's spot on the 400-meter freestyle relay if she didn't recover in time.

Silver was told by the coaching staff that she needed to swim down and back in no more than 55 seconds to keep her relay spot. She was timed with a hand-held clock at 54.8. ..." [Link]

'Coca-Cola' creates Beijing Olympic Stadium or "Bird Nest" commercial!

Homage to the Beijing Olympic stadium. Originally found at Not.cot who found it at Shape and Color.

"Do you have hot water in America?"

Cultural differences and misunderstandings about mustaches in Beijing. From the Telegraph: "... It was a chance to mix and meet Michael and Ian Croker; great rivals for the 100m butterfly title. Both were sporting moustaches but admitted they would be shaved off before competition.

One of the Chinese journalists could not understand why they grew them and then shaved them off. Ian sounding serious said they were a fashion status and didn't she like them. He then realized she was taking him seriously so quickly admitted he would not race with it and that swimmers were pretty lazy people (meaning they didn't shave). She misunderstood him and he quickly butted in "no, no, we are clean people and we do wash" which drew a laugh. ..." [Link]

Here is to Michael Phelps and his COPS episode mustache.