Cunning Cone

More Cone chatter.

An international level swimmer said to me the other day, 'Your Cone thing; it doesn't work for me, I don't fit the model.'

'Oh yes,' said I, 'how don't you fit it?'

'My heart rate is way lower than it says it should be.'

'OK, let's try some tests during this set.'

The swimmer positioned a heart rate monitor on the deck and prepared to start the 100's. Stroke rate during the first rep fluctuated 31-36-32-35-32-34-31. During the rest interval he asked me to predict the HR using the poster. Studying the range of data I had for his swim I made an 'intelligent' guess of 160 (33 cycles per minute). 'No way,' he cried triumphantly, 'It's 153!'

'Yes, but your problem is you're inconsistent with your stroke rhythm. Let's try to maintain a steady rhythm throughout the swim.'

It was a descending set and it took him a few reps to gain the required control. On the last rep he stepped up well and swam a controlled, solid effort, holding 44 cycles throughout. A look of glee plastered itself on his face as he held the monitor to his chest.

'Come on, what does your Cone say that one was?' he gloated.

The model says 43 is 180 and 44 is 182 so I thought I'd hedge my bets.

'181.'

'His face dropped, 'That's way off,' he said.

'Oh yeah, what was it then?'

'182.'

The public apology to the whole group was accepted with grace :)

Hurrying Hoff

Add this by Katie Hoff to the split pattern of Kate Ziegler mentioned in the previous post. Yards again, but ...

Especially:

25.93 53.73 (27.80)
1:21.75 (28.02) 1:49.87 (28.12)
2:18.02 (28.15) 2:45.83 (27.81)
3:13.62 (27.79) 3:41.50 (27.88)
4:09.27 (27.77) 4:37.02 (27.75)
5:04.58 (27.56) 5:32.24 (27.66)
5:59.78 (27.54) 6:27.23 (27.45)
6:54.62 (27.39) 7:22.05 (27.43)
7:49.37 (27.32) 8:16.93 (27.56)
8:44.31 (27.38) 9:10.77 (26.46)

Yes, you read that right: out in 4:37.02, back in 4:33.75. That’s not a misprint, 4:33.75. In case you weren’t aware, the current American Record stands at 4:33.35 by Kate Ziegler. I cannot stress how incredible that last 500 split

Zippy Ziegler

Check out this.

Especially the paragraph:

After taking the swim out fast with a 25.53 and remaining under 28 seconds per 50 through 150 yards, Ziegler then settled into a 28-second range throughout the entire swim, including a sub-28 27.89 at the 1550, before sprinting home in 25.45. Her final 50 was actually quicker than her first 50.

Now that's good tactics and good conditioning (even if it is short-course yards!).

Five Keys to Success

Craig Lord recently published a piece about Michael Phelps in TheTimesOnline. It discusses Phelps' chances of beating Mark Spitz' seven-for-seven in Munich 1972. At the conclusion of the article he quotes Bob Bowman's 'five keys to success'. Well worth studying:

Five keys to success

Endurance: “He trains for the 400m medley, the 1,500m freestyle and the 200 ‘fly in that order,” Bob Bowman, Phelps’s coach, says

Technique: “Years’ worth of small adjustments add up to large gains in performance capacity.”

Mental approach: “Our mental outlook is one of the few things that we can truly control. Training we must view as a privilege, and act accordingly. We must first look inward to find solutions to challenges. ‘The solution lies with us’ is our slogan.”

Speed and pace training: “How the time is swum is just as important as how fast the time is swum. Our sets are designated to make the stroke more respondent to racing conditions.”

Power training: “We believe that the dry land work must enhance our swimming performance, not hinder it: therefore, weightlifting - which can be very taxing to the muscles – is not a major component of our programme.”

Stop the Heart

Ernie Maglischo once said to me, 'Heart rate gets you into the stadium but it doesn't get you a good seat.' And, he's right.

Using HR prescriptions as the primary means of training intensity is stupid. Its a scatter gun approach which makes life too easy for the committed swimmers and too easy to cheat for the uncommitted. Swimmers can settle in to repetitions at, say, 160 bpm, and stay there with no real effort, commitment, concentration, focus or application at all. They can do the set brainless. Ask them to swim the same set holding a particular time, holding a particular stroke count and, just out of interest, watch what happens to their HR and you get a different story; they are now challenged. They have to think. They have to concentrate. They have to be conscious. They have to manage their technique, effort and application to complete the set correctly. While they're doing all that the coach can easily check their time and stroke rate and, therefore, know if they're 'holding steady' falling apart or randomly bouncing around all over the place.

Do not use heart rate as your primary intensity check. No two swimmers are the same, they have different maximums and different resting levels, therefore they have different functional ranges. Check out the FAQ's here and design your sets with layers of complexity starting with time targets, then stroke count or stroke rate targets as checks of effectiveness, then check what is happening to the heart rate as an indicator of improved or deteriorating efficiency.

Compile training times using the colour-coding system on the Cone, e.g. 10 x 200 'red' and have charts on the pool wall so swimmers can look up and learn their particular speed ranges for each colour zone. Recording test set information on a regular basis will enable you to do this relatively easily.

By all means have a heart but don't use it!

FINA article now uploaded

See the post below this one - Aiming to be Average!

Aiming to be Average!

The October issue of Fina Aquatics World has just landed. It's sent out to all National Governing Bodies although you can subscribe if you wish. In the past it's been a pretty useless collection of paper but lately its had a make-over and now contains some interesting stuff. This month there's part 2 of an article on Legendary Coaches highlighting Lawrie Lawrence, Mark Schubert, Richard Quick, Tamas Szechy, Gennadi Touretski and Alberto Castagnetti and an article titled Age Group Coaching Patterns which I have scanned and will upload for all coaches of Squad swimmers as soon as blogspot sorts out its uploading problems (now uploaded).

It's a mini-version of LTAD and was written by FINA Coaches Commission Members John Leonard, Osvaldo Arsenio, Alan Thompson and Leif Carlsson. A simple overview shows four stages:

1 Learning to swim
2 The Younger Age Group, 6-12 years
3 Older Age Group Development, 13-17 years
4 Becoming Senior Athletes, 18-22 years

For the 6-12 year olds they recommend two 'swim team experiences' a week at age 6, increasing to 4-7 experiences at age 10 with practices being 20-30 minutes at 6-7, 30-40 minutes at 8-9 and 60-90 minutes for more advanced 10 year olds and a total volume between 50km and 75km a year. Competition should be limited to 1-2 days each month.

The 11-12 year olds is where it gets interesting for NZL. They recognise significant differences in training needs between males and females with the females having a 'window of opportunity' for great aerobic develoment (males 2-3 years later) ... 'with substantially increased strong aerobic training each week'. They recommend training 5-8 times per week for 60-90 minutes with some 12 year old females doing more.

'Training should increase from 40 to 50 weeks and between 150km and 175km of distance each year.' That recommendation should be noted by many Kiwi programmes; it equates to an average of between 30km and 40km each week. DO NOT BE COMPLACENT. That's an average. It means most training weeks have to be at least 40km to 50km. For 11-12 year olds. They don't train 52 weeks a year. They have holidays. They get sick and miss training. They travel to competitions. For some unknown reason many 11-12 year olds taper! Maintaining an average of 40km per week is not easy. Your programme probably doesn't even approach it (the 'rucksack and rifles' coaches out there and Gary Hollywood please bear with me, it's everyone else we're talking to.)

Stage 3, 13-17 years sees training progress to 12-14 sessions per week and maybe up to 28 hours during training camps. The authors excellently recognise that sprinters may spend more time in the pool than distance swimmers but will do lower volume. Also worthy of a sign on your office wall is their statement, 'Common wisdom in this age range will dictate training aimed at twice the distance that the athlete will actually select as their main competition emphasis.'

The authors sum up with (this is a condensed version):

1 Athletes are individuals ...
2 Aerobic development is paramount to competitive success ...
3 ... the rewards of sport must be internalised because no external rewards are sufficient enough to produce the work necessary for world class success ...
4 Improvement ... is a long term proposition, with no shortcuts to success.
5 The athletes must 'own the sport' ...

All in all, an excellent article.

The Perfect Race

Efficient release of energy during a race results in great splits, almost invariably negative splits and even descending sections of a whole race. My favourite of all time was Janet Evans' winning effort on the 400m Freestyle at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games:

0:59.99 - 2:02.14 - 3:03.40 - 4:03.85

That's 60 - 62 - 61 - 60

In the infamous words of one of my countrymen, 'It just doesn't get any better than that.'

It gets faster than that of course; Evans' world record stood from 22 September 1988 until 6 August 2006 but Laura Manaudou's 57-61-62-61, although faster, just doesn't sit in the same league as far as 'all-time-greatest-swims' are concerned.

You can view the 1988 race on youtube here. Her characteristically high stroke rate averages around 55 for the whole race. It's difficult from the film to check accurately but measurements I've taken indicate she used a faster SR on the second 25 of each 50 than she did on the first 25 - the hallmark of REALLY great swimming. If you weren't there to watch it live you'll be surprised how close Heike Friedrich was until the last 50m - Evans did not have it all her own way but check out her face at the end; total disbelief that she'd gone 4:03 against her previous best of 4:05.45.

Other great swims that spring to mind:

Kornelia Ender's 200m Freestyle in 1976
David Wilkie's 200m Breaststroke in 1972
Duncan Armstrong's 200m Freestyle in 1988
Kieren Perkins' 400m Freestyle in 1994
Any 1,500 by Vladimir Salnikov
And not forgetting Henry Taylor's 1,500 in 1908

What's your favourite?

Unlimited Access

Many of you were having problems accessing the blog site so I've removed the restrictions; it is now no longer a 'private' blog but is open to the world!

Thoughts on Training

Yes, as you can see, I have got back in web-harness after the North American soujourn!

More wisdom from Vern Gambetta:

Real training is characterized by:

No Fads

No Frills

Just Training appropriate for the sport

Basic

FUNdamental

I have always said it is essential to differentiate between the Need to Do and the Nice to Do. Yesterday my colleague, Bill Knowles, gave me another to one to consider – The Want to DO.

Finally a thought from John Wooden: “Things turn out best for those who make the best of the way things turn out.”

Pinball Coaching

This from Vern Gambetta:

I call Pinball Coaching the approach where the coach is constantly looking for the secret, the new latest and greatest training for instant success. Pinball coaching is impulsive and filled with scattered unrelated ideas and concepts that occasionally yield results. One year there is one answer, next year another answer. I have even seen the answer change from week to week. It is the opposite of the systematic and sequential approach that yields consistent results. It seems that the Pinball coaches are always looking for the 2% that will put them over the top, the Holy Grail so to speak. Frankly the solution is in the other 98% that is where the secret is. Consistent systematic training accumulating over time will yield consistent and championship results.

Nuff said!

Is There Anyone Out There?

This blog has a depressing amount of interaction. Most posts have 0 responses. What is the problem?

Please let me know so I can remedy the problem.

No Positives!

This from Vern Gambetta's blog:

Truly amazing, at the conclusion of competition in the World Track & Field championships there have been no positive drug tests announced. That leads me to think one of two things: 1) The outlaws are ahead of the law again 2) There is another cover-up – if in doubt throw the piss down the toilet! You draw you own conclusions but if you think of it from a pure statistical viewpoint to have no positives given the number of athletes competing is almost impossible. Sorry for the cynicism but I have been there before.

In view of the mind-boggling standard of world-wide swimming performances this year I hold the same concerns; this from Nick Thierry (swimnews) on 7 August: I think something fairly dramatic is underway in sprinting. Both for men and women. Five of the fastest 50 free women were done this year, four for men.

Chinese Fortune Cookies

Incredible statistics about this year's world swimming standards from Craig Lord at swimnews.

Interesting, and scary, to look at our chances for next year; NZL is not looking good at this level.

Falling Short

Santa Barbara Swim Club has an excellent entry on its website; 'Concept of the Month'. This month it's 'Institutionalised Falling Short', a good diatribe on purposeful training and the pursuit of excellence.

Concept of the Month is a great idea for your club's site and you could kick-start it by systematically going through Dr. Keith Bell's '76 Rules For Outperforming The Competition'.

If You Don't Want To Do Better, Why Are You Here?

Two articles from the 2005 editions of the ASCTA magazine, Australian Swimming.

'A Chat With Bill Rose' and 'The Return Of The Great American Miler' were both reprinted from the October-December edition of Swimming Technique and were written shortly after Larsen Jensen won silver at Athens 2004.

Excellent reading and, as you'd expect, some very good lessons and attitudes.




'A Chat With Bill Rose'











'The Return Of The Great American Miler'

Creative Coaching

The American Swim Coaches Association make an award at their World Clinic each year named after the greatest innovator of our sport, the 'Counsilman Creative Coaching Award'. Examples from last year can be found here.

Curiously Strong Idea

Team banners are abundant at Nationals and good to see. Here's an imaginative one from the recent US Nationals based on the design of the famous Altoids tins, a popular peppermint in the USA (but note their place of origin :)

Idea for SCAT; award a prize for the best team banner at each Nationals.

22:48.4

There's a fascinating article on the FINA website titled 'World Records, a long history'. It's co-authored by Nick Thierry (of swimnews fame) and Chaker Belhadj, both FINA Press Commission Members. Most out of character for Nick, but not for FINA, there's a mistake in the article when it attributes the oldest standing World Record to Krisztina Egerzegi with her 200m backstroke from 1991 but, in fact, the oldest is Janet Evan's 800m freestyle from 1989.

The youngest (and the youngest in any sport when it was set) was by Karen Muir (RSA) on 1 August 1965 when she swam 1:08.7 for 110 yards backstroke in Blackpool at age 12! She did it in the heats of the 'Junior' (under 16 in English categorisation) English National Championships and, watching from the swimmers' stands, I picked it as a WR at the 55 yard turn.

The oldest record listed in the FINA Annual (compiled by Nick Thierry) is Henry Taylor's 1,500m Freestyle at 22:48.4 set on 25 July 1908 to win the Olympic gold. Yes, that's right, 1908 and metres, quite extraordinary, and, David Davies take note, the last time a British swimmer held the 1,500 World Record. The pool was 100m in length in the centre of the athletic stadium, surrounded by the runing track and the cycling track. The diving tower was designed to be collapsible and was hidden underwater during the swimming competition. We haven't really moved on that far, have we?

Henry lived and trained at a place called Chadderton, only 8 or 10km from where I lived. We had a lot of mid-week dual meets in the area so I swam at the Chadderton pool regularly. At the top of the entrace stairs there was a glass trophy case where Henry's four Olympic gold medals were displayed and they were a source of inspiration to me during my development years as a swimmer. The 'racing' suit he's wearing in this photograph is made from silk and, 100 years later, still retains its 'stretchiness'; I know because I've handled it.

He won a whole truckload of trophies but, unfortunately most of them are untraceable because he pawned them after he retired from swimming to buy an Inn but the venture failed and he never reclaimed them.

The certificate shown at the top of the article is one of his three from 1908 which are on my office wall. Unfortuneately the originals are in Chadderton!

Thoughts of an old dog

So you are having trouble motivating your distance swimmer and thinking they havn't got the drive that swimmers from the past have had.
Their training attendence is poor at best and their attitude, well I just won't comment on that least I lose it.
Well I've got news for all of you, maybe you should look at yourselves first ,remember if an orginization is going off the rails look it from the top first,look at the goal and more importantly the plan on how you are going to achieve it.
Next you must share the dream with everybody on your team and have them all on the same page before the journey commences.
When you have established how you want to proceed, do it from the front and by example, this way you steer the ship in the direction in which you want to travel and are constantly in a position to make changes when and if they are needed,much better than reacting to problems as they crop up, all you seem to do is complain about how they won't do what you want and the more you react the worse it gets, till in the end all you seem to be doing is putting out the fires and going backward instead of the direction you intended to go.
Impower your team both swimmers and helpers this way you will get the best out of everybody and together you can make this exciting journey.
I don't believe it has anything to do with training volumes number of session needed per week or whatever, show your team the way and they will follow you,try and drive the from behind and you will fail.
Coach Trev

XLR8 Olympic Challenge

As we move ever nearer to the Olympic Trials and the Olympic games, a neat idea for a training challenge is to swim the Olympic programme during one training session. That's it, every Olympic event; 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1,500 freestyle, 100, 200 back, breast and 'fly, 200, 400 IM and all three relays, 4 x 100 and 4 x 200 free and 4 x 100 Medley, all done by each swimmer. Total distance, if you do both 800 and 1,500, is 6,150m. Add a short warm-up and swim-down and you have a nice 7.0-7.5k session. It all has to be done 'for time' of course and you can use FINA points to set the standard or XLR8 points to compare all your swimmers across the ages. It's better to use points than simply add up the times because then the longer events don't skew the results.

As BOCOG, the Beijing Organising Committee haven't yet announced the swimming schedule you can do the events in any order you wish; you could go random order or short-to-long, or long-to-short, whatever. If you have pool space, you could let each swimmer decide the order independently. Give them a prescribed rest interval, say, one minute, betwen each event and relay repetitions as, say, 4 x 100 with 15 seconds, and away you go.

Set targets and give prizes. If you don't include the reverse distance events you have 13 individual events, that's worth at least an iPod for 13,000 points! Using the FINA points widget you can score the relays but using XLR8 you'd have to add the four repetitions and score as a straight swim equivalent.

A variation could be to repeat the exercise on two consecutive sessions, heats in the evening and finals the following morning, with the goal, of course, of going faster in the morning 'finals'.

If you're really onto it, and seriously serious about distance, you can add a straight 10k as the third session of course :), and, if you want to 'mirror' the World Championships instead of the Olympics, you can add the 'stroke' 50's, as well as a 5k and 25k!

Understanding Swimming

If you were to distill books on swimming down to the absolute bare essentials, which ones would end up on your shelves? A search in Amazon books for 'swimming' resulted in 168,168 'finds' although the symetry of the total number makes me somewhat suspicious. When you sort the list by bestsellers the first 'real' swimming book is Terry Laughlin's Total Immersion at number 257. Barnes and Noble ('the Web's premier destination for books') turns up a mere 1,758 but second on their best seller list is the splendidly titled My Boys Can Swim!: The Official Guy's Guide to Pregnancy.

There must have been thousands of swimming books published since the first in 1538 by German professor of languages, Nicolas Wynman, but what are the essential ones from a coaching viewpoint; that's today's question?

In order of date of publication I would go with:

The Science of Swimming (1967)
James 'Doc' Counsilman

This book revolutionised swim coaching. Some of the concepts and theories are somewhat dated now but it's still the single most influential book ever published on swim coaching. Strangely, you can pick up used ones for peanuts on the Web. I was privileged to meet Doc a couple of times and his quip, "I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken', still makes me smile.



Howard Firby on Swimming (1975)
Howard Firby

Probably the most unknown and important, paradigm-changing book ever published on swimming. If you want to know where Bill Boomer and Milt Nelms got their ideas, look no further. I used to sit on the pool deck in Vancouver listening to Howard talk and watching him mould his legendary plasticine models, knowing I was in the presence of a genius. Only 2,000 copies were ever printed so you need a water-diviner, metal-detector, tarot-card reader, archaeologist, a tuned-in medium and lottery-winning luck to find one. I have two copies ... and the answer to the next question? 'No.'

Howard also gave me original 35mm slides of every illustration in the book plus additional ones he didn't use. They need printing and mounting as a display somewhere.

Swimming Faster (1982)
Ernie Maglischo

This book slapped everyone across the face in 1982 as much as Counsilman's did in 1967. I remember the first time I saw and handled it as though it was yesterday; I was on camp in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and it had been published only a day or so earlier. I hurriedly bought a copy, devoured it and have been influenced ever since. (Image courtesy of Dave Pease because I have no idea where my copy is!)




Maglischo followed up with Swimming Even Faster, a development of the first book, and Swimming Fastest, a complete re-write running to a Harry Potter-length 790 pages. In this book Maglischo owned up to a huge mistake in the earlier books where he advanced arguments for 'lift' theory of propulsion which misled coaches for years. His U-turn is recognised as one of the bravest admissions in coaching.

For my money the first book is the best. It's split into two major sections, physiology and technique; the technique chapters are classical, with their step-by-step analysis and description; unsurpassed in my opinion.

Coaching the Young Swimmer (1986)
Kurt Wilke & Orjan Madsen

This book should be chained to the wrist of every age group coach world-wide. If you want the definitive model of long-term swimmer development, this is it. Out of print and rare as hen's teeth on the Web, but search hard and be prepared to pay; it's worth it. Kurt is an absolute master of coach education and swimming knowledge and Orjan, currently heading up German Swimming and a best friend of mine, has taught me more than anyone else about this sport.

The Science of Winning (2000)
Jan Olbrecht

I'm lucky enough to be acknowledged in the introduction to this book as partly responsible for publication. I first met Jan when I was visiting Orjan Madsen (see above) in Cologne in the mid-1980's. Orjan was Jan's PhD supervisor and they were researching lactate dynamics. I think I learned more in one week than in any other single week of my life.

This book, currently out of print but soon to be republished, popularised a concept little known to the coaching community; capacity and power. In 1991 I had identified that the energy delivery systems could be developed in both capacity and power and many years later, following the publication of Jan's book, I conceived the idea of encapsulating it all on 'one piece of paper'; The Cone! The Science of Winning is not easy to read, being highly scientific and detailed but, if you are serious about 'understanding swimming', it's well worth the effort.

Conclusion
Other coaching books may be interesting and informative (especially one from 1970 by the current agent of the former England football manager, Sven Goran Eriksson, with me on the cover!), but these five are essential. Interestingly there's a big 14-year gap between Coaching the Young Swimmer in 1986 and The Science of Winning in 2000 whereas the other gaps are much smaller; maybe not a lot was learned in the 1990's. It would be neat to correlate changes in world swimming standards with the publication date of these books. I wonder what the 'lead-time' is between revolutionary ideas, their dissemination, their practical implementation and the 'scores on the boards' results?

Sensible Poolside Footwear

Courtesy of Libby in the office is this image from the Core77 site of the latest in poolside footwear for those of the female persuasion. Makes sense when you think about it.

Play To Your Strengths

Here's the all-time top 10 for the men's 800 with splits (click for a full-sized version):






The top two swims are remarkable even by world record standards. Thorpe set his first 800m world record at Hobart in March 2001 then his fastest at the World Championships in Fukuoka in July of the same year, probably his best meet ever and, arguably, the last time he really swam well. His last 200 was 1:50.50 and his last 100 53.2!! Hackett claimed what he always thought was rightfully his at the 2005 World Championships in Montreal, swimming one of the most aggressive races I have ever seen; at one point he was over five seconds 'ahead of world record schedule'.



Commentators use the 'ahead of world record schedule' phrase pretty indiscriminantly as, although there are 'patterns' which tend to be common, at this level everyone swims to their strengths to push their boundaries to the limit. Hackett knew he would have to be way ahead going into the last 100 as there was no way he could approach a low 53 into the finish. The strategy paid off and he claimed his record. Check out the different race patterns and the world record 'Green Line', as first he obliterates the pace, then nearly gets caught .. but, in this case, nearly is enough.

You Got A Point There!

FINA points are calculated using the average time of the all-time top 10 performers. This top 10 average is the 1,000 point time with faster performances scoring more then 1,000 and slower scoring less. The ‘base’ time is updated every four years following the Olympic Games so the points/times we currently use are based on the FINA Points Scoring 2004. This is an example of the data currently being used for the Women’s 400 FR:









The average of these ten times is 4:05.64 which would score 1,000 points should it be equalled by a Kiwi swimmer. After Beijing this will change to FINA Points Scoring 2008 so it is interesting to look at what might happen to the standards.

This table shows the 1,000 point standard for the ‘distance’ events for each four years from 1988 to 2004 and the current situation so far for 2007 (remember they are all-time performances, not annual rankings).








As you can see the men’s 1,000 standard improved 3.79 (400), 8.66 (800) and 13.56 (1,500) from 1988 to 2004, an average of 0.95, 2.17 and 3.39 per Olympiad. If that average was repeated for the 2004-08 Olympiad the resultant times would be 3:43.36, 7:45.50 and 14:45.50, all faster than the 2007 standard so far, so some good racing expected next year (surprise!)










However, the women’s events tell a different story. The 1988-2004 improvement was 1.09 (400), 1.22 (800) and 4.62 (1,500), for averages per Olympiad of 0.27, 0.31 and 1.15, all significantly less than the men. If this average is carried forward to 2008 the times would be 4:05.37, 8:21.54 and 16:02.88 BUT the 2007 times are already faster than those for all three events. So what has happened?









The most obvious guess is the lingering effect of the doped swims from the GDR Wundermadschen. The impression is that the women’s world rankings from 1972 through 1989 were stacked with GDR performances which were fuelled by performance-enhancing drugs.













The reality, however, is surprisingly different; in 1988 the GDR women had 23% of the all-time top-10 400, 800 and 1,500 rankings.
That’s a pretty impressive statistic until you check out the other distance giants, USA and Australia which had 43% and 30% respectively.
















The GDR effect would seem not to be the answer then. What does look significant is the age of the swimmers when they set their best performances; in 1988 the average age of the swimmers was 17.3 years whereas by 2007 that has risen to 19.7, almost two and a half years older, two and a half years fitter, two and a half years stronger and two and a half years wiser.

So, although, there will still be youngsters who exhibit incredible power-to-weight ratios as they skip along the surface, the secret of swimming fast seems to be to keep swimming, keep training, keep racing and actually reach potential rather than simply threaten to. And, the women's 1,000 point standard will jump dramatically next year.

Click on a year to see the raw data.
1988






1992






1996






2000






2004






2007