>> Hello, whoever you are, and thank you for your long and detailed comment! Oh, I guess I could have signed off... I don't have a Dreamwidth or OpenID account. My name is Dave Stigant. I was a swimmer (in the US) through college, though nowhere near to qualifying to represent my country in the Olympics.
>> The identical nature, or otherwise, of swimming lanes is an interesting one. Certainly it has been suggested that this pool is particularly fast, or particularly good, because of the width of the lanes and because of the unusually heavy lane dividers being relatively likely to counteract the effect of ripples and waves spilling over from one lane to the next. << Yes, this is standard practice in high level competition pools now (and has been for at least a decade or so). There is, practically speaking, very little difference between lanes 1-8. There is probably a slight drag off the side wall in lanes 0 and 9, but I believe 1 and 8 are insulated enough to not be a big deal. The reason you see very few people win from those lanes is because the slower swimmers tend to be seeded out there from qualifying.
>> I think there's definitely scope for a head-to-head contest in at least the 100m or 200m sprint; << Perhaps, but I wonder what it would really add to the sport. It wouldn't really emphasize a different strategy or technique than the non head-to-head events do. (Well, beyond certain meta-gaming aspects). The same people who win in the current approach would be expected to win in this approach. Also, there are two other aspects of swimming that work against this: 1. The pool (heh) of swimmers is already divided already into 6 (or more) main specialties (backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, sprint freestyle, middle distance freestyle, distance freestyle, and IM) which are really not directly comparable because even the basic motions are different. In contrast, while there are differences in distances in running and biking (which also has flat vs mountain specialists), the basic motions stay the same across all sub disciplines. I don't think there would be enough depth within most specialties to make a head-to-head format interesting in general. I suppose one event just for sprint freestylers could be interesting, but freestyle is already heavily favored over the other strokes as far as number of events, and adding another event for them would probably be seen as unbalancing. 2. There's a considerable amount of crossover between strokes (ex: Phelps, Lochte, Coughlin etc all swim multiple disciplines). It's not so much that you'd "only" have to do 2 head-to-head races a day over a week. It's how those races would interact with your other races.
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Date: 2012-08-02 03:30 pm (UTC)Oh, I guess I could have signed off... I don't have a Dreamwidth or OpenID account. My name is Dave Stigant. I was a swimmer (in the US) through college, though nowhere near to qualifying to represent my country in the Olympics.
>>
The identical nature, or otherwise, of swimming lanes is an interesting one. Certainly it has been suggested that this pool is particularly fast, or particularly good, because of the width of the lanes and because of the unusually heavy lane dividers being relatively likely to counteract the effect of ripples and waves spilling over from one lane to the next.
<<
Yes, this is standard practice in high level competition pools now (and has been for at least a decade or so). There is, practically speaking, very little difference between lanes 1-8. There is probably a slight drag off the side wall in lanes 0 and 9, but I believe 1 and 8 are insulated enough to not be a big deal. The reason you see very few people win from those lanes is because the slower swimmers tend to be seeded out there from qualifying.
>> I think there's definitely scope for a head-to-head contest in at least the 100m or 200m sprint;
<<
Perhaps, but I wonder what it would really add to the sport. It wouldn't really emphasize a different strategy or technique than the non head-to-head events do. (Well, beyond certain meta-gaming aspects). The same people who win in the current approach would be expected to win in this approach. Also, there are two other aspects of swimming that work against this:
1. The pool (heh) of swimmers is already divided already into 6 (or more) main specialties (backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, sprint freestyle, middle distance freestyle, distance freestyle, and IM) which are really not directly comparable because even the basic motions are different. In contrast, while there are differences in distances in running and biking (which also has flat vs mountain specialists), the basic motions stay the same across all sub disciplines. I don't think there would be enough depth within most specialties to make a head-to-head format interesting in general. I suppose one event just for sprint freestylers could be interesting, but freestyle is already heavily favored over the other strokes as far as number of events, and adding another event for them would probably be seen as unbalancing.
2. There's a considerable amount of crossover between strokes (ex: Phelps, Lochte, Coughlin etc all swim multiple disciplines). It's not so much that you'd "only" have to do 2 head-to-head races a day over a week. It's how those races would interact with your other races.