Swimming Blogs - Chris DeSantis

As a new week dawns I have to face a scary prospect: it appears that there are no big championship meets to follow this week. Now, I'm not sure of course. With any luck, some country somewhere will be running a trials meet. I'll wake up every day and do my usual swim site hunting. My life just won't be the same unless someone is swimming fast out there. So if you care about me, let me know if you know theres a meet I should be following this week.

In the same vein as my articles last week on records, Swimming World beat me to the punch by offering readers a glimpse at a 1994 article they had after Allison Wagner broke the world short course 200 IM record. You can find it at http://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/lane9/news/17840.asp. Craziest part to me? Allison was only 16 in 1993. I remember her winning silver in 1996 after this in the 400 IM, but after that she sort of faded into obscurity. I've seen her in meet results recently. If anyone can find out if Allison is still swimming as of 2008 I would appreciate it.

A lot of good quality swimming at the World Short Course championship, a meet that was well covered. The swims that really blew my mind at this meet were the 200 backstrokes. Often scm world records can be a little soft, so it can be misleading when an unheralded swimmer breaks one. However, such is not the case with Kirsty Coventry and Markus Rogan's utter destruction of the respective 200 backstroke world records this weekend. Now, I definitely take all conversions with a boulder sized grain of salt, but just for fun I plugged these two times into Swimming World's SCM/LCM converter. Rogan's 200 back converts to a 1:51.06 LCM, and he's been a proven LCM swimmer for a number of years who has been swimming these short course meets for years and never come close to this kind of performance. Do I think he can go 1:51 this summer? Probably not, but 1:53 is a possibility from Mr. Rogan.

Coventry's been on fire all year, and her 2:00.91 converted to a 2:02.38 long course, light years ahead of her own 2:06.6 LCM record. Again, take conversions with a huge grain of salt, but once again she has proven before that she's not just a great SCM swimmer. Need further fodder for the conversion debate? Consider these SCM world records and their conversions, next to the actual LCM world record:

Men's 100 meter free, 45.92 converts to a 47.29, actual WR 47.50

Women's 100 fly, 55.89 converts 56.28, actual WR 56.61

So what did I discover? Even the WR's that I thought might convert to something close to the mind blowing LCM world records were faster. Obviously there's something up with this conversion factor, and I think changes in the sport may have a lot to do with it. The majority of improvements over the last 20 years as far as technique in the sport have had to with improved on underwater, turning portions of races. And yet the conversion factors to my knowledge have remained the same, despite the obviously larger impact this would have on short course swimming. If you need evidence, watch the 1992 Olympic Final in the men's 100 free:



Everyone's up at the top of the water before 10 meters, and underwater kicking had started to make its way into the sport. Now flash forward to 2007 Duel in the Pool:



Most of the swimmers are using the full 15 meters off the start. I know this is not an earth shattering change to point out, everyone who's been following the sport can see it. Still I would be interested to find out more about conversion factors and how they can be adjusted to help people actually understand just how good these swims are.