Swimming Blogs - Chris DeSantis

It turns out I didn't need anyone to save me this week. Swim results continued to pour in, starting with Japanese Olympic trials with the German trials quick to follow. Now, the French trials have begun and I'm back in results heaven. Still, something isn't quite right about these latest results. You see, since the dawn of 2008 I'd become quite used to records being flattened by steamrolling LZR suit-wearing elite swimmers. All of a sudden at Japanese and German trials the momentum nearly came to a screeching halt. Yes, there were still some good performances at each meet, and swimmers raced sans LZR because of their national governing bodies endorsement contracts with Mizuno and Adidas respectively. Sitting aside record breaking performances were times dramatically slower than national records.

Japan is a country with deep swimming heritage, a major player on the world stage since the dawn of the post war Olympics. In the past few years, I've felt as if they were poised to join Australia and the United States at the top of the sport. I don't want to pretend that their performances were disappointing, by any objective analysis they have improved or maintained their times across the board since Athens. However, the rate of improvement has been much slower than other swimming nations. Take for instance Japan's Male 400 medley relay: Tomomi Morita is on par with his backstroke from 2004, Kitajima is faster, Masayuki Kishida set a national record in the 100 fly. The missing leg remains the 100 freestyle, with no one coming close to the national record of 48.91. Still, Japan had similarly weak freestyle when they won a bronze in 2004. Despite their overall improvement, it seems unlikely that this group will medal in 2008 when you consider compare their aggregate 100 times from trials to that of other nations trials

Japan 54.03+59.66+51.86+49.70=3:35.70
Australia 53.68+1:00.04+51.91+47.52=3:33.11
Britain: 54.22+59.88+52.30+49.12=3:35.52

The US, the standard bearer in this event, and France, who will be able to put a 59 breaststroker and a 47.5 freestyle on their relay, have yet to complete their trials. It seems like Japan will struggle to medal or even improve on their time o 3:35.22 from 2004. They also had a number of swims that were well off national records, among them the Men's 100 and 1500 m free, the Men's 200 fly, Men's 400 IM, Women's 50, 100, 400 and 800 free, Womens 200 IM and more. I'm not highlighting this to prove that Japanese swimming has somehow failed, more that I noticed these trends and given the nation's swimming pedigree I expected their performances to be better. It is also worth noting that it is not as if swimmers held back knowing they were safely qualified with their winning times, as Japan enacted some of the most stringent time standards for qualification in the world, sending many event winning swimmers home without a bid to Beijing.

German trials have been even more confusing. The most puzzling event so far has been the Men's 200 fly, where the event winner posted a 2:00, more than 4 seconds back of Michael Gross' ancient German record in that event. Paul Biedermann successfully broke two other Gross records with his swims in the 200 and 400 m free, but to my knowledge there hasn't been a single swim from either the men or women excepting Helge Meeuw's 100 backstroke that makes these swimmers likely to medal in Beijing. Now, you may point out that Germany only medaled in a single event on the men's side in 2004 and 4 on the women's side, but they definitely had a number of swimmers that did not medal in 2004 who were close to doing so.

Is there a silver lining perhaps for the stars of Germany and Japan who struggled at trials? Well, if they managed qualification to Beijing, there certainly is. One of the perceived weaknesses of the intensely fast Olympic trials in the United States has been its effect on American performance at the subsequent games. Swimmers can often fail to repeat their amazing performances from trials (think Brendan Hansen in 2004) having had to be at their absolute peak for two meets in a short time span. Perhaps certain swimmers with their Olympic spots all but assured made the decision to postpone their best swimming until August. As a fan of the sport, I certainly hope they did.