Topic: Bud Charniga's Beijing Olympics Part 2

[Dave Chiu]

PS --

MP's 7/52 "thinking" is the same kind of rationale for less legal enhancement.

It's also evidence of why he can medal in more than a half-doz events -- his sport is not as physically challenging as others where even two medals is a super-human achievement. 

Therefore it's no surprise that an especially talented individual can put in so much volume w/o overtraining.

The massive margins by which swimming records have been shattered is also telling -- much of it is from improved technology (suits), but much is from the culmination of 4 yrs technique and training improvement oriented to peak at the be-all-end-all event for swimming -- that's not a bad thing, but reasonable evidence for my point.

[Stephen Georgiou]

It's also evidence of why he can medal in more than a half-doz events -- his sport is not as physically challenging as others where even two medals is a super-human achievement. 

At this, the highest level of competition, I dont think its correct to assume that swimming is less physically challenging than other sports...I have a different explination for the phenomenon.

What I see is that there are many swimming events. Thus if you have a great swimmer, it is very likely that they will be great at many (if not all) of the various swimming events. It would be the equivilent of having 10 different medals avaliable for 10 different variations of weighlifting....the likelihood would be that a great weightlifter would medal in a high proportion of these variations. Imagine there were individual medals avaliable for the snatch, c&J, and total in every weight catagory. You would have had several lifters taking away three gold medals at this olympics. Would that have made the weightlifting any less physically challenging?

[Dave Chiu]

The single toughest event in all of sport is the 100m.

It has the greatest talent pool going in (all kids run, but not all play soccer, and relatively few ever compete w/ a barbell or in a pool).

Your point about the variety of events is good, and one of my main gripes about how our sport could be improved to give the best athletes more chances to succeed and magnify their success.

My main point is that their are NO OTHER Olympic sports where it's even possible to get so many medals, and the primary reason is that the recovery from swimming is so much easier.  MP swam multiple heats and finals per day, and other sports are just too demanding to allow for that.

Swimming seems to still be remarkably early in it's performance curve, and so records fall more readily, and talent gets an even bigger boost from hard work.

[Paul LaDuke]

The single toughest event in all of sport is the 100m.

It has the greatest talent pool going in (all kids run, but not all play soccer, and relatively few ever compete w/ a barbell or in a pool).

Your point about the variety of events is good, and one of my main gripes about how our sport could be improved to give the best athletes more chances to succeed and magnify their success.

My main point is that their are NO OTHER Olympic sports where it's even possible to get so many medals, and the primary reason is that the recovery from swimming is so much easier.  MP swam multiple heats and finals per day, and other sports are just too demanding to allow for that.

Swimming seems to still be remarkably early in it's performance curve, and so records fall more readily, and talent gets an even bigger boost from hard work.

Dave,

Don't forget that the suits the athletes wear can actually make a difference in performance.  The suits that the Americans wore reportedly were so tight that lubricant was needed to put them on!  But the difference in times with the suits and without was substantial.  Swimming is becoming a bit like powerlifting - the athlete in the latest suit wins.  My solution is to make the swimmers skinny dip!