Sweat Science

The big news in swimming is that the buoyant polyurethane suits that have made a mockery of world records for the past 17 months — first Speedo’s LZR, and more recently the Jaked suit — have finally been banned by international authorities, effective starting in 2010. To put this in context:

In the Olympic individual events, only four world records remain from the pre-2008, pre-polyurethane era: the men’s 400- [UPDATE: uh, scratch that: Ian Thorpe's record just went down] and 1,500-meter freestyles, and the women’s 100 breaststroke [that one's gone too] and 100 butterfly [and so's that one].

This is the right decision, and a big relief for anyone who wants the competition to be among athletes rather than the R&D arms of big companies.

[T]hey enabled swimmers without an ideal physique or impeccable conditioning to be more competitive. Squeezed into the corset-like suit, a muscled and stocky body is as streamlined as a long and lean one; a soft abdomen as effective as six-pack abs. “The thing that’s really hurt more than anything else is the whole suit situation has devalued athleticism,” [U.S. swim coach Dave] Salo said. “A lot of kids who aren’t in very good shape can put on one of these suits and be streamlined like seals.”

Of course, that doesn’t prevent some whining from athletes who like the suits:

“Basically, when we roll back, racers are going to hurt a lot more than they hurt currently, which is not something I’m looking forward to,” [U.S. swimmer Matt] Grevers said.

The big question now: what to do about the world records that have been set over the pact few years. After all, it could take a long time to eradicate them with normal suits.

sports technology, swimming

It’s not just Usain Bolt — elite athletes have been getting bigger for the past century at a faster rate than the general population, according to researchers from Duke University in North Carolina. Yeah, I think we already knew that. But…

Futhermore, the researchers said, this pattern of growth can be predicted by the constructal theory, a Duke-inspired theory of design in nature that explains such diverse phenomena as river basin formation and the capillary structure of tree branches and roots. (www.constructal.org).

Apparently, the size of athletes illustrates some deep underlying truths about patterns in nature, as described in this Journal of Experimental Biology paper. Maybe, maybe not — it didn’t make a lot of sense to me. What I did find interesting was the data set they dug up for 100-metre world-record setters in swimming and running:

Specifically, while the average human has gained about 1.9 inches in height since 1900, Charles’ research showed that the fastest swimmers have grown 4.5 inches and the swiftest runners have grown 6.4 inches.

There’s been a lot of talk about how Usain Bolt’s otherworldly sprint times might be explained by the fact that he’s one of the first very tall men (6′5″, according to the JEP paper) to master sprinting. The second-tallest world-record holder is, not coincidentally, the second-fastest man, Asafa Powell, at 6′3″. This paper makes some interesting arguments about why this should be so, based on the scaling of horizontal and vertical forces in locomotion. It’s obvious to everyone why basketball players are almost all enormously tall — but the same forces appear to be in play, though less obviously, for runners and swimmers.

The authors also suggest that we may need to introduce size classifications, as in boxing and wrestling, to other sports. It’s an interesting idea — but I’m not sure that the genetic advantage of height is really any different from the genetic advantage of having a huge oxygen capacity or lots of fast-twitch muscle fibres.

running, swimming