Why bother watching: Olympic swimming

Swimming is to the summer Olympics what figure skating is to the winter Olympics: beautiful to watch but hard to understand. It’s not the actual stroking that’s perplexing, especially for anyone who has had even rudimentary swim lessons; in swimming, there aren’t a lot of new technologies to radically change the event. It’s still, more or less, man or woman against the water, and against the other swimmers.

The Journal interviewed three local swim fans about their thoughts on swimmer Michael Phelps, and on other attractions and intricacies of the aquatic events at the upcoming games. Jacqueline Rice is the coach of the swim team at Housatonic Valley Regional High School and, with Rhonda Rinninsland, she is also the coach of the Salisbury summer swim team; Lisa McAuliffe is an enthusiastic swimmer herself, and Salisbury’s recreation director.

Who are you most excited about watching at the Beijing Olympics?

All three: Dara Torres!

Rice: She’s 41 years old, she had a baby in 2006, she had shoulder and knee surgery in 2007 — and she set a world record [at the Olympic trials]  in 2008. She’s definitely my hero. There are people swimming against her who weren’t even born when she was in her first Olympics, in 1984.

What about Michael Phelps?

McAuliffe: He’s awesome. He’s got size 14 feet, they’re like flippers. He’s fun to watch, because  anytime he gets in the water there’s a chance he’s going to win a record. And he’s a good role model.

Rice: He’s trying to break Mark Spitz’s record [of seven gold medals in swimming in 1972 at the Munich Olympics]. Even the older generation of swimmers is encouraging him to do it. That records been around for a long time.

In the butterfly, and actually in all of the events where the swimmers dive into the pool from the starting block, they  seem to stay underwater for a long time before they begin to stroke.

Rice: Their momentum slows down when they break the surface of the water, so they keep going underwater with the dolphin kick for as long as they still have the momentum from the dive and then they go up to the surface. And they know exactly when they should break the water. Most of them come up at about the same time, they all train together.

Michael Phelps and Katie Hoff each set world records at the Olympic trials in June, and several more records are expected to be set this summer in Beijing.

Lisa: The training methods have improved, and so have the pools.

You wouldn’t think you could improve water all that  much. But apparently the speed of the swimmers is increased by changes to the pools.

Rinninsland: They have buffer lanes in the pools now. There are 10 lanes, but they only swim in eight of them, so there’s no “splash back.â€

Rice: The speed increases as you get to the center of the pool; lanes two and eight are always the slowest swimmers. Also, when you’re in the middle you can see all the swimmers in the pool, so you can see how fast the other swimmers are going. It’s a competition to get those center lanes; you have to earn it, you have to work your way up to the center lanes.

The depth of the water also impacts their speed.

Rice: Deeper water equals faster swimming, up to a certain point. It has  to do with the circulation of the water. There’s more turbulence in shallower water. When we have swim meets at The Hotchkiss School, we use the section of the pool that’s designed for diving, because it’s deeper. The water is about 10 to 12 feet deep.

The new swimsuits are also expected to increase the swimmers’ speeds. They’ve been designed with the help of NASA to decrease drag by eliminating hot spots on the body.

Rinninsland: They’re nice suits but I wouldn’t want to have to get into one of them. It takes about 20 minutes to get them on.

McAuliffe: It’s like a second skin. There’s a zipper on the back but there’s no cord attached to it, because that would create too much drag.

Rinninsland: Someone has to be there to zip and unzip it.

Rice: It’s partly pyschological, too. Any new improvement is seen as a good thing. You feel like you’re supposed to go faster, so you do.

Their goggles are super tight, too. Some of them, especially the women, get marks on their forehead that look like tattoos from wearing their goggles up there before they pull them over their eyes.

Rinninsland: You can’t stop to fix your goggles if they come off in the middle of a race...

McAuliffe: It makes the body more streamlined when they wear them that tight. And they wear two swim caps, too. I think part of the reason is to keep the goggle straps from creating drag.

All the swimmers have unique ways that they put on their goggles. There’s a lot of twitching and grimacing, and splashing water on their faces.

Rinninsland: It’s partly to help them relax. They each have a unique way of warming up for the race. Phelps listens to music.

What do you find most interesting when you watch a swimming competition?

Rinninsland: I watch the starts and turns. The swimmer who does those best is going to win.

McAuliffe: Especially in the relays. They have to time the takeoffs perfectly, the exchange can win or lose the race for them. Everyone’s mechanics are impeccable for the strokes. If you can gain a slight advantage [in the takeoffs and exchanges] that’s going to win the race for you.

Rice: Actually, I like watching all the Olympic events, whether it’s swimming, running, equestrian, because the

If you’re going to watch...

A mini-primer, courtesy of the official 2008 Olympic Web site: The games themselves begin on Aug. 8, and swimming competitions begin Aug. 9 and continue to Aug. 24.

Most of them will be held at the “green†National Aquatics Center in Beijing, which has been nicknamed “the water cube.†It looks like a giant box trying to disguise itself as a window in a rainstorm (for photos, go online to en.beijing2008.cn/venues/nac/index.shtml).

The only one not in the water cube is the 10k swimming marathon, which is heralded as a new event, but which harks back to the swim competition at the 1896 Athens Olympics, when the contestants were dropped off in the middle of the Mediterranean and had to swim back to shore (in 55-degree water).

In the pool, there are 16 swimming events for men and women, in four strokes: backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, freestyle (which we used to call the crawl) and the individual medley, or IM, which includes all four strokes.

Many of the swimmers compete in several different strokes, but some are famous for their skill at one or another. Michael Phelps, for example, will  do several events but he excels at the butterfly. As announcer and Olympian Rowdy Gaines said of Phelps during the Olympic trials, when Phelps does the butterly, it’s as close as a human can get to swimming like a dolphin.se athletes are all at the top of their game. It’s amazing to watch.