Nothing new here. This has been well-known for decades. That's why there are rules against underwater swimming. It isn't so much that it is unfair, but that having an event turn on who can hold their breath the longest could lead swimming down a very unhealthy path.
There are many tricks. I don't claim to understand the physics, but dolphin-kicking very near the bottom and/or wall of a pool is also faster. That too is banned. And competition pools are deep enough that this effect would be difficult to utilize.
If you want to see an interesting evolution, look at the competitive breaststroke these days. It's migrating away from "frog" kicking towards a butterfly-style dolphin kick, vertical rather than horizontal. In my day that would result in a DQ, but today they let it slide.
Most pools are 25m. I see many people point to 25m pools and call them an "Olympic-length" pools. I think TV warps perspective. Those 50m olympic pools have much wider lanes, much thicker lane ropes, an olympic swimmers are now as tall enough to be in the NBA (being tall is a ridiculous advantage in swimming). An olympic swimmer (male) would struggle to do butterfly in a normal lane. I'm no giant (5'10") but do touch both ropes sometimes at my local pool.
So a 20m limit wouldn't be practical. Swimming is a very communal sport. Little kids train in the same facilities as world-class athletes. FINA wants to keep the rules as universal as possible.
People have been underwater kicking since the 80s. They changed the rules to limit the distance one could kick underwater. Is this an old story?
Also, interesting to note that in the olympic / NCAA 50 yard and 50 meter freestyle, a drag race, usually people are not kicking to 15m. So perhaps underwater is only faster with effeciency in mind. With a short race like the 50 free it's possibly still not the fastest. It's similar to how fly is as fast as free swimming at short distances. It's the inefficiency that makes fly end up slower over a 50/100 vs freestyle.
> They changed the rules to limit the distance one could kick underwater.
Why do they do this? I thought the point of the sport was to see who would get across the pool under their own power and without a tool. It seems to defeat the purpose of the competition when they include arbitrary rules like this.
In freestyle races, maybe. In races for specific strokes, there must be rules defining how you get across, otherwise there's no distinction between them.
You could liken it to the difference between running and walking races. Without the rules, a walking racer could discover an amazing new technique that greatly increases their speed - i.e. running. Or long jump vs. triple jump. Both are 'how far can you get across the sand without disturbing it'. you could get amazing triple jump distances if you could just keep running to the edge of the pit, then jump.
Even so, you could describe the point as who could get across the surface of the pool under their own power, and that there is a permitted amount of underwater time or distance due to the nature of turns and dives. Much like in a walking race, you can 'run' a limited number of steps, otherwise half the field would likely be disqualified in most races.
Butterfly was originally a breaststroke variant, as it complied with the then rules for that stroke. The rules for breaststroke were changed and a new event came about. Conversely, English Backstroke has simply vanished in favour of back crawl.
It seems to defeat the purpose of the competition when they include arbitrary rules like this.
All sports include arbitrary rules to try to make them more fun for both participants and viewers. Basketball isn't just about seeing who can get a ball through the hoop the most times, car racing isn't just about who can be the first N times around a track etc.
Basketball is a game, it's like chess, the move "knock the board off the table and punch the opponent" is not part of the definition of the game, and that's fine, games have definitions.
But honestly, it annoys me when things like swimming and car racing bind themselves up with rules that amount to "no, do it the conventional way, not the better way". It should be legit to win by innovation.
I tend to feel the same way but there are often safety reasons. You can't have a popular sport where the winners are the ones who push themselves closest to death.
Smaller events also have to allow the competitors to focus on a smaller range of capabilities so they can actually find competent players. Robot and drone competitions come to mind where the equipment is often standardized so they're only testing skills or programming, not being-the-best-at-everything which would end up as "throwing the most money at it".
At the end of the day sport doesn't exist in a vacuum and the end goal of swimming or car racing as a sport isn't (just) to go as fast as possible, it's to put on an entertaining show that people will want to watch. Much like with any good business, the goal isn't to make the 'best' product at any cost, it's to make the most profitable product that will make your customers happy.
why should freestyle swimming prohibit this style of swimming?
The official reason? Safety concerns (from oxygen deprivation) and the fact that people swimming underwater makes for a less spectator friendly sport. There might be some other unofficial reasons, but not sure what they might be. My guess is that the spectator angle is the main reason.
I don't get people who don't get this ;-) Imagine if it got to the point where the whole 50m fresstyle race was won by reamining underwater full time. Gone would be the frantic flapping of arms and legs making waves and splashes, which is how non-swimmers understand how fast paced the event is, like the running 100m sprint. People gliding like dolphins viewed in underwater cameras is just not as exciting.
> After the 1956 Olympics, in which Japan's Masaru Furukawa swam almost all of the breaststroke underwater, FINA limited how long a breaststroker could swim underwater. One concern (beyond the obvious downside for spectators) was safety: As others adopted Furukawa's technique, they became worried about swimmers passing out from oxygen deprivation.
> In the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Berkoff of the U.S. and another Olympian, Japan's Daichi Suzuki, used extended underwater dolphin kicks to dominate the backstroke. That prompted FINA to enact a rule that competitors could only swim underwater for 10 meters. A year later, the allowed distance was increased to 15 meters.
Safety was a concern also in the curious case of javelin thrower Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo:
"In the mid 50s Miguel and the pitcher of the Basque Bar, Félix Erausquin invented how to adapt that instrument to throw the javelin. In the manner of the disk or hammer, pitcher turns on itself before throwing. After much training, Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo presented the "Spanish style" of throwing the javelin. The effectiveness was that high that in 1956 added 20 meters to the world record, which at the time was around 80. However, the record was never approved by the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations). It thought that launch was too dangerous for the public because during the rotation the javelin tip was focused to them." [1]
>> It seems to defeat the purpose of the competition when they include arbitrary rules like this.
Without rules, we'd swimming would be people canoes racing back and forth. But this particular rule is health-related. Breath-holding is not a healthy thing to do day after day, especially with groups of young kids. They aren't going to drown but their brains aren't going to thank them.
(Unrestrained drowning is actually very hard thing for a healthy person to do in a pool. Most competitive swimmers have experienced the adrenaline and panic of inhaling a large amount of water. It happened to me during a scuba lesson. During a mid-water CPR exercise I inhaled a lung full of water. They called me aquaman after seeing me leap, with tank, onto the deck like Kevin Costner in waterworld.)
> People have been underwater kicking since the 80s. They changed the rules to limit the distance one could kick underwater. Is this an old story?
The article is not really about underwater swimming but specifically about the 'fish stroke', which is like the underwater kicking of yesteryear but turned on its side like a fish.
When I was a competitive breaststroke swimmer in my high-school years I remember that the league made the use of a supplementary dolphin kick during the glide phase of the stroke a disqualifiable offense. I'm not sure why they did that since it's simple enough for anyone to learn. The principle was that you move faster underwater is the same as the one in the article.
I'm a fairly casual amateur swimmer (who happens to have a PhD in physics, which is surprisingly helpful if you want to reduce your drag in the pool, but I digress). I learned this technique in 1998 or 1999 from a Yale or Harvard swimmer home on vacation in Sierra Madre, CA. He was doing this crazy sideways kick thing, and when I asked him about he said his coach had them doing it because if you tried to do a pure kick version of the butterfly from a normal face-down position you lost too much range of motion in the small of your back. I already knew other coaches encouraged on-your-side flutter kick practice to get more comfortable swimming on your side (most of the drag you experience has to do with surface interactions, so rolling your body to get it farther from the surface helps with drag, just like submarines can commonly go faster than surface ships). I've been hooked ever since. It's surprisingly fast, even if you're not in great shape, which is lots of fun, but it does take a little practice to get the hang of breathing while doing it.
If you want to give it a try, my advice is to start with a kickboard for balance in the beginning, then toss the board once you get the hang of the position because you don't really need it and it just slows you down with extra drag.
The dolphin kick used to be the strategy for the shorter butterfly events. Butterfly the first length, then dolphin kick pretty much the whole of the next length. They changed the rules so you could only dolphin kick so far off the glide phase
A good dive will carry you through the water say 1/2 distance, then you butterfly the rest. The return leg is a dolphin kick off a tumble turn against the wall. The dolphin kick helps maintain the momentum
How do you breathe? How do turn rounds? I guess it's doable for the last 25 meters or so, but the rest of the routine may be faster overall as it's easier to combine with efficient turning and you know catching a breath
