This won't be interesting to most of you, but Kate Ziegler, all of 18, crushed the oldest swimming record on the books. She beat Janet Evans' 1500M record by almost 10 seconds; set in 1988. Kate swam the race in 15:42.54.

Janet is widely considered the best female distance swimmer in history.

Those of you that compete in distance events might be impressed by her splits. The 1500M is 30 laps of a 50M pool.

Kate's 50 splits from lap #2 through #29 ranged from 31.24 to 31.88 seconds. #1 was 29.23 and #30 was 29.04. That's incredible consistency - almost like a watch.

Wow! If memory serves, and I'm sure it doesn't, it wasn't until a few years ago that anyone else other than Evans even broke 16:00. I knew there were a few girls creeping up on it, but that is amazing.

[This message has been edited by H2OPoloAg02 (edited 6/19/2007 8:00p).]

absolutely AMAZING swim.

I have to say I saw this coming when I saw how close she was to the record at the world championships. Still, it's an amazing accomplishment.

from a non-swimming fan...what is it about swimming that is different from the other sports? It seems like swimming records are being broken at a much higher rate than sports like track.

there are many parts to that answer. the short version is that swimming as a true competitive professional sport is extremely young. until very recently, olympic champions looked like this -


now they look like this.


notice anything different?

along with the advent of these super-swimsuits, the appearance of athlete sponsorship contracts has allowed swimmers to literally compete into their late 30s while in the past it has been financially unrealistic for swimmers to go much past their university careers.

the most similar sport would have to be track and field, and while many of the records are quite old, you'll notice that the majority of the top ten performances have occurred in the past 5 years in almost every event. the exceptions being the paradigm-shifting athletes.

would you believe men's swimming has seen at least 4 of these swimmers in the past decade? obviously with michael phelps at the forefront of most of the action, swimmers like ian crocker, brendan hansen, and ian thorpe have literally changed how we have to think about fast swimming.

in the next 10-15 years, you will see a definitive plateau in swimming performance. the improvement cannot continue at the same rate.

as an example of the infancy of swimming - the WR in the 50 freestyle was 23.70 in 1980. that time would not even qualify a swimmer for US Olympic trials now. There were 3 swimmers faster than that at the meet at student rec center last weekend.

the most similar event in track would be the 200m sprint. the world record in 1980 was 19.72, it is now 19.32 (without Michael Johnson's performace, the record would only be 19.62!). the 19.72 is still the 11th fastest performance of all-time.

after a brief look at the top 10 performances in swimming, the earliest date i could find was 1990. there are some events that have had all the top 10 performances in the past 3 years. world records are going to be much harder to come by in the very near future.

excellent explanation apoco. I would also add that one of the differences between track & swimming would have to be the technique. not being a track expert, anyone feel free to correct me if I am wrong. I believe there is MUCH more technique involved in swimming, that being minor adjustments in strokes that can have larger effects on someones speed. underwater catch, recover, kick, pull, starts, turns, etc, all can be modified depending on the person, ultimately leading to much faster swimming. I do not see the same degree of changes possible in track, explaining the more rapid and constant decrease in WR times. maybe I am way off i dunno, but it sorta seems to make sense to me.

Fantastic explanations! I think you guys hit the biggest factors. I'll throw 1 more nugget in: training techniques, both in the pool and out.

Old style: pound yardage & lift weights if you want.

New style: quality yardage with focus on lactic acid levels, heart rate monitoring, event specific workouts & integrate with a comprehensive dryland program.

Good explanations above. I would downplay the significance of the swimsuits. Most believe they are faster, but the biggest breakthrough occurred when they started using Lycra instead of Nylon - that was 30 years ago.

I think track is a VERY mature sport. People have been running in races for centuries. Swimming is a much younger sport. Consider that most swimming experts rank the goggle as the most significant factor that improved swimming attainment (because it allowed athletes to deal with chlorine in pools).

Couple of other factors:

- swimming is highly technique oriented (said above). It is likely continued refinements will occur to reduce drag, increase propulsion, etc.
- women began competing even more recently. There were few NCAA women's swim teams 30 years ago.
- swimming is relatively injury free because of the lack of impact. The limits of training are not known yet.
- women's records have taken some time to surpass the drug tainted times achieved by East Germany and China 20 years ago.
- years ago swimming achievement was concentrated in the USA and Australia. Now top swimmers come from everywhere in the world. Japan has returned as a swimming power. Lots of Europeans all around. Maybe the breakdown of Communism opened opportunities for Eastern Europe?

I'll take Janet!

In addition to the previous responses, part of the reason for swimming records is the frequent rule changes.

For example: The Butterfly stroke was not a separate event officially until 1952. In the case of breaststroke, the rule was recently changed to allow for a dolphin kick on the pullout (layman-underwater part at the beginning of the breaststroke race), which adds speed and will surely allow for records to be broken in the near future.

Also, swimming techniques evolve, as there is ever changing theories about the ideal ways to swim strokes.

Swimming too has benefited by the relatively recent introduction of weight training into the training regimen.