Newswise — For Olympic champions, their swim times boil down to years of dedication, hard work and sacrifice. For exercise physiologists and swimming experts at Indiana University, it's a matter of statistics.
These researchers can successfully predict winning swim times based on previous years' performances, drawing attention to when anything other than chance -- such as doping or high technology swim suits -- gives athletes a boost.
Eight years ago, when the first generation of bodysuits was introduced prior to the Olympics, swim time predictions by researchers at IU's Counsilman Center for the Science of Swimming were so accurate that researchers concluded the suits had no impact on swim times. In Beijing, it could be a different story. At the U.S. trials in June, Counsilman Center researchers called all but two of the women's individual races but accurately predicted only one of the men's races.
"The men swam faster than expected," said Joel Stager, director of the Counsilman Center and a professor of exercise physiology. "Something not taken into account in previous races contributed to the performances."
If the high-tech swimsuits alter buoyancy, it would make a bigger impact with men because women generally are more buoyant, he said. Or, because men swim faster than women, the effect of lowering drag might also be more obvious.
Stager said the majority of the swim coaching community is in favor of banning high-tech swim suits in age-group competition. The swimsuits' high cost raises equity issues, places an extra financial burden on athletes and swimming programs (swimming is not a revenue-generating sport) and could represent a major change to the sport -- and one introduced by business interests. Stager notes that Olympians do not pay for their suits.
"The issue is half a million swimmers feeling forced into purchasing $500-plus swimsuits in order to be competitive," said Stager, a coach and United States Masters Swimming champion. "Everything is based on impression."
Stager said athletes report the new bodysuits last for only six to eight races.
"If all athletes are wearing these new suits, then what's the point?" Stager said. "All we have done is artificially elevate performances across the board. The new suits are only effective if only 'some' athletes have access to them."
Backgound: * Equipment? International rules that govern swimming prohibit the use of equipment (or rather, "devices") that improves performance or increases buoyancy, which is why swimmers do not compete using such training devices as fins, paddles or neoprene wet suits. Since Speedo introduced its new LZR bodysuit earlier this year, dozens of world records have been set. Normally, around 10 world records are set in a given year.
* Big jump in times? Over time, swim times improve in smaller increments as swimmers approach a theoretical limit to human performance. The top eight swimmers in the men's 50-meter freestyle in the 2004 Olympics, for example, swam .08 seconds faster than their peers in the 2000 Olympics. This represents a .3 percent improvement. The mere nature of water also makes incremental improvements more challenging. The IU researchers say resistive forces caused by the water increase exponentially with an increase in swim speed. Thus, to swim a little faster (at high speeds) becomes more difficult because propulsive forces must increase exponentially to mirror the exponential increase in resistive forces of the water. "If the suits make a 10 percent, or even a 2 percent difference, as predicted by the manufacturer, it's phenomenally fast when compared to annual improvements of much less than 1 percent," Stager said. "What this forces you to do is to start asking, how fast would Mark Spitz have gone in 1972, how fast would Jim Montgomery have gone in 1976, if they would have had one of these suits? It places all the previous records sort of out of context."
More Olympics insights * To read what IU professors have to say about pollution, Chinese image issues and the impact controversy involving China can have on athletes, please visit http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/7980.html. * To read what IU professors have to say about controversial high-tech swimsuits, Tibetan independence, China's efforts to protect endangered species, a faulty track & field starting system, and sports law, please visit http://newsinfo.iu.edu/tips/page/normal/8331.html.
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