One of the most intriguing showdowns of this week’s Pan-Pacific Championships will be between two swimmers who will only swim a single race against each other. If, somehow, you still don’t know the names Missy Franklin and Yolane Kukla, then you need to learn them, fast. These two young women are THE young superstars of the swimming world, and by 2016 (if not 2012), will be lighting up Olympic podiums.
These two young women will only have 1 head-to-head matchup in the meet, in the 100 free, but it will be a glimpse towards the future. In that race, the two are seeded 16th (Kukla) and 17th (Missy Franklin), which means barring a scratch, or both finaling, we will miss out on seeing the two race each other. But outside of the actual races, the two will be battling for years for Awards, medal counts, media attention, and sponsorship dollars.
While not a rivalry in the traditional sense, consider this like a “pitchers’ duel” in baseball. Rarely (if ever, depending on what League it’s in) do the pitchers actually face each other with one in the batter’s box and the other on the mound. Yet, in a heated rivalry, each pitcher is still trying to out-do the other. Maybe Kukla will throw out a 57 second 100 fly, and Franklin will answer with a 59 second 100 back.
But the funny thing is that beyond their young ages–Franklin turned 15 on May 10th, Kukla does so on September 29th–the two really have very few similarities.
Kukla, affectionately known as the “Pocket Rocket,” stands about 5’4″ tall, which makes her a veritable smurf in the world of swimming. Franklin is a young giant who’s pushing 6 feet tall and still growing. In short course races, this gives Fraklin a sizeable–pun intended–advantage, but that advantage is dulled in a long course race with fewer turns.
Kukla is probably better at this age than Franklin. Earlier this year, Kukla scored what was then the 4th fastest 50m fly time in history, 25.92, and 3rd fastest without a rubber suit. Franklin, while clearly good, is still not considered one of the best ever in any event without a “for her age” qualifier (although she is quickly headed that way).
Franklin has a lot more versatility than Kukla. Franklin, a backstroker by trade, expands her repetiore to backstroke races of all distances, the 200 IM, and freestyles from 50m-800m. Kukla, on the other hand, generally sticks to her wheelhouse of 50 and 100 meter distances in free and fly.
This difference in versatility points largely to the difference in their swimming backgrounds. Franklin is a career swimmer-as is evidenced by the USA-Swimming National Age Group Recordbooks being littered with her name. Over so many years of hard training and competing in the pool, she has developed that sort of natural ability to just get in the pool and swim different events.
Kukla, however, is a relative newcomer to the sport at the elite level, as she was an elite-level gymnast until only a few years ago. Since an injury derailed that career and forced her into the pool full-time, she used the incredible power, strength, and body awareness into a meteoric rise in the sprint events. While her background as a gymnast gave her an awesome foundation to make a run at the best female sprinter of all-time, it did little for her in terms of developing the muscular endurance to pull off longer races. This is not to say that she couldn’t, but she is so perfectly suited for sprints, that she’s not likely to ever have the need to.
Kukla’s background in gymnastics also gives her another big advantage over Franklin. While Franklin’s height gives her an advantage on turns, Kukla is way quicker off the blocks. While Missy’s reaction time usually ranges at the slower end of the spectrum, in the .78-.81 range, Kukla is closer to .67 seconds. Kukla’s .67 is not a weak .67 seconds either: she shoots off the blocks with power built from years of vaulting and floor exercises.
So, while the two are vastly different in most aspects of their swimming, the two are bound to be compared throughout their careers, beginning with these Pan Pac Championships.
