In This Story
- Anthony Ervin
Anthony Ervin
- Cullen Jones
Cullen Jones
- Garrett Weber-Gale
Garrett Weber-Gale
- James Magnussen
James Magnussen
- Michael Phelps
Michael Phelps
- Nathan Adrian
Nathan Adrian
- Ryan Lochte
Ryan Lochte
83
Leave a Reply
83
Its such as you read my thoughts! You appear to know so much about this, such as you wrote the guide in it or something. I believe that you just could do with some % to drive the message home a little bit, but other than that, this is wonderful blog. A great read. I’ll certainly be back.
….wondering why this post didn’t make the “most commented” section on the home page? Hmmm?
Thanks, Zach! based on chart 5, I feel that my argument stays in tact if
a) Magnussen breaks the WR
b) The fourth place finisher does not finish faster than 47.6 (James Robert’s time is approximately at the 2nd line from the bottom).
Again it is tempting to assume many men will go sub 48 simply because so many people were knocking on the door last year. And certainly, on paper it looks like as many as 8 could, but I definitely came into 2011 with this sentiment and the field simply did not live up to it. To me its not unrealistic that the field moves ahead 0.2 so that places 4-6 are around 47.8 instead of… Read more »
@John: Thanks for posting chart #5! That’s what I was mainly curious about. It does indeed show that most of the top times are converging (though the convergence is exaggerated a bit by drawing the projection lines all the way to 2016) … the exception being between the #25 and #8 times. Really no change there btw ’90 and ’12. That is interesting…
After looking at that data, I admit my mention of the “gap” argument is a little weaker than I’d thought. But, considering only “gap” theory and the obvious narrowing of the top times, looks to me when the convergence factor is considered, Mag’s swim looks approx equal to Hoogie’s and Popov’s … so that is not a… Read more »
Zach,
That was exactly why John26 and I have provided numbers and statistics:
a wow factor is different from one person to the other, and that I can understand.
BUT, Mel Stewart gave the reason why he was not wowed by Missile’s 47.10 (please read his original comment):
He did think that 47.10 only put back WR into historical improvement rate line.
That was the point that John26 and I contented: Magnussen’s 47.10 does not only put the latest WR into the historical line, but it actually accelerate the WR progression, as John26 chart has shown.
re: gap between WR and #10 of the year, if there is data I’m sure I can show you that John Devitt’s… Read more »
^ That last comment was to say, that no, Klim’s fly times weren’t necessarily ahead of the curve but Crocker completely destroyed it when he went 50.40. If you choose to see the 48.0 barrier as 51.8, that is to say if Magnussen goes 46.7 or something like that it would be as impressive as 50.4 was in the early 2000s. I would agree with this sentiment But because it is 7 years later, I would contend that Magnuusen going 46.7 is on par with the current 100fly WR.
—
Regarding the wow factor. I was very new to predictions last summer and I made some pretty optimistic guesses (aswimfan probably remembers this), I predicted that the w400IM would be… Read more »
First off, thank you all for the compliments regarding the data. I tried to present it in most unbiased manner given all the information available.
I suspected that the argument was going to come up that Magnussen is “only” less than a second ahead of his competition while in the 90s there were clearly time where individuals were clearly more ahead of the competition.
I’m sure you can make similar arguments about how Team USA was once able to win 2 or 3 golds per Olympics, while today, they’re struggling to win half of them. Does this make the US team less “wow”ing than they were 30 years ago? No we can all agree that the world has learned and… Read more »
John26,
Thank you for the charts! They all confirmed my hypothesa.
re: Agnel, I agree with you.
Now that Agnel has ditched 400 and moved towards sprints, I think in the long run he will be Missile’s biggest competitor aside from Roberts, because they all are in the same age range. Once Agnel gets his 50 speed right, he will be very dangerous.He is already 48 flat from 48.5 last year.
To tell the truth, I’m kind of disappointed that he dumped the 400 event. Although its hard to see him better than Bronze this year, down the road, who knows what would’ve been possible. His improvement curve in ’10 and ’11 mirrored Thorpe’s as a teenager.
On the other hand, it truly opened possibilities in the 100. Even still, he has only dropped half the time he’s going to need to in order to make the switch “worth it”, in terms of hardware. He went from 145.4 to 144.9 despite a poor showing in the 400 and disrupted training. If he was 343 in the 400, he would be even faster in the 200.
That said, its not difficult to… Read more »
John26,
I think Agnel has almost maximized his potential in the 400, and I definitely think it’s very smart of him to move towards sprints where the older you get (until a certain point), the stronger you become.
Conversely, in the longer distances, the older you get, the slower you become.
There’s a reason why Holland, Goodell, Salnikov, Perkins, and Hackett swam their legendary times when they were still teenagers and never replicated or swam close to their marks once they hit early 20s.
Obviously with better training techniques, recovery, etc, the peak of even distance swimmers are prolonged, but it’s still the general rule.
For 400 free, Thorpe already swam 3:41 when he was 17, and he was… Read more »
I want to add also that by ditching the 400 free, it will conserve Agnel energy and may even be the difference between bronze and gold in the 4×100 FR for France, as the 400 free will fall on the first night and the 4×100 FR on the second night, although it didn’t seem to affect Thorpe at all in 2000 where both were on the same night (but it may have quite possibly affected him in 200 free in the following night resulting in his narrow loss to VDH).
Ddias,
So you don’t think a swim is a wow because you have already expected it?
I remember that you wrote in swiminfo you expected Magnussen to break WR in London (and you expected Cielo to swim around 47.20).
Does this mean that when both actually happen in London, you will not be wowed by 46.90 and 47.20 in London?
I think the general swimming population have totally opposite idea.
And for me personally, if that happens, I would not only be wowed, but I would be totally mind-blown.
How about if Franklin goes 2:04 flat in 200 back or Sun Yang goes 14:30 flat?… Read more »
Surely we all expect that kind of thing to happen.
Honestly, i will be very happy with their times(And i think Cielo time in coach Alberto Pinto sheet is lower than 47.20).I will be wowed(it s a neologism???)if someone blast a time 2.06 in 200IM female, or crack 21 mark in 50 free(no, i dont believe Cielo can do it, at least while training 100 free),Why?Because right now, i can t expect times like that or someone swimming faster like that.
Come on, Franklin 2.04 something for me is a done deal.
DDias,
It just occurred to me that you may not understand that a drop of 0.5 seconds from 48 or 47.50 is so much more difficult than 0.5 seconds drop from 55 seconds.