Last summer, I asked the question after Sun Yang and Ryan Lochte broke World Records at the World Championships of: “when can we retire the “textile bests” and focus just on “World Records”?
Not yet.
The final night of the 2012 London Olympics gave us a stat that shows we clearly are not fully-recovered from the 2008 rubber-suit era in the American men’s 400 medley relay. They kept their undefeated streak alive, but for the first time since the relay was instituted at the 1960 Olympics, they didn’t break the World Record.
That’s right. After a streak of 12-straight Olympic Games (in which the United States participated), this is the first time an American Olympic men’s 400 medley relay has not broken the World Record en route to their gold medals.
At some point, as we come closer-and-closer to the limits of human achievement, the streak was going to be broken. But we do not yet seem to be maxed out, and this relay with three individual champions in their respective 100m races still couldn’t even come close to the World Record.
Even with the 8 World Receords broken in London (listed below), we are still far from hitting the halfway mark where more World Records are textile than polyurethane. In all, 10 of the 40 official long course events are textile, with just one (Kate Ziegler’s women’s 1500) from before 2008.
The relay records are even more telling. We’ve only seen 1 of the 6 in long course relay records go down; phenomenal talents can overcome the effects of polyurethane, but in relays it’s hard to assemble enough phenomenal talents to overcome the effects of four swimmers in the rubber suits.
The short course numbers are even worse – only 7 out of 42 World Records are not rubber. With swimmers really utilizing the effects of the suits underwater, that’s not a surprise, though.
We’re getting closer. Men’s free relay spits, for example, are getting there. We had a 46.7 from Yannick Agnel and a 46.8 from Nathan Adrian, which is right in the neighborhood of the best splits aside from Jason Lezak’s legendary 46.0. There are hints that we’re back on track, but we’re still not there yet. Let the textile-bests live!
World Records from the 2012 London Olympics:
| Swimmer | Country | Event | Time | |
| Sun Yang | CHN | Men | 1500 Freestyle | 14:31.02 |
| Cameron van der Burgh | RSA | Men | 100 Breaststroke | 00:58.46 |
| Daniel Gyurta | HUN | Men | 200 Breaststroke | 02:07.28 |
| Missy Franklin | USA | Women | 200 Backstroke | 02:04.06 |
| Rebecca Soni | USA | Women | 200 Breaststroke | 02:19.59 |
| Rebecca Soni | USA | Women | 200 Breaststroke (Semis) | 02:20.00 |
| Dana Vollmer | USA | Women | 100 Butterfly | 00:55.98 |
| Shiwen Ye | CHN | Women | 400 IM | 04:28.43 |
| USA | USA | Women | 4×100 Medley | 03:52.05 |
I agree with all the points made and I would add a few. Comparing swimming to track I believe swimming is still evolving in almost every area–stroke technique, starts and turns, underwater, suits, training (in and out of the water) and nutrition. Major advancements have been made in dryland that I believe accounts for much of the improvement in the last decade. Also swimmers are swimming at an older age which allows for physical and emotional maturity. Nearly every male olympic champion was post college age. Track hasn’t had near the advancements in the past 30 years that swimming has had in the past 10.
Rule changes have also had an effect. By the way we should go back… Read more »
Without the rubber suit era, times wouldn’t be what they are today. The massive leap of 2008-2009 set the bar higher than anyone thought was achievable—and now we are surpassing those times without fast suits. Although they wrecked the record book, rubber suits advanced the sport by leaps and bounds.
They women are generally closer to the rubber times because the suits they wear still provide almost the same amount of coverage and new fabrics are very slippery.
Agree.
200 breast and 100 fly not right?
I saw a piece on CNN that they timed a cheetah in something like 6.8 seconds. Human’s are rather slow, huh 😉
Cheetah record is 5.95 seconds!
See below:
http://digitaljournal.com/article/329973
I wonder how close we are to reaching “max human performance” in swimming. I think track, at least the 100m, is getting close. But sprinting is fairly efficient, motion-wise; swimming is mostly wasted energy. (Or like, energy expended used not to directly propel the athlete forward. Or something. I don’t know. I’m just spitballing here.)