Following the IOC announcement of the additions of the men’s 800 free, women’s 1500 free, and the mixed 400 medley relay to the Olympics, many people haven spoken out. While a popular grievance has been that the 50’s of stroke should’ve been added before these other additions, or at least before the mixed relay, Michael Phelps is frustrated with the addition of new events, in general.
While he does support gender equality and the women’s 1500, an event in which men have been able to swim for more than a century at the Olympics, adding new events “takes away from the sport,” according to Phelps at an event for Krave Jerky in Manhattan (per NBC Olympic Talk).
“What else are we going to add? Are we going to do, like, 75m frees? How many other events are we going to add?” he said. “It’s just like what we had in 2009, after world championships, having those high-tech suits. It’s not swimming anymore. We’ve had this event schedule for so long, and now we’re just going to pick and choose what events we want? I could go into more detail, but I’m really not going to. It’s a touchy subject. I hope swimming takes the turn for the right direction, and we continue to grow.
“When you add something like an 800m for men and a 1500m for women, and you’re adding mixed relays and 50s of strokes. I don’t want to say it, but it seems like there’s too much going on. It seems like, so then we’re going to grow the team by a handful of other people? I don’t like it. I don’t think it’s what swimming has been through all of this time, and hopefully we don’t have it for too long, but it’s not in my power. I can’t really do anything. I’ll just sit and watch.”
In terms of adding people to the team, which Phelps seems concerned about, the IOC did say that they were going to lower the overall amount of swimmers invited to the Olympics by 22. From that statement, it seems as though team sizes won’t increase because of the new events, at least for now.
However, Phelps wasn’t wholly dismissive of the IOC announcement. He did address murmurings of Katie Ledecky potentially going for more than six golds in Tokyo with the new events added.
Besides the 200, 400, and 800 free individually, as well as the two free relays, Ledecky would assumedly take gold in the 1500 in Tokyo to put her at six golds. As she’s progressed in the 100 free and the 400 IM, there are talks of having her at least swim prelims on one or both of the medley relays, or shoot for gold in the 400 IM (that being more of a stretch than being a prelims medley relay swimmer), bringing her over six golds to nine, potentially.
“It’s great to be able to see Katie potentially go for eight,” Phelps said. “I think it’s great to see different events added for Katie because then you can really challenge where her limit is. … Then you bring a lot more excitement to the sport from a marketing standpoint.”
By and large, I tend to agree with him. FINA’s push for more events was hardly in the interests of growing the sport but rather their own self promotion. The harsh reality of Olympic gigantism and the need to cap competitor numbers has to be both recognised and addressed as the Olympics are already at a point of near impracticability/uneconomic to stage if they continue to grow.
Evening up the 2 distance freestyle events was defensible enough as it does answer the criticisms of inequality between the genders and it will not realistically see any additional numbers given that those who will compete in said events will almost certainly already be competing in the M400 & 1500/W800.
Mixed relay… Read more »
Let’s face it – swimming is already overrepresented in the Olympic medal count. Gymnastics has 18 events. Tennis has 5. Volleyball has 4. Swimming will now have 37. A couple years ago, vdHoogenband was even advocating eliminating 200s from the Olympics. I would not go that far, but he had a point: the fewer medals given out, the more meaningful an Olympic medal is.
And I absolutely support abolishing semifinals, at least for 200s. It doesn’t help the sport for spectators to tune in and see swimmers coasting.
There is still reasoning for semi-final to exist. If you have arguments against the idea of selecting finalists based on in-season ranking then you can use same logic to defend semi-finals. In WC in Kazan Ledecky ( world champion) could easily miss final because semi in 200 was right after 1500 final. She got lucky that other swimmers let her go through with slow 1:56.79.
Do you want such obstacles to exist in the future major meets or you don’t? Is the case with Ledecky ky an argument for semi-final or against it ?
Why are we not aligned with Track & Field. I don’t believe Track has mixed relays and they always complain that’s Track medals are not comparable because they have less events. We just made our comparability argument even harder to defend.
Wrong direction USA swimming!!! May help generate some extra $ for marketing as Phelps stated in the next olympics, but it’ll ruin the long term view of the sport.
Track is adding a mixed relay
Yes but adding a mixed relay only won’t bring parity for track. They need to add two 4×200 relays,(that is for men and women ) and a mixed 4×200 mixed relay. They should also add 200 meter hurdles and hurdles relays to get parity with swimming in terms of medals offered.
Gymnastics should also add like 5 more apparatus for both men and women to achieve parity with swimming. Other sports should add events to have equality with swimming and to make room for all the events, the Olympics should take place for a duration of 3 months indead of 1 month. 3 long boring months.
At the Rio Olympics, there were 47 athletics medal events and 34 swimming medal events. Athletics medal events are more dissimilar than swimming medal events tho, so 8 athletics gold in a single games is just not going to happen. No one will ever be internationally successful at both (say) shot put and the marathon – the events reward completely different body types.
This absurd adding events is the death of olympics, sport and swiiming. I am sad about this absurdity of decision. The IOC doesn’t makr the interest of the olympics and of the people
The whole Mixed Relay thing sounds way too “Summer League” fto me.
4 X 100 Mixed Medley Relays?
Then we add 4 X 100 Mixed Freestyle Relays!
Next comes 4 X 50 Freestyle Relays and 4 X 50 Mixed Medley Relays!
Eventually we go to 4 X 200 Men’s and 4 X 200 Women’s and 4 X 200 Mixed Mendley Relays!
Finally, we introduce kickboard Relays at all of the aforementioned strokes and distances!!!
And have thought about Diving???
The IOC should consider Cliff Diving into a pool and of course Belly Flop events off all boards and towers!!!
Think of all the additional TV ad revenue the IOC could take in. And then… Read more »
I don’t know why I keep going the same error, i.e. reading the comments (and afterwards, sometimes, writing) ?
Thanks to Swimswam’ staff for the articles, the best part of the site.
It is very addictive. I agree with you.
800 and 1500 are way too similar.
Drop 800 for both men and women, keep 1500 for both genders.
They can swim it at world championships.
Similar for a spectator, perhaps, but not for a distance swimmer. I adored the 800 when I was swimming, and despised the 1500. They are very different if you have any kind of real experience swimming them.
The fact Ledecky is being handed the 1500 gold over THREE YEARS before Tokyo just shows the lack of depth in the women’s 1500, and therefore that it shouldn’t be an Olympic event.
800/1500 are totally redundant in terms of energy systems, aptitudes and athletes involved. Even the 400/1500 has so much doubling, but those are at least somewhat different in terms of the tools required to win.
If equity is the issue, just have the 1500 for everyone and scrap the 800 from the Olympics. It was only ever put in under the idiotic belief women couldn’t race 30 laps.
The W1500 is much deeper than events that have already been contested at the Olympics. Look at the all-time rankings and active swimmers. A singularly gifted athlete should not preclude a competition.
And we can attribute much of the doubling we see between the 400 and the 1500 to the incentives in place to do so. Now that the 400, 800 and 1500 will be contested across all genders, I think we will see more specialization and even deeper competition across each of those distances because there will be a greater incentive to train distance.
Women can do 30 laps, it just takes an extra 50 seconds that no one wants to watch, the race is boring enough as it is