Robin Pla, a researcher with the French Swimming Federation (FFN), doctoral candidate at the l’Université Paris Descartes, and assistant coach at France’s elite National Institute of Sport and Physical Education (INSEP) has drilled even deeper into the Kazan results. Pla has analyzed each race from every conceivable angle, and in a collaboration with SwimSwam, he has provided us with some of his most interesting findings.
In the first part of this series, we looked at finalists and medalists per country. In this second part, Pla analyzed every individual semi-final and final swim to see where the strength lay in each event. He broke it down country, by gender, by stroke, and by distance. He analyzed ages, winning swims by lane, and all sorts of other data.
In the series of graphs below, Pla shows the number of individual event finalists, by gender and by country. Then he breaks down each stroke group by country (men and women combined). It is interesting to see which countries dominate each stroke group. There are a few surprises, but most of the graphs show what one would expect to see: the United States came out ahead in freestyle and IM, Australia in backstroke, Russia in breaststroke, and China in butterlfly.
Can Ledecky get down to the 100? I think not, but I’m not willing to bet against her either.
It’s really discouraging for the US women’s sprint if its best 100 free hopeful is the 1500 free world champion. 😆
No way she swims it in individual.
However, she plans to swim it at trials for the relay.
But will all the respect due to KL, she can’t be the girl in 52 USA badly needs. You need pure sprint specialists! Tall girls! Powerful girls!
http://olympictalk.nbcsports.com/2015/08/10/katie-ledecky-swimming-world-championships-rio-olympics-2016-sarah-sjostrom/
Bobo, what the hell are you talking about!
Franklin, Manuel, Weitzeil, Schmitt, Vreeland, Romano etc are all tall and powerful girls!
Bronte was not the tallest in the field & won both 50-100 plus best splits in gold & bronze relays .
She likes it short but this year her haircuts & styling have been especially good All together with her slighter sculptured frame & the slicked hair. – she is rocking those pull up pics . No one can compare .
Cross fit hags – you ain’t got nuttin.
I think she should gun for the 200m free WR. I know… it’s a tough one and she is not so close to it at the moment.
Adrian’s timeline is definitely trending the wrong way. 48.5 seems to be the floor now for what we can generate in our system though Conderelli was able to push through and break 48. Maybe Dressel and the jr kid Rooney will be next. I really thought conger would do it after that relay split at WUGS but he seems to have stalled at 49.0
Adrian is getting older, so it is almost natural for swimmers who are more 100 than 50 free to focus on 50 free later.. Also.. both races are pretty much different now, no one had Big sucess (Big Sucess = Medal on Worlds or Olympics) on both at the same time since the end of the duits..
And about all events, the only 2 Americans ranked number 1 in 2015 are the same 2 swimmers as last year.
Katie Ledecky on the women’s side. 400 free/800 free/1500 free
Michael Phelps on the men’s side. 100 fly/200 fly/200 IM
Last part of my analysis about the state of US sprint. And especially the 100 free and the 4X100 free relay. No no, I’m not obsessed. Just a mystery to me to see you struggle so much in these 2 events.
I always say “nothing new”.
Let’s see some facts.
MEN
Last 100 free olympic gold 2012 Nathan Adrian. Previous one was in 1988 with Matt Biondi. Only 1 gold over the last 6 olympic games.
4 medals won out of 18 medals possible over the last 6 olympic games.
Last 100 free world gold medal 2001 Anthony Ervin. Previous one was in 1991 with Matt Biondi. Only 1 gold over the last 10 world… Read more »
To be fair, saying the US only had “4 medals won out of 18 medals possible over the last 6 olympic games” is a bit misleading because they were only eligible to win 12 medals since they are limited to 2 entrants per Olympics. Still pretty poor but not quite as bad.
You’re absolutely right. I didn’t have that in mind at all. 🙄
Remove the 4 parts about “out of medals possible”.
Interesting analysis! Aside from how well GB did in Kazan, what stood out for m was how amazingly well the Polish Men did (more finalists than Brazil? France?). I didn’t expect that! I DID expect more from Russia; although it looks like the youth of their Team is strong (I believe they broke 2 JWR).