Disclaimer: Blueseventy Swim of the Week is not meant to be a conclusive selection of the best overall swim of the week, but rather one Featured Swim to be explored in deeper detail. The blueSeventy Swim is an opportunity to take a closer look at the context of one of the many fast swims this week, perhaps a swim that slipped through the cracks as others grabbed the headlines, or a race we didn’t get to examine as closely in the flood of weekly meets.
At the Asian Games, China’s Liu Xiang broke the world record in the women’s 50 back, a record with one of the odder histories in swimming’s record books.
From March of 2008 to July of 2009 (a period of 16 months that encompassed the explosion of full-body, rubberized ‘supersuits’), the women’s 50 back world record went down no less than 8 times, dropping from 28.09 to a wild 27.06. That was a worldwide explosion that saw seven women trade the record back and forth, including world records in both of the semifinals, then the final of the 2009 World Championships.
Then, from 2009 to August 2018, a period of more than 9 years, the record went completely untouched. In fact, after four women in the 2009 A final went 27.3 or better, only one single woman would even break 27.5 over the next three years. In the nine years since China’s Zhao Jing set the 27.06 world record in 2009, only two women had come within even a tenth of the record.
It’s an odd, and under-discussed, record. While the most outrageous supersuit records seem to reside in the 200 frees and 200 flys, the women’s back had persisted as one of the harder-to-challenge suit-era world records.
But China’s Liu broke through this week, going 26.98 for the first sub-27 swim in history. She’s the fastest swimmer since the supersuit ban by .13 seconds. Liu won her Asian Games gold by an amazing .7 seconds, absolutely obliterating a good field that included World champ Fu Yuanhui
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Whoever knows something about advantages of swimming in super suits can you explain why does it benefit most middle distance swimmers?
In the women’s swimming three of such records left and all of them are about 200 distance:
200 fly; 200 free; 4×200 free.
My two cents is that it’s mostly about buoyancy. The supersuits were more buoyant and kept your body higher in the water even as you fatigued. That’s an especially big issue in a race like the 200 fly, where hips really start to sink as the body tires out. It’s possible that had an effect on race strategy in the really ‘strategic’ 200-meter events: in the supersuit era, you were a little more free to go after the front half of your race, knowing you wouldn’t sink down so much when you tired out late in the race. In the textile era, everyone is a little safer going out, because overswimming the front half can lead to a crash-and-burn type… Read more »
Thanks. But after giving more thoughts to my question, (that actually should’ve been done before opening my mouth 😀 ) I understood that the statement in this question can be incorrect. To say which swimming disciplines got affected most we have to compare records before 2008/2009 with the records set in suit era. The fact that only 200 distance related records left on women’s side indicates most likely the level of competition development in this particular disciplines during last nine years.
That’s definitely another aspect of it. Men’s 200 fly/400 IM in particular, there hasn’t been another swimmer like Phelps, suit ban or not. Women’s 200 fly, though, the level of swimming for the entire world was so much higher with the suits. Same goes for the men’s sprint frees and free relays.
In addition to the buoyancy, it was also the compression effect of the suits. They reduced muscle vibration in the later stages of races which kept swimmers in the position to produce far less drag as they tired. This “girdle” effect especially kept the core and trunk muscles tight and kept swimmers in the ideal body position for far longer through fatigue.
Anytime a super suit record goes down, it’s a big deal! But to me this one wasn’t that surprising considering how close it had come to being broken before. Don’t get me wrong it’s still AMAZING! But there are some records that I’m wondering if they’ll even be broken in my lifetime.
I might be mistaken, but I don’t think Fu Yuanhui has been an Olympic champ.