Earlier this morning, we heard from one of the Olympic coaches of an interesting ruling by event organizers at the Olympic Aquatics Centre: no stretch cords allowed.
For those unfamiliar, Stretch cords are effectively bungee cords or rubber tubing with handles that swimmers use for a number of reasons, including dryland resistance training, as a part of their stretching routines, and for specialized race training in the pool.
The decision was apparently made after Australian coach Dennis Cotterell was knocked by a snapped cord; though newer models are designed to prevent the whip from a broken cord.
For many swimmers, this is going to drastically alter their pre-race routines, as many swimmers rely on the chords to get a feel for top-speed that is hard to achieve outside of a real-race circumstance.
Someone should launch some kind of protest. I can’t imagine the 50/100 freestylers are going to be very happy about this…
The answer is rather simple – https://twitter.com/JakeShell/status/229954761112293377/photo/1
Perhaps the top sprinters simply join together and defiantly protest the decision by using cords anyway. Gandhi / MLK style peaceful disobedience in true Olympic spirit. What are they going to do, disqualify or remove all the top sprinters from the meet? NBC won’t allow that…money talks. If NBC can get 2008 finals in the morning they can certainly get cords for warmups in London.
They should ban participants wearing jewelry on the podium. Oh right, they did that already.
What next, bathing caps… They can snap back at you!
Or just fall off mid race! Someone else might swim into the floating cap like a seal swimming into soda can rings!
Are they banning the Aussie men’s 4×100 relay from the Aquatics Centre as well after they snapped?
LOL
UK ‘Health & Safety’ strikes again.
This is awful.