Today, we kick off a new series called “SwimSwam Pulse, which tracks and analyzes the results of our periodic A3 Performance Polls. Our most recent poll asked readers who had a better summer between Olympic champs Michael Phelps and Chad le Clos. You can find our new poll, which deals with the Mexican federation’s falsified World Championship entry times, on the right sidebar of the homepage here.
We asked, you answered. Overwhelmingly.
Our latest A3 Performance Poll asked readers to compare the summer seasons for world butterfly rivals Michael Phelps and Chad le Clos:
Poll Question: Who had a better summer of swimming?
Results:
- Michael Phelps: 92% (785 votes)
- Chad le Clos: 8% (71 votes)
Le Clos was facing an uphill battle here for a number of reasons, the biggest of which being the season-ending word ranks.
The primary conflict between the two looms in the 100- and 200-meter butterfly races, and Phelps finished with the #1 world ranking in both.
Though swimming often has the air of complete objectivity in terms of times, it’s still far from proverbial “apples to apples” when comparing times done at different meets halfway across the world from one another.
The biggest difference in Le Clos’s meet (the 2015 World Championships) and Phelps’s (the 2015 U.S. Nationals) is in total swims, given that Worlds swims prelims, semifinals and finals of all 200-meter-and-shorter races. That means that Le Clos had to gear up for almost 50% more races than Phelps did over the course of their respective meets:
- Le Clos: 11 swims in 4 events over an 8-day meet
- Phelps: 8 swims in 4 events over a 5-day meet
Obviously, Le Clos pulled a heavier load, relatively speaking, than Phelps, though we can only speculate on how much that affects a swimmer’s times in terms of tenths and hundredths of seconds. It’s also worth noting that since we’re focusing in on the 100 and 200 flys, those two events came at the end of Le Clos’ schedule (after he’d already swum the 200 free and 50 fly), but were the first two events Phelps swam at U.S. Nationals (before his 200 IM and 200 breast).
On the other hand, it’s hard to argue that the pool conditions were anywhere near even. Phelps swam outdoors in sun-baked San Antonio, Texas, a far cry from the indoor, temperature-controlled facility where Le Clos swam at Worlds.
In looking at our poll results, it’s important, too, to remember that our audience is overwhelmingly American, which might skew results comparing an American icon to an athlete from a smaller nation in terms of SwimSwam readership.
Just over two-thirds of our sites readership comes from the United States, while South Africa makes up our 8th-biggest national reader base with less than a percent of total viewer sessions. There’s no doubt that has some impact on our results, though a 92%-8% split is definitive enough to make a pretty clear statement on which swimmer’s summer SwimSwam readers found most impressive.
Sound Off:
Our new A3 Performance Poll has been posted, asking you to weigh in on the importance of Mexico’s fraudulent World Championships entry times. You can find the poll on the sidebar on the right side of our homepage.
For the sake of the planet those 785 people should not be able to reproduce.
Of course Le Clos’ Summer was much better than Phelps’.
Le Clos won multiple individual world championships golds and broke multiple WRs.
I may be alone on this but Le Clos got World championship medals and Phelps didn’t. I suppose everyone also thinks Yamaguchi had a more successful 2012 than Gyurta, after all, Yamaguchi went faster.
You are not alone. I think that Phelps had a brilliant summer (200IM in particular). The easiest way to settle the argument is for Chad to keep is World Championship medals and for Swim Swam to mint a “Swim Swam medal” and send it to MP. That way everybody will be happy, and we can move forward to Rio 2016.
Chad himself voted 70 times!
#surpriseofthecentury
The fact is Le Clos is 23 years old, in his prime, and the assumed “heir to the throne” in butterfly events on the National scene. For Phelps to come back, at 30 and under a certain amount of duress this past year, is phenomenal. And to put up times that rank right with some of his best ever is just a cherry on top.
One glaring illogical base to this poll. For Chad it was not his summer .
Southern Hemisphere swimmers earnt 22 medals – Australia , South Africa , New Zealand & (welcome) Argentina all in their winter . Equal to the USA ! They plan their year to include the domestic season where they must maintain their standard & thus spread out their peaks .
Yes this is an American site – part of the reason I like it because it is so entertainingly american . However swimming is global – you can’t bully out everyone else .
Chad will get a great reception in Brazil which like SA is oppositional to the U.S. . He is young &… Read more »
Please don’t reproduce
So you guys can lynch Chad – quoting Billabong – on the former thread & it is ok?
SwSw posters have directed their anger to Chad trying to cover where the weakness really lay . It was not his fault your Mega olympic champion was a big baby . You can sell the rehab angle till the cows come home ( like those tv evangelists at 4am that we see after a night out drinking ) but blah blah we are bored .
The Olympics are not some imaginary American grudge match . It is a new Olympiad & in this
current state of the world , one we need to be fresh & inspiring & not… Read more »
Correct, the Olympics are not some imaginary American grudge match.
Rather, they are a real life grudge match between hostile, wealthy, and militarily dominate countries, padded by the presence of less wealthy, much smaller, less militarily dominate countries. Sort of like the U.N., but with better sponsorship.
But of course we mustn’t taint the fresh and inspiring purity of the Olympiad with hostilities between two random individual swimmers 😉
The U.N. isn’t dominate, but rather a weak and feeble grouping of countries whose mandates get ignored on a regular basis. When was the last time the U.N. enforced anything notable?
Rick, m’dear, I don’t think you a) read carefully or b) understood the joke. I didn’t call the U.N. dominate.
And when they say at the closing of an Olympics – we invite the Youth OF The World to gather in X city in 4 years they are not thinking 30 year olds plus .
FGS can’t they find something else to do in the whole world but keep turning up at Youth events? Ppl complain about FINA being the same old blokes – what about the competitors?
The good thing about 1960- 70s music stars thought it a good idea to be dead at 27 . Now some are 70 & still barking weakly & won’t stop . The Olympics will be like this .
It doesn’t matter what happened out of the pool. Perception, crimes, jealousy, etc, but rather what the times were in the pool. The “big baby” as you call him wasn’t crying in August 🙂
So by your logic the World Championships wasn’t what Chad and the other Non-American countries were peaking for? Do you think in an Olympic year they’ll try to peak in the summer and hold off on that wonderful winter swim season?
BTW….what meet did Chad swim his best times in? Wasn’t it the World Championships held during the summer month of August? In addition, during the year 2015 does he hold any World #1 times in LCM? You can count the winter months if you want, but I don’t think it will make a difference. 🙂
But it is not his summer – that is the point this being an American centric poll . You would have to ask Chad what his summer was like – likely it was great – surfing , training in the mountains , biking on the ancient trails , , eating some of those famous local curries , cruising with lions , Dolphins , whales , elephants , rhinos . I think it might easily be the world’s most beautiful country . Versus a summer in Baltimore .
In short Irish , CLS is world l/c champ in his winter plus quite a few world s/c champs in his summer . I could count his world medals up but it… Read more »
This has to be the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard of. In what state of mind did you concoct this fairytale?
How was it not Chad’s summer? He finally broke 51 in the 100 fly and only lost the 200 by a hair. I’m pretty sure he put in 110% at Worlds.
It was not Chad’s summer.
Le Clos is from South Africa. And Summer in South Africa happens during December-February.
Why is it so hard to explain this simple fact to some people?
Didn’t they ever learn in school that the earth is round and rotates on its axis on a tilted angle and thus summer in the southern hemisphere does not occur at the same time as it does in the northern hemisphere?
I think phelps performance in nationals was very good, better then le clos in worlds, but le clos had a better summer.
7% of Americans believe Elvis is alive. With a reasonably large sample size, 92% is about as close to unanimous as it gets.