Re: Swimming Stuff To See

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you might be interested

No we are not. Pls to go back to not having sex.

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Holy shit. And I thought herding cats was teh awesome. That kid wins.

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He touches the wall with his head.

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it's not even close.

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How do you judge whether he's following the requirements for the stroke? (I never understood that for any stroke- technically, fly is a variant of breast, right?)

I suppose he has less drag than his competitors.

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He's swimming in the paralympics, so I think requirements are quite a bit more relaxed.

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That was freestyle, right? I always thought you could swim any stroke during a "freestyle" event; it just happens that what we know as freestyle is usually the fastest so that's what everyone chooses.

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Here is the real test of the new long-thread trend. If a swimming thread can get to 100+ comments, a new Unfogged model has arrived.

Only 92 more.

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No, it's butterfly, and yes, you can swim whatever you want in freestyle. I've seen people swim fly in freestyle races.

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So how does the kid get out of the pool?

BTW, the 50m butterly??

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10: My guess is that he goes over to a ladder, and someone helps him out.

In the butterfly, you pretty much have to keep both legs kicking in unison, and technically, I guess, both arms must be in unison as well. You can turn your head to the side to breath.

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That picture is striking, but what causes the stripey background? (It looks like he's swimming in front of a waterfall.)

I love watching swimming, but I don't float. I don't know why i don't float, but it made swimming practically impossible.

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If a swimming thread can get to 100+ comments

You may not have noticed, but every thread is an open thread after about 20 comments now.

even though he has no arms

God, those Russians are sneaky bastards. They lose the Cold War arms race, become our "friends," then instantly start plotting to totally cream us in the armless race.

We need a new Reagan is what we need. He wouldn't stand for this shit.

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Apparently armsmasher struck again.

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So how does the kid get out of the pool?

He goes deep, then vaults out like a dolphin. It's amazing.

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Wow, that's awesome. Would someone swimming butterfly with no arms have any advantages over someone swimming it with arms? I always felt like my arms created a lot of drag when I swam fly but that could just be because I sucked at it.

I think the Paralympics would be pretty cool to watch. I saw Murderball last weekend – talk about some hard core guys.

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I think whatever drag advantages one would gain would be offset by having no arms to pull with.

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I know why I thought it might be freestyle. One of the other swimmers has only one arm.

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Becks, if you watch, there's a difference in the pace of kicking. It's not so much that the arms create drag, but it takes a lot of effort to get the arms out of the water and that slows down the kicking pace. so... yeah

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Ah, that's it, tweedle. I always felt like all of that vertical energy was inefficient compared to freestyle, backstroke, or breaststroke, where the energy was more focused on propelling you forward.

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If you watch the really great butterfly swimmers, though, they don't go up and down much at all--their hips stay in pretty much the same plane throughout, but they do undulate. Needless to say, it's really effin hard to do properly.

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One of the guys on my swim team in high school was a pretty damn good butterflier... he once got confused about what race he was in (thought it was the 200 IM when it was the 200 free) and so started out with butterfly and was winning for a few laps until he realized he was confused and stopped.

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I've heard that if you're really good at it, fly is actually faster than freestyle. Damn hard to swim well, though.

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That can't be true, because the fastest crawl times are faster than the fastest butterfly times. Not by much, obviously, but also, it's just about impossible to swim fly at race pace for 1500 meters, like they do with the crawl.

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Ah, well never mind then. Maybe whoever told me that meant for shorter distances, like 100m. Or my memory from 8 years ago is not quite so sharp as I had thought.

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12: Caustics.

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You can go faster swimming butterfly than freestyle, which mostly makes sense since it lets you bring your abs and lower back into play as well. But you can't do a flip turn, so in short course pool, crawl will be faster for anything over a 25, e.g. all competitive events. And you can't keep up maximal effort butterfly for very long - the 35 meters of actual swimming that has to happen in a 50-meter long course race is too far. Even so, most freestyle sprinters throw a couple of dolphin kicks in coming off of each wall these days, and they had to put a limit on how far you can dolphin kick underwater for backstroke and freestyle.

Oh, and if you are swimming in a medley relay or individual medley, the "anything goes" rules no longer apply, and you can't do anything that would qualify as backstroke, breaststroke, or butterfly.

But yes, it is a thing of beauty.

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Swimming is supergay.

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Your Ben Franklin link reminded me (but I thought I'd post here): do you think knowing how to swim is class-related?

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I ask because Benjamin DeMott tells a story at the beginning of The Imperial Middle about the old, gentlemanly requirement at Amherst that all students pass a swimming test at the beginning of their first year. A black scholarship student from Philadelphia had never been in the water before--but was too intimidated to say so--and drowned.

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He didn't drown because he couldn't swim.

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There's such a requirement at Chicago to this day.

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UNC says they have a requirement, but I never took the swim test and they still gave me a diploma. I can swim, I'm just lazy and poorly organized.

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And, I think, at Columbia. (They're willing to let grad students drown.)

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I think there is a class aspect to it and a racial one as well. I had a black friend in high school who came from a very well-to-do family who didn't know how to swim. Her parents had never learned to swim growing up because the public pools were all whites-only. Even though things were now different and their economic status meant they had plenty of access to pools, they always felt uncomfortable around them because of what they symbolized so they never took my friend or her sisters when they were growing up. It was specific to swimming, too – they did plenty of other things that might typically be considered class-related, like going to the opera and ballet, and felt perfectly comfortable in those environments.

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Did you take it, Ben? Did you have to lie down afterwards?

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I think there is ... a racial [aspect] as well.

Worth noting in this context that, by some reports, the African-American community has more discomfort with homosexuality than the broader country.

I had a black friend in high school

So much for the ogged/Becks coupling.

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Thanks, Becks. This is actually a sore point. My step-sister (swimming enthusiast, married to the former UCLA coach) thought the suggestion ridiculous, and we got into an argument about it at my cousin's wedding. That was fun.

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I took it, and I passed it, thankyouverymuch. I didn't have to lie down because I wasn't in the mood to exercise.

JM, what department are you in? I have entirely noncreepy reasons for asking this; you might know someone I know.

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My school (which is not one of the schools mentioned above) also has a swimming requirement. It hadn't occurred to me before that this could be a "gentlemanly" thing, although it does make some sense given the kinds of schools that have it.

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I could pass the basic swim test easily enough. They had dropped the requirement--except for people who wanted to participate in water sports. Even so, I decided to take a remedial class, because my stroked were so poor. I do a modified breast stroke to do the distance thing, and I can tread water okay, but my crawl sucks.

It was a gentlemanly school, but you could take free lessons --that is, no charge other than tuition.

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my stroked were so poor

I'd bet your stroking alleviated the pain of their poverty, at least for the moment.

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Claim: University implements mandatory swim tests at the behest of a wealthy benefactor whose own child had drowned.

Status: False.

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From my link:

Whatever the reason behind the swim test requirements, schools took them quite seriously. Dr. Mortimer J. Adler, who earned a PhD from Columbia University, wrote more than 30 books, taught at Columbia University, and was chairman of the board of editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica, was denied his bachelor's degree by Columbia in 1923 — despite his completing their four-year curriculum in three years and finishing at the top of his class — because he failed to pass the swimming test required for graduation. He was finally granted his degree sixty years later after informing Columbia that he had since learned how to swim and asking them to waive his disqualification.
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That's awesome, eb.

I'm rather nervous about saying, Ben. I think I'd rather not.

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Harvard dropped its swimming requirement, when they realized that it was unfair to the paraplegics they were admitting post ADA, or something like that.

COlgate apparently is a real stickler.

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