[Podcaster]

Your argument is foolish. There is only one proper way to run. All the others are handicapped methods of running. However in swimming there are multiple equally successful methods of swimming and it all depends on which one that the athlete is personally better at. For example whereas whatever stroke is used in a race by Joe Public against Phelps, Phelps will always win, Bolt couldn't beat ANYONE by running backwards.

[gingerrama]

Flop thread tbh

[pinkmeerkat]

Not saying I agree but I can see the point the OP is making, a BBC commentator noted the other day that one event - perhaps it was the butterfly I'm not sure was created just for there to be another olympic swimming category -think I heard right maybe I'm just making stuff up ha. But that is not to put it down as a stroke as others have said I'm sure plenty of hard work and training goes into it. And arguably you are more likely to be the most decorated olympian in say swimming as opposed to Canoe Salom or Judo just because you do get that few more possible chances. Not in any way does this play down the achievments of say Phelps - it is just a fact.

Interesting to note however that of US's 37 medals so far a staggering 23 come from swimming alone! I very much think of them as dominating the olympics but it seems to me that much of their dominance comes from swimming alone. I guess its a savy tatic to focus and drive money into a sport where you do have the potential to pick up scores of medals at somewhere like the olympics. China on the other hand has a more even spread over the different disciplines.

[Hopple]

(Original post by Podcaster)
Your argument is foolish. There is only one proper way to run. All the others are handicapped methods of running. However in swimming there are multiple equally successful methods of swimming and it all depends on which one that the athlete is personally better at. For example whereas whatever stroke is used in a race by Joe Public against Phelps, Phelps will always win, Bolt couldn't beat ANYONE by running backwards.

The only proper way to swim is front crawl, as that is what all the swimmers would choose if they were in a freestyle race (i.e. swim there as quickly as possible, however you like). The other strokes are handicapped, else why wouldn't a swimmer choose them if allowed?

[Podcaster]

(Original post by Hopple)
The only proper way to swim is front crawl, as that is what all the swimmers would choose if they were in a freestyle race (i.e. swim there as quickly as possible, however you like). The other strokes are handicapped, else why wouldn't a swimmer choose them if allowed?

They may have a slight handicap but the difference is not nearly as great as with say running which was the OP's original argument. If I did front crawl and Phelps did butterfly, Phelps would destroy me every time no question. However if I ran normally and Bolt ran backwards i'd definitely win.

[Clip]

I actually agree. Swimming does totally distort the medal table as a country can have a single swimming superstar (like Phelps or Thorpe) who can compete in a half dozen events, and win a clutch of medals. Take Thorpe out of the Australian team at Athens and Sydney, and Team Australia goes from amazing to rather average.

It's particularly unfair as most athletes can only possibly compete in one event. A hockey player has to play 5 or 6 matches, a judoka will only get 1 chance (not including open category - which might as well be a heavyweight category), same with boxers and so on. Look at the sailors - a dozen races over more than a week to get a medal. Ben Ainslie is probably the world's best sailor. Given the chance, I have no doubt that he could win medals in multiple dinghy classes - but the schedule means that he has no opportunity to do so.

The swimmers are only there to make sure there are medals around from day 1. I don't think it's particularly fair, and I also think it devalues the events.

The point of the running events are that it determines the fastest person across the distance (sometimes with obstacles). If someone wants to run backwards or side-to-side, they can. Swimming deliberately inserts these artificially slow categories, plus derivatives of the categories (the medleys) and the relays on top.

Personally, I would only have the freestyle - and use the time to have more different events, even if they are demos. I would have liked to have seen Twenty20 cricket, lacrosse and jousting in the Olympics ahead of all these bogus swimming events.

[roh]

(Original post by pinkmeerkat)
Not saying I agree but I can see the point the OP is making, a BBC commentator noted the other day that one event - perhaps it was the butterfly I'm not sure was created just for there to be another olympic swimming category -think I heard right maybe I'm just making stuff up ha. But that is not to put it down as a stroke as others have said I'm sure plenty of hard work and training goes into it. And arguably you are more likely to be the most decorated olympian in say swimming as opposed to Canoe Salom or Judo just because you do get that few more possible chances. Not in any way does this play down the achievments of say Phelps - it is just a fact.

Interesting to note however that of US's 37 medals so far a staggering 23 come from swimming alone! I very much think of them as dominating the olympics but it seems to me that much of their dominance comes from swimming alone. I guess its a savy tatic to focus and drive money into a sport where you do have the potential to pick up scores of medals at somewhere like the olympics. China on the other hand has a more even spread over the different disciplines.

Fly developed from breastroke, the basic wavy body motion is the dame but they are pretty different. Just look at your local pool, most people there can and do breastroke, you'll rarely spot people doing fly.

FINA then split them into different strokes, but it's the IOC's decision to let the new one (fly) in not FINA's.

It's not a conscious decision of US sport to do that. Their swimming excellence comes from Div I colleges choosing swimming to be one of the sports they plough some of the profits from College football and basketball into. If the colleges decided to start spending that money on table tennis and badminton instead you'd see those sports surge in America instead.

[These Streets]

Why not have forehand and backhand tennis/table tennis/badminton events?

[shepstar1]

Yes, I agree, swimming has too many events and I can't agree with anybody trying to defend the, quite frankly, ludicrous number of potential golds up for grabs.

Take Weightlifting as a comparison, had Phelps been an Olympic lifter, he'd only be able to win one medal maximum at any given Olympics. The lifters have to train for each of the two lifts (which, may I add, are MASSIVELY different in terms of muscle groups used, technicality etc.), yet they aren't seperated into different events like swimming. Some lifters are better at the Snatch than they are at the Clean & Jerk, like some swimmers are better at fly than they are at breaststroke, but it's tough luck - they're tested as all-rounders. There's massive disparity between some sports that needs to be addressed.

There are an arbitrary number of possible lengths, so where do we draw the line? We could create a 300m event and argue that it would require a different skillset to compete in that compared to the 200m/400m. I don't dislike swimming but I think it undermines other sports when one has 34 events (thus 102 medals up for grabs), more than three times the number of the average sport. It gives nations with strong swimming programmes an unfair advantage at collecting a disproportionately large number of medals compared with other sports.

[explicit4u]

Well if swimming has the most medals up for grabs wouldn't it make more sense for countries to dedicate more of their resources to swimming to improve their chances of getting a medal? Doesn't really seem unfair.

[silent ninja]

Ha

Well Michael Johnson famously said that winning on the track is more difficult than the pool. Realistically, it's not possible to take part in more than 3 events on the track. A 100m specialist, arguably the pinnacle of human power and speed, can rarely do anything more than the 200m and relay events.

I'm sorry but I'd take Usain Bolt's 3 medals at Beijing over Phelps' 8.

Swimming is a bit of joke tbf.

[Aeschylus]

(Original post by silent ninja)
Ha

Well Michael Johnson famously said that winning on the track is more difficult than the pool. Realistically, it's not possible to take part in more than 3 events on the track. A 100m specialist, arguably the pinnacle of human power and speed, can rarely do anything more than the 200m event.

I'm sorry but I'd take Usain Bolt's 3 medals at Beijing over Phelps' 8.

Swimming is a bit of joke tbf.

And it is also rare for a 100 swimmer to do anything beyond 200. The exceptions in the last few years have been Ian Thorpe (who is a 400 swimmer but won bronze in 100) and Michael Phelps, the two most famous swimmers of the last 20 years. Point?

[shepstar1]

(Original post by explicit4u)
Well if swimming has the most medals up for grabs wouldn't it make more sense for countries to dedicate more of their resources to swimming to improve their chances of getting a medal? Doesn't really seem unfair.

So countries should should focus their efforts on one sport and deprive the others of funding?

No sport is better than another; the IOC should have prevented swimming blowing out of all proportion to begin with.

[explicit4u]

(Original post by shepstar1)
So countries should should focus their efforts on one sport and deprive the others of funding?

No sport is better than another; the IOC should have prevented swimming blowing out of all proportion to begin with.

It's not ideal and it's unfair on other sports but if the IOC aren't going to do anything to reduce the number of medals available for swimming it makes sense for countries to do that if they want to compete with the United States and level the playing field.

[silent ninja]

(Original post by Aeschylus)
And it is also rare for a 100 swimmer to do anything beyond 200. The exceptions in the last few years have been Ian Thorpe (who is a 400 swimmer but won bronze in 100) and Michael Phelps, the two most famous swimmers of the last 20 years. Point?

How many events can a 10k runner do? Or a 800m runner? Again, not more than 3 and usually 2. Swimming is a joke. Phelps wouldn't be able to do 8+ events by any stretch of the imagination on track and field. He'd be a heptathlete = one medal.

[Deshi]

One of the commentators today was talking about how swimmers are starting to train in more than one discipline now due to Phelps's success, which is why quite a few of the youngsters (especially the American's) seem to be in pretty much every race. So the disparity in number of medals one by a swimmer compared to other sports will probably only increase tbh.

[Marsha2112]

Every other event has that many classifications - gymnastics has one for every piece of equipment, one for all 4, and then a team competition. So there's no medal distortion.

[Aeschylus]

(Original post by silent ninja)
How many events can a 10k runner do? Or a 800m runner? Again, not more than 3 and usually 2. Swimming is a joke. Phelps wouldn't be able to do 8+ events by any stretch of the imagination on track and field. He'd be a heptathlete = one medal.

I love that you 'know' the ratio of medals between swimming: athletics.

Anyway Phelps wouldn't be a heptathlete. At his best he set world records for fun. Heptathletes don't. If you really think he'd get one medal either you're trolling or you have no idea how swimming works. The only person I can think of analogous to him in athletics would be Carl Lewis, and Phelps had the longevity that swimming allows and the advantage of not having postitive steroid tests covered up by the US authorities

Also most swimmers do no more than 2 events and possibly a relay. The ones who do (lochte, phelps, franklin) are usually world-class. So that argument doesn't really hold water.

[Four Queue]

There are too many medals in swimming, imo.

[shepstar1]

(Original post by Marsha2112)
Every other event has that many classifications - gymnastics has one for every piece of equipment, one for all 4, and then a team competition. So there's no medal distortion.

There are 10 gold medals up for grabs in Gymnastics, 34 in Swimming.

Gold medals, in my opinion, are unequal yet they're classed like they're uniform in the medals table. For example, Lochte has won more medals in the swimming from this Olympics alone than Hossein Rezazadeh, arguably the best Olympic weightlifter of the past two decades, did in his entire career. Yet, on paper, it looks like Lochte is the better athlete.

If weightlifting had more than just one gold medal opportunity per person per Olympics, I'm sure Rezazadeh would have won more. Rezazadeh won the maximum number of golds possible whenever he competed, only two - nothing compared to the tons that Phelps has, yet they're probably equal in terms of stature in their respective sports.

I think it undermines the efforts of some athletes when they only have the opportunity to win one medal where other sports allow participants to compete for many. It's not that they don't have the ability to win more, it's that the format of the sport prevents them.