I just watched the NYT animation of the men’s 1500m freestyle and realized that, after turns, Bobby Fink largely gets out ahead of other swimmers because of how much speed he gets when he pushes off the wall, and then other swimmers start to catch up. It made me realize that if the competition were 1500m in a straight line, the results would be different.
Are there measures in place around how much time you actually have to “swim,” or is this just how swimming in a pool works?
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They are only allowed to be underwater for 15m I believe. I thought the same thing watching Marchand swim, he would reach one end before the others but would still be the last to surface going the other way
You might already realize this, but they’re swimming under the water after they do the flip turn, so their speed/distance before they surface isn’t just a function of the pushoff, but also of how good/powerful their dolphin kick is.
The reason that swimmers are required to surface after 15m isn’t because the pushoff is so impactful, it’s because swimming underwater with the dolphin kick is more efficient than swimming on top of the water, regardless of what stroke the event is focused on.
There is a rule in freestyle (and butterfly and backstroke) that you must break the water within 15m of the wall. A British athlete, Luke Greenbank, [was disqualified from this year’s backstroke competition](https://www.eurosport.com/swimming/olympic-games-paris-2024/2024/why-did-team-gb-swimmer-luke-greenbank-get-disqualified_sto20023531/story.shtml) for breaking this rule.
This rule was introduced to limit the amount of advantage that you can gain from the turn and from then propelling yourself underwater after it. This means you must ‘swim’ for at least 35 of 50 metres.
A very good ‘turner’ might be able to beat a slightly better pure ‘swimmer’ if they are able to gain enough advantage in the turn to make up for any losses in the swimming, but yes that is just part of the sport.
I thought the exact same thing. The announcers got so excited about a huge kick turn and I started thinking, well, then that’s the game – become the best at kick turns and you win swimming.
I like the idea of a straight line. Let’s see who can really swim fastest.
The force generated by the push-off is dissipated almost immediately. Look at how it works when you’re swimming. You push off the wall, and you go fast for about a second, and you slow down VERY quickly, because the water bleeds off that energy very effectively. When you see these swimmers gaining ground on the turns, it’s not because of the push-off. After they push off, they do a dolphin kick underwater, and some of these folks are better/stronger with that kick than others, so they can pick up some ground during that period.
Edit: Evidently being a swimmer and understanding basic physics are mutually exclusive.
If you compare short course (25m long pool) vs long course (50m) [world records ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_record_progression_1500_metres_freestyle)you can see that you’re quite correct the short course record is quicker.
I can’t believe nobody has pointed this out yet but the NYT animations aren’t remotely accurate in their depictions.
They make it look like 75% of each lap is the push-off, but they just do this to speed things up and make the graphic watchable.
A 1500m straight line pool would be completely impractical to build. So we have 50m pools and that’s how the competitions are. The turns and pullouts are definitely a huge part of completion though. In fact in younger competitive swimming in the USA you compete in a 25 yard pool from September to April and then switch to a 50m pool for May to August. And some kids post better relative times in the 25Y vs 50M pools because they’re great at turns vs the straight line swimming. Yes 200Y vs 200M is also a different total length of swimming but there are separate time standards for SCY (short course yards) vs LCM (long course meter) events.
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