Olympic Swimming

Phelps with his special FINA award for all his achievements which was presented after the medley medal ceremony :)

'To Michael Phelps, the greatest Olympic athlete of all time. From FINA. August 4 2012. London, Great Britain.'
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http://www.london2012.com/news/articles/day-review-phelps-ends-career-golden-fashion.html
 
Nice.

From FINA too, which is nice. Means people can't argue about him not being the best, because he is by far the best Olympic Swimmer of all time.
 
Scon said:
Just lol at those saying they're "ashamed" at GB swimmers, only someone with next to no knowledge of the sport would say something like that. No one "expected" anyone bar Becky to medal so we've actually done better than expected.

The reason most haven't swam best times is because the team is mainly compromised of athletes who were in international competition during the jaked/lzr era. Those in doubt, tell me, how many pb's phelps has done this Olympics?

We've got a good chance of Gold in the 10k from KAP so it's not over yet.
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PBs are not so important if you are winning medals...

The performance output of the GB swimmers has been sub-par. Expectations were for improved performances and possibly medals based on them swimming PBs at home with a huge support behind them. Neither of those were really achieved (save the british mens breaststroke, who performed superbly).

If you swim a PB no one can really complain; the complaint is that the performances were sub par relative to what they normally produce. Addlington is 23 and she is swimming slower than Beijing; she is not past it, she has been dominant and in the final she was miles off the pace when if she had matched her PB she would have got gold.

Compounding this is that the reaction afterwards is pretty galling, it is full of "life will go on"; look at the reactions of the camps who have performed- rowing, swimming and athletics. It was a stark contrast between the swimmers as they got out of the pool.
 
Adlington swam faster in the 400m in 2012 than she did in 2008 and was beaten by an Olympic record.

At the British Championships this year she swam slightly faster but still wouldn't have been fast enough for silver.

In the 800m she improved on her qualification time (which was the fastest time in the heats) but again two other swimmers swam faster in the final. If she had replicated her most recent form at the British Championships she would have won silver by a tiny fraction but she still would have been a way off gold.

Her best time in the 400m was set at the World Championships in 2009 (and was 'only' good enough for bronze at the time).

Her best time in the 800m was set at the World Championships in 2008 and she hasn't come close to that since then.

I wouldn't necessarily be looking at PBs, but more at recent/average form and if you look at it like that, Adlington far from under performed, she just wasn't as fast as two other people in both events.

It's nothing to be disappointed about and I preferred the swimmers attitude to the rowers who see to reflect the public mood that anything but gold is an abject failure.
 
Panzerbjorn said:
Adlington swam faster in the 400m in 2012 than she did in 2008 and was beaten by an Olympic record.

At the British Championships this year she swam slightly faster but still wouldn't have been fast enough for silver.

In the 800m she improved on her qualification time (which was the fastest time in the heats) but again two other swimmers swam faster in the final. If she had replicated her most recent form at the British Championships she would have won silver by a tiny fraction but she still would have been a way off gold.

Her best time in the 400m was set at the World Championships in 2009 (and was 'only' good enough for bronze at the time).

Her best time in the 800m was set at the World Championships in 2008 and she hasn't come close to that since then.

I wouldn't necessarily be looking at PBs, but more at recent/average form and if you look at it like that, Adlington far from under performed, she just wasn't as fast as two other people in both events.

It's nothing to be disappointed about and I preferred the swimmers attitude to the rowers who see to reflect the public mood that anything but gold is an abject failure.
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It is Addlington's 800m which should come under scrutiny; that is her event. She "should" be peaking between now and the next 3 years, instead she is in a steady decline. In the 400m she has got slower relative to the pack, which she can argue is because it is not her event (but might also point to why she didnt succeed in the 800m).

I would not look at recent form- they have had 7 years to get to their best for the London Olympics, which they have not. Poor recent form is equally problematic- why are they all producing poor form just before the biggest event they will ever swim in? Something has gone wrong.

The medals or lack thereof are not the problem, it is the performance. Quite simply they are not producing their best and they don't seem to really care. I don't see how we can applaud that.

Instead of focusing on my disregard for the BRitish showing, i would prefer to talk about the swimming event as a whole, which, in this Olympics has been incredible. The mens breastroke pair were sensational, Ruta was so classy, the Chinese swimmers raised the bar and Phelps was just a phenomenon.

What Phelps did is something like winning the 200m sprint, the 110m hurdles, the 400m hurdles, the 400m and the 800m, the long jump and a triple jump. The fact that he is multi-disciplined and actually competed against the very best in that field, and won, is mind blowing.

Ennis is amazing but her multi discipline is against generalists- Phelps went out against the very best in the world at each discipline and won. Quite incredible.
 
What makes you think it's even possible for them all to post their personal bests during one week in the summer of 2012?

As I posted above, Adlington's best Championship times were posted in 2008 and 2009. She hasn't come close to either time in the last year or two so based on evidence, why should she suddenly start smashing those targets? Because it's the Olympics? You're not being realistic.

Like I said in another thread, the home crowd might give them a boost but it's not a magical elixir that will perform miracles.

You're right about Phelps, what he has achieved is incredible, but he's a bit of an anomaly. I don't think we should criticise our swimmers for not being able to match Phelps.

In fact, the way the USA team has dominated this meet it's amazing we got anything.

Perhapse the estimated medal haul was unrealistic, maybe it didn't take into account a clean sweep for the USA?

We had so many swimmers into finals which is an achievement in itself and we had a lot of swimmers just outside of the medals.

Maybe that will give the team an incentive to build on those results for Rio but it shouldn't be seen as a failure in London.
 
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I dont expect them to reverse a downward trend and produce pbs in one week of summer in 2012 following a decline. I do expect them not to be in a decline in the first place, instead I expect a crescendo (ideally a perfect crescendo, but realistically some sort of crescendo) over this 7 year period to help them produce their best form in these Olympics. When I say they I mean the swimming federations, the coaches and the athletes themselves.

It is unfair to isolate Addlington but in her case your example speaks volumes. She has been off the pace for 2 years; our medalling athletes in particular have all come from set backs or improved in that timescale to win. Addlington had age on her side as well...

RE Phelps; I don't expect our swimmers to be like him. I just wanted to comment on how insanely amazing his swims have been. I dont think the media coverage (bar Ian Thorpe) is doing a good job of really highlighting what he has managed. Steve Redgrave went as far as to say that he should have done it over a longer period of time to make it more impressive and also completely omitted to highlight the enormous biomechanic differences between the strokes Phelps swims.

I think my point essentially comes to the following; you cant argue with coming first or swimming a PB. On the other hand, I think that you should examine when a GB swimmer has failed to produce a PB or a medal or has dropped places from previous life time bests. That is perhaps the objective analysis.

On a purely personal level, I found it shocking that the swimmers were essentially unbothered by their own lack of performance when it mattered; it was a stark contrast to the groups that have really produced in these games.
 
I don't think they were 'unbothered' at all.

I think what most of the swimmers have said is that they did the best they could on the day.

While it might not have been enough for a medal, they are still immensely proud to have achieved what they have.

I'd rather that was the main message from these Olympics than the "I'm so sorry, I've let everyone down for only winning a silver' that we have heard from some of the other athletes.
 
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