I'd always assumed, based on personal experience, that the closer you kept on the toes of the lead
swimmer, the more you got sucked along in the draft. I was, therefore, astonished to come across
this two year old study from the Department of Sports at the University of Bath, which is the
British National Training Center for triathlon (among other notables, both Simon Lessing and also
Stephanie Cook (Olympic Gold medalist in modern pentathlon, Sydney, 2000) train/trained there. So
I'm presuming that they did the study properly.
Millet, G. et al. European Journal of Applied Physiology 82:465-471,2000.
They measured passive drag as a function of the distance behind the feet of the lead swimmer. There
was an inverse relationship between 14 cm and 85 cm (about 6 inches and 3 feet, respectively). In
other words, in the range between 14 and 85 cm, the closer the hand of the draftee to the feet of
the lead swimmer, the greater the passive drag. Thus, one may stay a comfortable 3 feet behind the
lead swimmer and not risk inducing road rage in the leader with inadvertent foot touches and still
enjoy optimum draft benefits. Maybe everyone else already knows this, but it was surprising to me.
Larry Weisenthal
Certitude is poison; curiosity is life