I'm sitting here utterly stunned.
I very much enjoy trolling the web for swim videos and deconstructing
the various styles. I've gotten pretty good at it - with a glance I
can usually tell what the person is doing. After all, there are only
so many ways humans swim freestyle through the water at the elite
level. One of my favorite videos is Peter Vanderkay swimming his leg
of the Athens 2004 800m relay. You can download it from Par's site:
http://www.kurtz.se/swim/index.html
It's the third one from the bottom. The interesting thing is that his
kick style (two beat crossover) is so different than the rest of the
men, who lope (most of them), or swim catch-up both sides (Ian Thorpe)
So I was at the following site:
http://www.swim.ee/videos/Athens2004/index_free.html
And I downloaded the top video "Men in Relay I". It has excerpts from
the entire 800m relay race in Athens. The third swimmer in the relay
is Vanderkay - except he looks completely different from Par's video!
He's using what we call on the group a "distance 4-beat" kick. It's
the exact same style Hackett and Prilukov and Keller use from time to
time. Par's video is from the last 50 of the race. In the video from
swim.ee, you can tell for a moment at the very end that Vanderkay
switched styles at the end of his race. I suppose that it is not too
uncommon, but it would mostly be swimmers getting on their kick more.
The interesting thing is that with his distance 4-beat, you can see
Vanderkay gliding for a moment on his right arm. There's obviously no
glide when he's two-beating. So I suppose in some sense it make sense,
go out gliding just a bit, but not at the end.
For those who have taken the time to notice, people kick at the
beginning of their arm stroke, OR at the end. If you can swim both
styles, you know it feels a lot different. TI proponents usually kick
at the beginning of their stroke because they have glided and need a
little pop from their foot, otherwise their legs are going to sink as
their hand descends and pushes down on the water. Kicking at the end
of arm pull is utterly traditional. It's surprising to me that
Vanderkay could make such a big change mid-race.
Eric