Walking the Talk

This writer believed, rather arrogantly it may be added, that he was relatively impervious to the effects of our omnipresent mass media. In the past year or so I’ve awakened to the realization my perceived immunity isn’t altogether true. Take for instance how easily I believed physical perfection was only an arm’s reach away – a natural product of work ethic, genes, and a good understanding of physical training. I’m blaming those ads which promise athletic, well muscled bodies in less time that it takes most people to eat lunch. It didn’t help hearing about those actors who spent a few weeks with a personal trainer to get into fantastic shape for a role either. Some pitches go as far as claiming their miracle exercise system can provide the lean, well defined muscular/toned bodies displayed on the screen for a daily cost of only ten short minutes. And while most viewers will discount these ads the idea at least some observable improvement can be expected is implanted into the subconscious. Like mine.

Recently an advertising blitz for an exercise program promising spectacular results in just ninety days has been on TV. I’ve looked it over closely and while I believe it is built upon solid principles and is well designed it presents nothing new or cutting edge in our understanding of physiology. Gratifyingly the program requires a full hour of vigorous training every day – a major commitment for anyone. In addition to the exercise the system also requires the buyer to participate in a highly regimented low carbohydrate diet. To give you an idea of what sort of results they claim I’ll provide the before and after pictures of one of their customers who bought the program.


This individual goes by the name of JoeB and he’s fairly representative of the examples provided on the program’s website. I admit his improvement over ninety days is not as spectacular as the two or three men late night television programming showcases, but I discount those results as virtually impossible without some sort of deception being played upon us. Even so, while JoeB is a more conservative example, I don't have to work very hard to detect a couple ways they manipulated his before and after images either.

First I’m going to point out weight loss makes by far the largest contribution in any of the before and after pictures justifying this or any other advertised bodybuilding system. It isn’t coincidental the most dramatic losses from diets are realized in the first three months – when the body has the most excess fat and before the body’s metabolism can adjust to the new diet. In low carbohydrate diets this is referred to as the Induction Phase, and when combined with exercise reports of weekly weight losses of 2-4 kgs (5-10 lbs.) are not uncommon. In JoeB’s case his before picture shows a body with a reported 14% body fat, a level indicating good physical conditioning with little, if any, excess weight¹. In the after picture JoeB’s body fat percentage has dropped to an amazing 8%. This is a tremendous accomplishment. Reducing fat after reaching our predetermined ideal body fat percentage becomes increasingly more difficult – a fact well known to every dieter trying to just get close to normal weight much less well below it. The body shuts down metabolism in an effort to keep some reserves. This is where exercise is crucial for maintaining the metabolism necessary to continue burning fat. Certainly exercise is involved in JoeB’s case, but he's transitioned from a fit body's fat level to a professional athlete’s equivalent in a mere three months. I find this difficult to believe without some sort of catalyst. Starvation would have cannibalized muscle tissue as well as fat.

On the other hand I’m considerably more accepting in regards to his increased musculature. A good hour with weights just prior to the picture being taken would suffice to highlight the now revealed, bulkier muscles of shoulders, arms, and torso. Muscle gain is something a man of his age can reasonably expect to see after ninety days of intensive effort. Having conceded this, however, the unflattering direct lighting used in his before picture has been changed to more intense side lighting for better definition in the after picture. At least he's not changed his posture and switched to the partial abdominal twist bodybuilders use to minimize their waist.

Now let’s look at my own efforts at physical rehabilitation. When this blog started I began taking pictures of myself every month expecting slight but observable changes to show up each time. After six months of humiliation and no discernible progress I cut them back to every three months and then, still seeing no progress, all the way to just once a year. The gullible fool I was I had truly expected to see marked progress in my physical form in a matter of weeks.


So here are pictures showing my progress after an entire year of exercise; a sustained effort which saw my weekly workouts increase from five hours of swimming to close to nine. On top of which I participated in a couple of hour and a half yoga sessions a week for my flexibility.

After so many times I shouldn’t be surprised when I view these pictures but damn it – I see a different body in the mirror. Part of it is the foreshortening which comes from viewing myself in the mirror; partly the loss of depth perception in a two dimensional picture which adds the proverbial “ten pounds”; and yes, the lighting in the picture is atrocious. But I cringe every time I put up these things. I’m now down to 80 kilos (176 lbs) and I have put on muscle in spite of what my after picture may suggest. Yet my measurements suggest my body fat percentage hasn’t budged over the year. That’s difficult to believe. More likely is when I measured myself last year I was rather generous and when measuring for this post perhaps a tad harsh. The other significant improvement I hope you can see is how much straighter I’m standing now. That’s because of my lessons in Alexander Technique and will be covered in another post. Overall, however, my improvements aren’t anywhere close to those exhibited by JoeB and his ilk on TV. Ah well, what counts is not where I am now but where I’m going.

This year my goal is to build up my core and work off that ever so persistent bulge around my middle. But beyond doing about twenty minutes of core work a day I’m going to rely once again on swimming alone to do the job. No weights for me. I figure the extra meters and stroke work my program calls for over the coming year should more than suffice. I’ll start back with weights next year. My target for fat loss the coming year is 3-4 kilos and a similar amount of muscle gain. I'm hoping the two combined will make a significant difference in next year’s picture. The long term goal is to lose 6-8 kilos of fat to bring me down close to a 10% fat content while increasing my muscle mass by 10-12 kilos to finish at around 85 kilos or better (close to 190 lbs). I figure it will take me three more years of work to realize my goal. Unfortunately no quick fix for me, but that's what happens when you start getting old.


¹ For most men the first sign of carrying excess fat comes from the appearance of rolls of flesh at their waist, something showing up in males with around 15% body fat. The American Council for Fitness calculates a fit man should have a body fat percentage between 14-17% and an athlete between 6-13%. A woman should look for 21-24% and 16-20% respectively². You can calculate your own body fat percentage quickly and reasonably accurately with a tape measure using the military method by going here and downloading the U.S. Naval Health Research Center’s Technical Document No. 99-2B in .pdf format.

² Just so you don’t get too depressed about your own fat percentage the acceptable level of body fat changes when we reach middle age. You can check the adjusted ranges here.

Betrayed: How USA Swimming has Sold Us Out for Money

Dateline September 27, 2008 – Washington Post

USA Swimming banned the revolutionary, high-tech swimsuits worn by nearly every swimming Olympian in Beijing for athletes 12 years old and younger during its annual convention in Atlanta on Saturday.
About 65 to 70 percent of USA Swimming's house of delegates, which consists of hundreds of voting members representing swim clubs at all levels across the nation, voted to ban suits that extend past the neck, shoulders or knees, officials said.

I’m sure readers will have almost certainly heard of Zen Buddhism. Perhaps, however, there are some who aren’t very clear about what Zen teaching is exactly about. Well aside from Zen masters who really does? So please forgive me if I go the extra step of trying to explain this very arcane philosophy in simple terms; not because I think you, my dear reader, are ignorant; but only to ensure some sort of understanding as it will be necessary to follow the rest of this piece. Zen Buddhism asserts that all sentient beings have a Buddha-nature of inherent wisdom and virtue, a nature which is created from the mind itself. The aim of Zen practice is to discover this Buddha-nature within ourselves, the search for which can provide the perspectives and insights on existence that can, ultimately, lead to enlightenment. Clear? No? Well I don’t blame you. Then how about this – Zen Buddhism is all about discovering what it is to be a complete human being by stripping away everything else. You’d be surprised at how little is left.

Now swimming is a very Zen sport. It is a very complex, intricate weave of exactly choreographed motion set in a dangerous environment, where pain and exhaustion are inevitable companions in the pursuit of unattainable perfection. In order to do our very best in a race we, like the Zen masters, must set aside thinking about specific techniques and discomfort and instead allow our form to flow unconsciously from the mind. Of course, since we want to set our personal bests before the age of sixty, our young swimmers tend to opt out of spending their time in reflective study and devote themselves to practical training in the pool instead. Even so, though the methods are different, our goals are similar – a very narrow focus on achievement and complete devotion to its attainment. The strength of a swimmer’s mind will often determine the victor. That and of course hyper flexible joints, size seventeen feet, and thirteen litre lungs.

USA Swimming's Age Group Committee at first recommended a ban on the suits for swimmers up to age 18, but it met resistance from members who feared U.S. athletes would be at a disadvantage if they didn't have access to the suits. The sport's rules and regulations committee, meantime, urged members to let athletes have access to the best equipment available.

I’m not sure how many international age group swim meets the typical American competes in but I’m going to guess it wouldn't be all that many. Wouldn't it be more effective to provide an exemption from the new suit ban for those specific events rather than open up the entire country to the expense? Just speculating here.

In Canada, as in many other countries, there are special rules for youth swimming. Up in the Great White North competitive age group swimming starts at the age of eleven. For these younger swimmers special rules to guard against excessive competitive pressure and early burn out before reaching their true potential. Rules and guidelines for our 10&Unders limit the number of hours a meet can have; advises giving out ribbons for placing, aggregate scores, and personal bests rather than the traditional first, second, and third; restrict the total number of hours they can train, and calls for training with the national federation’s proscribed Long Term Athlete Development philosophy in mind, an approach which stresses training orientated towards individual medley and distance freestyle. In the United States serious training is only recommended once the child becomes a teenager. So when USA swimming talks about placing suit restrictions on 12&Unders they are for limiting the new rules to the one segment where competition isn’t its primary focus. Even so, Swimming World magazine’s October 1st edition of The Morning Swim Show makes the point these rules don’t really stop anyone at all from wearing the new technology. It was discouraging to hear Tony Young, Chairman of USA Swimming’s Age Group Development Program virtually concede this point. Incredibly he even refers to the fact the restrictions put in place were modeled on suit legislation passed in Southern California in 2000. Clearly these so-called limits have nothing to do with today’s concerns. In my mind this is a non-ruling: practically speaking USA Swimming has ensured there are no barriers to using the new high tech suits in competition for anyone who desires to wear one.

USA Swimming's Club Development Director Pat Hogan said delegates were concerned that the pricey suits, which can cost as much as $500, would drive promising youngsters who couldn't afford them out of the sport and possibly deter proper stroke development.
"We're in a position where we want to grow participation in our sport," Hogan said. "We don't need to have false barriers to participation. The cost of those high-tech swim suits, for a young swimmer, doesn't really make sense."

But spending a couple of thousand dollars a year on swim suits makes sense for everyone else? To compete in a local regional meet? An adherent to the Zen philosophy would ask one simple question. Why is it necessary for everyone to swim 2% faster? Is it right to question why Hogan feels that thirteen or sixteen year olds are different from ten or twelve year olds when it comes to shouldering the costs of the new suits? I fail to see his logic. Let us have no misunderstanding about this: the number of parents who will stick with the sport after their child has torn both their primary and backup racing suits at a meet is virtually nil. The number of parents who will gracefully accept seeing their child denied a place on a select team because they can’t afford the suits? None that I know. This decision is a crushing blow to the long term future of swimming in the States.

Now I’m going to concede I’m one of those who believe the suits are bad for the sport regardless of the level of competition. There are enough of us that FINA has been forced to engage an independent firm to verify the new technology does not violate existing FINA prohibitions. At least it's a step in the right direction rather than naively relying on the manufacturers’ in-house testing for their rulings.

I’ve argued in an earlier post the manufacturers’ own descriptions dictate the suits must fall into the category of devices, something specifically banned by FINA rules. If I’m correct then there’s more than just a simple rule violation involved here. The real problem is that a device is a tool, and tools work by expanding human ability in highly specific ways. The science on which they rely upon to improve performance will affect swimmers differently depending on the various mix of skills and abilities every individual brings with them. For example as a poor kicker fins help me considerably more than they'll help someone good at kicking. If the new technology helps stabilize the core it logically provides more benefit to those whose core integrity is deficient. There's decent anecdotal evidence to back this up, like the fact Michael Phelps didn’t feel the need to wear the full body suit at Beijing, or that Gary Hall Jr. is on record saying the suits didn’t provide him with any noticeable increase in speed. If the current studies don’t conclude the suits should be banned I’m going to consider performing a scientifically based statistical analysis of the suits and see if there's evidence the new tech suits discriminate against the very best in our sport.

A final statement. I lied when I wrote earlier I couldn’t understand Pat Hogan’s not being concerned about the cost for anyone older than twelve. I unfortunately understand only too well. The host of The Morning Swim Show Peter Busch brought it right out in the open when he said, “... it would be unfair not to allow these new technologies to enter the market place ...” There can be little argument this present farce is all about the large amounts of money Speedo's pumping into USA Swimming. But really why hasn’t a complete ban on the new technology been considered? It’s done all the time in sports. If NASCAR for example didn’t ban certain technologies we’d be watching Formula One America. Why, if we are to accept the technological advances incorporated into these suits, shouldn’t we also accept monofins? We’d certainly swim faster with those. I must ask the question. Just why do we have an obligation to swimsuit manufacturers to accept their products?

Shouldn’t swimming be all about being the best we can be?

Breaststroke, Backstroke, Butterfly and Free – Oh My!

I’ve always known technique is one of the preeminent factors in determining how fast someone can swim. Yet despite this as time passes and I learn more its importance continues to climb. That’s an opinion many of the world’s top coaches share. Way back when I first swam as a youngster technical skills weren’t really on the radar for me. I simply assumed there were those who couldn’t swim very well, others that could, a handful like me who could swim really fast, and then the rare few who could swim really, really fast. I thought it was all in the genes so to speak. Now in hindsight I can wonder if my early success was more due to the fact I was coached my first year by Archie McKinnon, a George Haines-like figure in Canadian swimming, than my own innate talent. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

No surprise then on my return I was happy to take advantage of the team’s coaching by attending every clinic offered by my club. Yet always underlying my efforts was the idea that, aside from my fly of course, I only needed to tinker with my strokes. In this I was sorely mistaken. Just how mistaken was driven home one practice where we did a set of freestyle stroke counts in a long course pool. I finished the first pair with counts of 39 and a 53 for fists only, which turned out to be significantly better than the numbers the rest were announcing as their own. I was figuratively patting myself on the back when, with our set resuming, our coach leaned over to Doug standing next to me and in a normal voice asked him what his own counts were. “Ah, 28 or so swim ... and 40 fist” he responded. A simple nod was Brad’s only response, his casual acknowledgment providing ample proof he’d fully expected those numbers. It came as a profound shock someone could be so much more efficient at swimming than I. My deficiencies meant I would never compete along side our elite masters with what I had; and made it blindingly clear wholesale changes to my strokes were necessary – mere tinkering was not enough. So a couple of weeks later I bit the bullet, ripped my strokes apart, and started from scratch with several suggestions for each stroke from Brad.

A year later has seen some progress. My breaststroke kick has shown a profound improvement to the point where it’s now a ‘good’ kick technically speaking. Much of the improvement has to be credited to Alexander Technique which has made huge strides in bringing back my hip flexibility and thus allowing me the proper kicking motion. My pull, on the other hand, requires considerable work to bring it to a point where my drag coefficient becomes acceptable. Overall body position is also a problem, as is getting both pull and kick together into a cohesive and fluid undulation that moves me forward rather than up and down.

If my breast has shown solid improvement my back has been the opposite. I’ve better technique in the various individual facets of the stroke such as catch, pull, arm placement, finish, kick, etc. but, like breaststroke, I’ve been unable to tie them all together into one synergistic motion. Paradoxically I believe the fault lies here in the fact my natural backstroke comes the closest to the ideal out of all my strokes, resulting in conflicts and/or confusion for me when I unconsciously relapse into habit during a race. Of course lots of work remains; especially in delivering a solid, rearward directed pull and inducing more shoulder roll for my catch. But integrating all my separate parts is my primary goal for now. Also my lack of strength is very evident in my pull, often causing me to deliberately fall away from proper form just to give my muscles some rest. Hopefully with time and more work this will pass.

Now my fly. Jeepers, what can I say? Originally I planned on spending five weeks to master the basics of the stroke. Two years later I can only say I’m confident this will be the year it all comes together and I’ll finally have a legitimate 100 fly. I can boast a real dolphin kick now, even if it pales in comparison to the kick of an actual fly specialist, and my integration of pull and kick is reasonably fair. Emphasis this season is on my head position, pulling rearward rather than down immediately after my catch, and staying on a flatter plane in the water. But my lack of strength really shows up here.

Finally my free. My coach has told me he believes this stroke will eventually become my most competitive when I can work out my problems. That might be some time away. Besides it's hard to believe when I can’t even come close to breaking a minute swimming short course meters. On the other hand watching a video of me trying to swim arms swung out flat and elbows low with a pronounced lope I can see there’s considerable room for improvement. It has meant a major effort in redesigning my pull but I can sense progress slowly coming my way. I’ve even come around to understand what Brad means when he refers to incorporating a “shoulder shrug” in my stroke. Plus, in addition to the above, I also need to induce more body roll and better coordination into my stroke, and finish with my hands by my hips. Right now, however, everything feels very artificial and forced. Much, much work remains.

A lot to push through, but I feel I’m in the right place for my long term plans. Because of the efforts I’ve been putting into revamping my strokes I wasn’t going to be setting impressive new personal bests whatever I did. With speed work not being conducive to mastering new techniques, and the need to practice my new strokes as much as possible, I think my 30,000 meter weekly target is very compatible with my immediate needs. More pounding away in the pool will be good for building my strength up too. So onward I paddle. Time will tell if I’m on the right path.

The "Program"

Two years back in swimming and now a year and a half has gone by with no improvement. What’s up? Well first of all I’m not panicking, though I have to admit thinking when I started my present program I’d be seeing a slight downward drift in my times. Okay, truthfully I’ve seen my hundred times improve by a second or so with the notable exception of backstroke, but such small margins of improvement on times achieved after only six months of swimming might as well be nothing. So why the lack of progress?

Alas I have only myself to blame. Once I decided to swim Masters competitively I became “serious” as one of my teammates put it. For me you see there is a huge difference between exercising for fitness and training for competition. Fitness is something you can approach on a casual basis because ... how should I put it ... the definition of what constitutes physical health is both relative and flexible. But when you compete you are trying to be the very best you can be, to test your limits and go beyond them. Certainly if I was a former Olympian or college swimmer this blog wouldn’t exist because I’d already know those limits. But I’m not one of those select individuals. So for me the question remains – just how good of a swimmer am I? My current training program is my attempt to answer this simple question.

A conundrum is presented by this decision. To be the best I can be would seem to require that I train as hard as those who aspire to Olympic glory. Bill Sweetenham figures this means something between eighteen to twenty four hours of swimming a week. Okay, that’s not happening. But clearly I’m going to have to devote a significant part of my life to swimming if I want an answer. And then I have to decide on how long will I need to train to reach my goal. Well physiologically it takes at least five years to recover whatever aerobic capacity an individual has remaining, and six or seven years to build sport specific muscle from scratch. So I’m looking at six years or so before training can bring me to my maximum potential. Multiply the two together and you’ll come up with some mind-numbing numbers. If I’m going to invest that much time then I had better do it wisely.

Swimming has two major components to success: physical conditioning and technique. Both, I’ve unfortunately discovered, are very problematical for me. Let’s take physical conditioning. It turns out one cannot start swimming the same workouts as elite swimmers after a few months of training. At least this is the case for me, but then I’m old and not Dara Torres. On the other hand it typically takes age group swimmers years to work up to the punishing two hour practices and the 60,000 meters or more national caliber swimmers regularly put in every week. Thankfully this is double the 30,000 meters/week normally committed to by our top masters swimmers, but even at this relatively low kilometrage the hours are significant and present a significant hurdle to overcome. For instance a well regarded U.S. university coach keeps mileage within 5% after he found increasing yardage by 17% over a single season had a distinctly negative impact on performance. I started competitive swimming from a base of 3,000 meters per week. The first year I increased my weekly workouts to an average of around 12,500 meters. That year I felt like I had been beaten on a daily basis and mere walking brought forth a chorus of complaints from my stressed out muscles. The second year my training volume increased by two-thirds to just over 20,000 meters. And while the cries of disbelief coming from my body became more muted it was likely because they were too exhausted to complain. This year I’m planning to hit 30,000 if things go well – a bump of another 50% and invariably another year to be written off competition-wise. And through all this at the back of my mind is the nagging thought I should consider specializing in the 200 events to take advantage of the endurance I showed as a youth (I know I must have a little remaining somewhere). If I go ahead with this idea I’ll need to consider increasing my kilometrage to around 40,000 meters to exploit my perceived advantage (remember we’re talking masters here). That’s a lot of meters in a very short time. But do I have a choice if I want to end this experiment in six years? I don’t think so. And then there’s the big question mark regarding my swimming technique. Thankfully I’m going to leave that for my next post. It’s a complete subject on its own.

Third Time’s the Charm

The most pleasant surprise I’ve had returning to ‘competitive’ swimming has been discovering how much the overall quality of coaching has improved the three plus decades I’ve been away. Swimming with a masters team that's affiliated with a major swim club allows access to underwater cameras and stroke analysis reserved only for the elite back when I was a child. So now instead of merely swimming up and down the pool in mind-numbing monotony I can consciously work on correcting any one of my strokes’ many known flaws. There are enough to keep me busy for a long, long time.

When I started back in the pool a couple of years ago I limited myself to trying only a couple of changes at a time. I felt attempting any more would overwhelm my efforts and I’d end up with little real progress or, even worse, create new problems which would need correction. After several months and a couple of clinics, however, it became clear trying to compartmentalize my stroke deficiencies wasn’t working. There was simply too much else going wrong elsewhere for me to isolate and target specific problems.

Realizing this I took the plunge late August last year and adopted a radically new approach to my training. I would try to tackle all my flaws in one cohesive whole. The idea was to bring my overall technique up to a point where I could start addressing individual problems without being overly distracted by the other niggling deficiencies. In effect I threw out the idea that I could swim competitively with my existing strokes and decided to start fresh, really fresh – dropping myself to the level of someone new to age group competition where the general rule of thumb is that any time spent on specific problems is a waste of time. For me training became oriented around the same basic stroke instruction and overall conditioning given to every eight year old. My practices reverted to drills, kicking, and distance work. To become more at ease in the water I had to swim more, but to handle the heavier workload and still maintain proper technique I required much better conditioning. It was, is, a slow and tiring process which I estimate will take at least three more years to build up to my maximum potential. A year of this, however, has been enough I think to start correcting some of my major stroke deficiencies.

Consequently by the end of the short course season I was looking forward to a review of my various strokes which eventually led to a clinic with Brad one sunny Saturday this past June. I am pleased to report it was a very productive hour and a quarter for me. Boiled down to its essence for the next several months I’m going to tackle two primary themes – my catch (early vertical forearm) and maintaining proper rotation around my body’s core. A couple of following posts will look at each stroke analyzing my individual flaws and how I intend to improve. So once again, for the third time in two short years, I’m making serious changes to my strokes. Some are more refinement than wholesale change, such as the changes required for my backstroke. Others are at the point where I’m able to retain some major components but still need to introduce completely new concepts, such as revamping my breaststroke and fly pulls. And then there is freestyle, where I’m just starting over and completely rebuilding my stroke from scratch. I feel like a school boy on his first day back at school looking forward to another year of learning and some good grades. I’m hoping by the time I go back for my next stroke review around December I’ll get mostly A’s for progress made.

Memories of Gresham, Oregon

Last month I attended my first USMS National Championships. My first ‘real’ swimming meet for a long, long time if you consider, like I do, that legitimate competitions must require their entrants to meet minimum qualifying times. Even so the atmosphere was decidedly casual and easy going on the pool deck – clearly there’s no going back to the days of real competition. I’m going to miss that. But it was an enjoyable experience with lots of interesting observations:

– I was very surprised getting off my flight to enter a very large, bright, and modern terminal on my arrival in Portland (Gresham is referred to occasionally as East Portland). Despite being named Portland International Airport I had in my mind’s eye the same sort of small ‘international’ facility as my birth city Victoria, B.C. influenced no doubt because I thought the two cities were roughly comparable in size. Not correct. Metropolitan Victoria has less than half a million souls while metropolitan Portland’s population boasts over two million, ranking it in the top 25 most populous population centers in the United States.

– My second surprise was to be greeted by a modern LRT (light rail transit) system. I immediately canceled my plans to cab it over to my hotel in favor of riding what Portlanders call the MAX. No worse after the experience of disembarking once at the wrong station and a rather long wait for a connecting bus I eventually found my hotel for the grand cost of $4.25 and no carbon emissions. Thereafter, aside from twice using cabs early on because of my unfamiliarity with Portland’s public transit, the rest of the weekend I found my way around the city and back to the airport using buses, MAX, and the pool shuttle.

– The Mt. Hood Community College Aquatic Center had a novel upgrade a couple of years ago when they added a meter of depth by raising a concrete platform some two meters wide around its edges. The extra depth makes for an even faster pool. I was, however, more impressed by the touch pads they employed. Most pools I swim in have somewhat slippery to very slippery walls or, like our club’s Canada Games Pool, walls like rough sandpaper which over time tend to shred the skin off your feet. These pads were perfect – not particularly rough to the touch but providing enough grip to eliminate any chance of slipping.

– In a masters meet of this caliber the announcers play an important role because of the presence of so many varied stories of interest. For one they tell the spectators when there’s a good chance for a world record to be broken. And there were a lot at this year’s championships. At other times they identify swimmers of note such as former distinguished Olympians. One such individual I was pleased to observe was Yoshi Oyakawa, a former world record holder and Olympic gold medalist for the United States at the 1952 Helsinki Games. He set two world records in the 75-79 age group 100 and 50 backstroke events with times of 1:22.78 and 36.54. If only I could be that good when I reach his age. The announcer also let out an historical tidbit by noting for the audience that Yoshi Oyakawa was considered to be the last of the great straight arm backstrokers. That put some historical context into seeing him swim. It also drove home the point that Helsinki was over half a century ago!

– If the Speedo LZR Racer was the singular suit of choice at Beijing then the equally clear favorite at these Long Course Championships was the Blueseventy Nero Comp. It was everywhere. I talked during a social one night to a top ranked 50+ swimmer who purchased the suit just before this competition and he raved about the effect it had on his swimming. But I will say he was a little skeptical about the claims of neutral buoyancy for the suit.

– Those males who didn’t wear a fully body suit tended to be shaved. I was one of the few who appeared on deck still ‘fuzzy’ but this was intentional. Given my recent swimming performances I wanted to make very sure any casual observer was well aware I wasn’t taking myself very seriously.

– The organization of these Championships was absolutely first rate. The only complaint I can make is the BBQ I signed up for ended up putting on my plate a warmed, pre-grilled chicken breast and a charred hot dog with not a drop of BBQ sauce in sight. I was hoping for something resembling ribs, perhaps some version of pork or maybe a little Texas chili. No such luck. Perhaps I was overly optimistic shelling out only $15 for the dinner but no BBQ sauce? Charge $30/plate if necessary but at least barbecue the food.

– I guess I’m about average at estimating peoples’ ages but I do have a really hard time guessing how old masters swimmers in serious training are. For example when I first met Doug, one of our club's best swimmers, I had him pegged at around five years younger than me ... only to find out he was a year older. It was just as difficult at this swim meet, which displayed a relative abundance of bodies approaching those of our elite swimmers. Well close enough. It wasn’t hard to observe the strong correlation between the quality of the individual swimmer and his or her physical appearance. I’m going to have to really work on my core muscles over the next year and get some definition. If I can’t swim fast maybe I can fake it.

– Friday and Saturday were blistering hot 105ºF (over 40ºC) and it was an outdoor pool. I wilted even keeping under the tents which were arrayed around the pool deck. Eventually I went indoors to the warm up pool which I used as a ‘cool down’, and that’s despite the fact the 25 yard pool was allowed to be warmer than typically seen in competitions.

– That wasn’t the case for the main pool which had the chillers going full blast to keep it at a perfect temperature for racing. Many were comparing the overall pool conditions very favorably to last year’s USMS Long Course Championships held at The Woodlands, Texas where apparently the outdoor temperatures were just as hot. It seems the difference at The Woodlands was a broken chiller allowed rather warmer water than desirable. Although I’d have to say considering the number of world records broken in Texas the conditions didn’t seem to slow them down much.

– I signed up for the meet as a member of the Hyack Swim Club, completely forgetting my provincial swimming association tries to collect together all local swimmers going to these out-of-province meets under its banner to allow fielding relay teams. I’ll remember next time. On the other hand I was greeted three times by people who had lived in New Westminster or had some association with the Hyacks. One individual from New Westminster I met was Jill Black, who is now swimming with Oregon Masters. She had been a Hyack until she won a scholarship to a Californian university where she ended up meeting her future husband. For her swimming really did change her life. I'm kicking myself for not finding out her maiden name.

– I had a hard time hanging on to my sunglasses during the meet. I blame the fact that I’ve just started having to use reading glasses and the constant juggling between reading glasses and sunglasses threw me. Not to mention that as a long time resident of the Pacific Northwest I’m not used to wearing sunglasses anyways. On Sunday I left my sunglasses on a table while I was reading the paper waiting for the shuttle bus and had regretfully written them off as lost. Later on, getting out of the pool after my 50 back, I was approached by a man who asked if I swam for the Hyacks. When I answered in the affirmative he handed me my missing sunglasses. To him and the citizens of Portland my sincere thanks once again.

– Standing in the shower at meet’s end the fellow next to me, apparently knowing my age group, complained about swimming at last year’s long course championships at The Woodlands as a 45 – 49 year old where the competition was brutal (and it was – almost all the world’s top ranked swimmers in my age group showed up for that meet). This year in Gresham virtually no one showed up and he was moaning the fact he had placed sixth in the 50 free as a 50 – 54 year old with a time that would have placed him fourth if he could have swum with us younger guys. I guess that’s the problem about masters competitions for us Type-A competitive folk: there’s no single competition you can go to where you’ll be guaranteed to find all the top swimmers gathered together. So you get a national championship which really isn’t a national championship and a gold medal’s true worth varies wildly depending on the level of competition which happens to show up. The real competition is on paper in FINA’s Top 10 lists.

Next year the long course championships will be held at Indianapolis, Indiana at the famous Indiana University Natatorium. That should be another interesting experience.

The Greatest Olympian of Them All

At a pizza and beer social with my masters swim team a teammate leaned over and asked, “Do you think Phelps is for real?” Before I could put down the beer and reply my coach answered for me. The abridged version can be paraphrased as ‘We know he’s for real because he’s always been Michael Phelps’. One of the select few destined for greatness in their sport. At this year’s Olympics I watched the performance of another athlete marked for stardom but around which swirls persistent rumours of performance enhancing drugs. Usain Bolt. It does not help quell doubters the facts that Jamaica didn’t have a national anti-doping agency going into Beijing, that several Jamaican sprinters have been caught cheating over the years, or the improbability such a small country could dominate both men’s and women’s sprints. Yet there are other countries who lord over a single sport all out of proportion to their size. New Zealand for example, another island nation, reigns supreme over the world of rugby; the relatively small country of Canada is the perennial favorite in ice hockey; and Brazil sees its football players acknowledged as representing the very best in the world. Jamaica’s national sport is sprinting. Are we surprised Tiger Woods is an American? Wayne Gretzky is a Canadian? Then should we be surprised it was Jamaica, where sprinting is the national sport, which produced Usain Bolt?

Having never seen Bolt run but having read so much about this young prodigy I was very interested to watch him compete. Seeing him race was thrilling. There's little doubt in my mind Bolt is the real deal. His physical size and build, his youth, and that beautiful stride – if a man can do what was done that night without drugs then Usain Bolt surely is that man.

However the topic of this post is not Bolt but Phelps, because his now epic achievement seems to demand consideration as the “greatest of them all”. Not everyone agrees with this assessment. A runner's blog dismissed Phelps’ Beijing triumph by denigrating swimming as an Olympic sport, “... we’d be giving out medals for the 125, 150 and 175”. Clearly a man who hasn’t even swum 100 meters, much less tried doing it butterfly. Yet for me Phelps’ foremost accomplishment is not the number of gold medals, or the number of world records he set, but the fact he managed to do it all so well in nine days.

Contrary to the aforementioned blogger’s belief that an excess of swimming events exists the facts show the number of Olympic medals offered by the two sports is roughly comparable. Track has eleven individual, one combined (pentathlon for the women and the decathlon for the men) and two relay events for each sex; whereas swimming has eleven individual, two combined (the 200 and 400 IM) and three relay events for each. Three of Phelps’ gold medals and world records were in the relays. Likewise relays figure prominently in the great track Olympians’ haul of gold medals. Both Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis, for example, won golds in the 4x100 relay while Paavo Nurmi won two of his five 1924 gold medals in the 3,000m and 8,000m cross country team events. In order for proper comparison of individual talents, however, we should put these aside. That leaves Phelps winning five compared to the three individual gold medals collected by each of our track legends.

In athletics the ultimate in success is considered to be the “double”, or Olympic gold medals in two individual track events. It’s considered almost impossible to compete for more given the strikingly different abilities required to run sprints, middle distance, and the distance events. With distances roughly doubling each time the range required to win three is simply too much. Then too, as the distances go up, the problem of exhaustion rears its head. Both Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis doubled in the 100 and 200 in their respective Olympics. In Beijing we were treated to a rare double double: Usain Bolt in the 100 and 200 and Ethiopia’s twenty three year old Tirunesh Debaba in the women’s 5,000 and 10,000. Owens and Lewis supplemented their doubles with a win in the long jump. Paavo Nurmi did it the hard way by performing a triple, possibly the only Olympic track triple in history, by winning the 1,500, 5,000 and 5,000 cross country (nowadays this is the 3,000 steeplechase). And don’t forget his team event golds were in distances of 3,000 and 8,000 meters! No wonder Nurmi is an Olympic icon.

For a runner to win five golds to match Phelps he or she would have to win, say, the 400, the 400 hurdles, the 800, and the 1,500. That’s four, which leaves the 200 or the 3,000 steeplechase as the obvious remaining options for the fifth. Only the great Michael Johnson has ever doubled the 200 and 400 (normally the two events mark the dividing line between sprints and middle distance respectively) and going in the opposite direction and adding the steeplechase makes a seemingly impossible situation worse. Winning five golds, even by adding the quick 200, still means racing at a world-class pace throughout nearly twenty three minutes of an incredible mish mash of prelims, semis, and finals. Anyone who competes in track will say that's surely impossible. To attempt five by adding the steeplechase would make the situation even worse. No wonder our blogger friend believed any sport which allows five individual gold medals must be inferior to his beloved athletics.

He fails, however, to comprehend the critical input technique contributes towards success in swimming; an attribute which is also crucial to success in gymnastics - the only other remaining Olympic sport blessed with an abundance of multiple gold medalists. A swimmer or gymnast who exhibits an advantage in technique over the world will be able to transfer this advantage to all events, even non-specialties. Runners must do it on physical ability alone. Gymnasts need to depend on strength, flexibility, and technique. Not swimming – swimmers can succeed going either way, but should an individual combine both raw physical strength and stamina with a more efficient technique than the rest then wonderful things will happen. No wonder swimming dominates the multiple gold medal winners in Olympic history. Phelps not only has incredible natural talent but has a clear advantage over the world with his turns. It’s this, combined with his phenomenal ability to recover, which brought him his scintillating achievement. Totaling up all his events Phelps raced nearly thirty three minutes to win his eight gold medals, an incredible display of endurance. Only Nurmi himself has matched that amazing combination of recovery and stamina.¹ Is Phelps the greatest Olympian ever? Personally I’m philosophically opposed to such measurements. I don’t think you can compare athletic performances from different sports and to date no one has been able to arrive at a defendable formula to do so. Besides I believe I’ve demonstrated swimming has a stronger tendency than any other sport to reward dominance with more individual chances at gold medals. But regardless Michael Phelps’ achievement at this year’s Beijing Olympic is epic in its nature. Something indeed for the history books.

¹Nurmi’s ability to recover was legendary too. In order to compete in the 5,000 meter final at the 1924 Paris Olympics he had to line up for the race only twenty six minutes after taking gold in the 1,500.

Update: I have subsequently read that there have been others who've achieved the 200-400 Olympic double. One of these is Frenchwoman Marie-Jose Perec who doubled in the same Atlanta Games as Johnson. I have to plead mea culpa for omitting her feat. I unfortunately share the strong tendency of males everywhere to be blithely unaware of female athletic competitions and their achievements. Even more regrettably I haven't yet been able to identify a possible third who accomplished this trick. Perhaps the deed occurred in the distant past. I'll make the correction when I finally do learn his or her name.

Confessions of a Doubting Thomas

Right now at Beijing's Watercube history's being made. Michael Phelps has swum five of his eight events and won five gold medals setting five world records in the process. He has two more hurdles to overcome given a gold and new world record in the 4x100 medley relay is a virtual lock. The first will be the 200 IM in the form of Ryan Lochte and Laszlo Cseh, and the second in the 100 fly where he has to deal with Ian Crocker. Yes, it may be true Ian Thorpe didn’t believe Phelps had a chance at winning eight golds, but he had plenty of company. Count me among the doubters and I’m a huge fan of Phelps. It just didn’t seem feasible. Michael’s schedule has him swimming seventeen races and that, even with his amazing and well documented ability to recover, is a huge obstacle to overcome. Monday at practice we were divided into relay teams and assigned many of the individual events to allocate between ourselves – all in fact excepting the two distance and the 400 IM and 200 fly events. With a very broad range of swimming ability on our relay I ended up doing the 400 free, the 100 fly, and the 200 back. Five minutes after putting in a less than stellar 400 I was again swimming 100 fly. Not my best event for sure (OK, other than the aforementioned 400 IM and 200 fly it’s my worst) and still tired I ran out of gas midway, limping home more than twenty seconds over my best time. How Phelps can race Olympic finals less than an hour apart and set world records in both is completely beyond me. There’s also all the pressure to perform he has to deal with, pressures most people sitting on their couch aren’t able to comprehend. It has laid low some of the best swimmers in the world. People such as Lochte, Hoff, and Manaudou have all felt its bite these Games. Yet Phelps has cruised through so smoothly I wonder if the rumors he went through U.S. Olympic Trials only partially tapered are true. I’ve often said I’m in considerably more awe of the great track stars than swimming’s best but Michael Phelps is rapidly climbing my sports pantheon. And I hear the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has been receiving complaints they’re showing too much Michael Phelps on their Olympic programing. Are the viewers mad?

Field Trip

This weekend the US Masters Swimming’s 2008 Long Course Championship takes place and I’m going to participate. If you ask me how I feel about it I’d have to say I’m ... ambivalent. Last year I was all signed up and ready to go to this very same meet at The Woodlands in Texas when work obligations intervened and I had to cancel at the last minute (not very well as the following Monday evening, when I was back home sitting at my desk, I received a phone call from my airport shuttle bus wondering where I was). The Woodlands was supposed to be the meet where I’d get out and talk to some of the best masters swimmers in the world on how they train and why, all the while gaining some experience for this year’s Championships. That didn’t happen. Now this year rolls around and I find my situation unchanged. Admittedly stagnation was all but decided when I chose the high mileage route and thus concentrated on stroke technique and aerobic conditioning rather than speed in my training to date. Still it’s a little disconcerting to start out slow and after a year and over 700,000 meters in the pool achieve only very modest improvements in times.

This year’s Championships are being held at the Mt. Hood Aquatic Center in Portland, Oregon (technically Gresham, Oregon but judging from the map I might be able to throw my kitbag into Portland from the pool). The pool is outdoor of course, with all the baggage which goes with that. Still, it does look like a marvelous facility and it should be an enjoyable weekend complete with a couple of socials. I entered into the same six events I did last year but only under duress. The schedule has me swimming the 200 back Friday and the 100 back and 50 free on Sunday; but unfortunately also had me trying to swim the 200 IM, the 100 free, and the 50 backstroke in back-to-back events on Saturday. I looked at substituting a 100 fly or 100 breaststroke for one of my non-backstroke events but neither helped much so I grudgingly plunked myself down wondering how I would plan my Saturday races. It turned out my idea to switch events was moot anyways after checking the necessary qualifying times and realizing I didn’t qualify in either one. Though I just miss breaststroke I’m way off the fly qualifying time of 1:12.86 – impressive there are so many 45-49 year olds who can swim a 100 lcm fly that well. But perhaps Americans are natural butterflyers. Ian at my club was marveling at the fact this year’s U.S. Olympic Trials needed fifteen heats for the men’s 200 fly despite a stupefying fast 2:03.99 qualifying time. Fifteen heats! At our own (Canadian) Olympic Trials we managed to fill four by having a qualifying time a smidge above 2:07 flat. Not that I’m knocking my country’s butterflyers, certainly not with my pathetic excuse of a stroke! Anyways it was with some relief I discovered this past week my sixth event, the 200 IM, had been scratched at the discretion of the meet organizers due to the large number of participants. Anytime you can tell teammates that you really wanted to race the 200 IM but those damned meet organizers wouldn’t allow it is a pretty good day in my books. I’d try for an even better impact with the 400 IM but it would be just my luck they'd have happily waved me in and I’d be stuck either actually attempting the event or scratching and knowing I was coward (sane, but a coward nonetheless).

All in all I’m looking forward to the experience before flying off for another week on the road. I’ve always liked Oregon yet have rarely spent more than a weekend in the state and never in Portland itself. On the other hand at The Woodlands, TX a half dozen of the top masters backstrokers in my age group showed up and this year only one appears on the meet’s psyche sheets. That’s regrettable because it would have been fun to watch a bunch of men my age all clustered close to a minute flat in the 100 back. I can only hope for a couple of good races and at least a little improvement.

No Sense Flogging a Dead Horse

Time to make a tactical withdrawal. For the past month I’ve been struggling to finish off some of my unfinished doping articles before dropping the entire sordid venue and resuming my blog’s original purpose – to be an informal training log for my own, ineffectual swimming. Several times I sat down and spent an hour or so trying to make head way – all to no avail. It was like doing breathing drills for an entire practice. So I’m killing my final Dara Torres piece as well as the article on WADA. In order to salvage something from my efforts, however, I'm going to keep my ethics post around for the day when I can stomach polishing and refining the arguments presented by proponents for legalized doping.

My dedication to pursue the subject was also hobbled by some recent revelations. The Jessica Hardy incident, where a swimmer tested positive at her Olympic Trials for a banned substance, hit me hard. Not that she cheated – I mostly concur with the speculation she ingested the clenbuterol as the result of a tainted supplement – but the fact by miscalculating the timing of their doping test results her federation missed the deadline for naming replacements and deserving individuals were denied their chance to participate in this year's Olympics. Executive Director Chuck Wielgus should have done the proper thing and fallen on his sword. Resignation is the only appropriate response for such a massive failure of office. But, alas, accepting responsibility is not something we see anymore.

Then there is the horrible Nick Fahey, current President of WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency). Late last year former French sports minister Jean-Francois Lamour was slotted to replace what must be considered the disappointing oversight of Canadian Dick Pound. The well respected Lamour was reported to be planning implementation of a much more intensive out-of-competition program with less random, more targeted testing when he took over the reins; that is until the United States weighed in and had Fahey appointed instead. No doubt USADA wanted more control over the anti-drug agency after the numerous doping scandals it had recently undergone. Fahey, a former Australian politician, more than adequately demonstrated his incompetence for the post when in his first public statement as head of WADA he made the completely fraudulent claim the Agency was responsible for Marion Jones’ confession. Another unfathomable, counter-intuitive appointment by the Bush/Cheney Administration. This past month he once again put his foot in his mouth when he falsely announced Ricardo Ricco had been caught using a third generation EPO due to the addition of a molecular tag. His statement was later retracted by a WADA spokesman who was reduced to saying that “his words may have been misinterpreted”. No, he just didn’t know what he was talking about. Worse, in a telling recent interview, Fahey came out during this year's Tour de France and stated, “Unless cycling changed how it dealt with the problem, "they are in real trouble" and "they have recognized this … but we haven't reached the point where we can give them the stamp of approval” Apparently he feels aggressively going after the cheats and prosecuting them is the wrong way to go. Thankfully the French Cycling Federation (FFC) has decided to tackle the problem head on, warts and all, in a desperate effort to clean up their sport. I applaud their efforts and indeed this year’s Tour was the closest and most competitive in years. In a similar fashion the International Association of Athletics Federation has just recently taken the extraordinary action of ordering additional tests because of suspicious circumstances and caught virtually the entire Russian women’s middle distance team substituting urine samples. Yes, another painful black eye for the sport. But a necessary and unavoidable step I think towards deterring doping in sport. Nick Fahey, one of those despicable career politicians, would disagree. To him all these positive test results are a public relations disaster better to have been swept under the rug, never to see the light of day. The idea of actually going out and looking for cheats must strike him as organizational suicide.

So that’s it for my foray into performance enhancing doping. But wait ... one last parting shot. After posting several times about the impossibility of Dara Torres not being guilty of doping I have to admit I was depressed at how often the same, disproved arguments continued to be raised in her defense, along with the idea we must assume she isn’t doping without a positive test result in hand. Most of her supporters of course are ignorant about swimming and of elite athletes in general and could be easily discounted – but from the key group I most wanted to hear from, the elite swimmers and coaches themselves, only silence was heard. I could and did explain their reluctance to speak out in terms of their desire to protect the sport, the fear of losing sponsors, and of basic good sportsmanship; but my assertions that I was saying the very same things they were surely saying amongst themselves did place me in a rather uncomfortable position. Facts and logic only go so far.

It was with some relief I could finally see some cracks in that wall of silence when I wrote “Asking All the Wrong Questions”. As time goes on more carefully worded expressions of disavowal have appeared in the community. In a Southern Cal Aquatics Swim Club blog post Janet Evans is quoted saying, “Although I do not consider her the favorite to win this race, we can never count out Torres and her incredible will to win, especially because this race could represent the first and only individual gold medal of her Olympic career.” No one could find fault with that last statement could they? Certainly not.

On Gary Hall Jr.’s Race Club Message Board the man himself (who while very outspoken on the subject of doping in sports and swimming in particular was, until now, very careful never to come out and say anything directly about Dara Torres himself) quotes Mark Spitz as saying, “"I am a big advocate of the way the IOC does its drug testing," he said. "They have a list. If you take something on that list, you get caught. If you don't take anything on that list, you won't get caught. There's just no other way to look at it." So Torres? "She's obviously drug free of what they test for," Spitz said. Ouch! Read Hall's post further and you'll discover after retiring from swimming he's become a lot more forthright about his thoughts on Torres.

At least I go away from this smiling.

Gene Doping Has Arrived in China!

In a breaking story by German television broadcaster ARD in conjunction with several journalists it has been revealed gene doping is now available for a fee in China. The documentary, aired Monday evening, outlines how despite China's official anti-doping position the problem of performance enhancing drugs is widespread and apparently tolerated at least at the local level in the country. It also detailed the state's continued recognition of national level coaches with histories of doping infractions, the lack of any testing in high risk sports, and the active participation of the country's medical community in the abuses. In one example cited by Swimnews Online, whose Craig Lord participated in the investigation, a young squad of swimmers from Hunan province have been making great advances by training up to 120 kilometers a week. That's twice the distance covered by most Olympians and some are reported to be as young as twelve. The story also notes we're only three weeks from opening the Beijing Olympics but China has not yet announced its national swim team.

Asking All the Wrong Questions

John Naber ranks among history’s great backstrokers. With his background in media broadcasting no real surprise he was chosen to be the U.S. Olympic Trials master of ceremonies. It seems some of his banter, however, rubbed people the wrong way. Apparently a lot of them. Since I wasn’t there I can’t really comment on this, though my natural inclination is to give people the benefit of doubt and assume they’re not trying to be nasty. For example one quote which was repeatedly used by the blogging community was the question he asked Natalie Coughlin, “What does it feel like to lose to a forty one year old?” It took a little digging to find out her answer but it evidently was a terse “That’s not a nice question” and an end to the interview. If true that’s a very interesting response. Leaving out the obvious reference to Dara Torres the question was a pretty basic variation of the standard “What does it feel like to lose” probe every champion faces when finally beaten. For example Brendan Hansen had a full blown press conference to answer this very thing after failing to qualify in his favorite event the 200 breast. A consummate professional Hansen handled it all with aplomb. He admitted he had an inexplicably bad race and then gave out the equally standard reply – praising the winner (or in his unfortunate case, the winners) as tremendous athletes and champions in their own right and declaring there was no shame in losing to such great competitors.

Coughlin has certainly shown over the years she’s at least Hansen’s equal in public relations. And yes, even Coughlin loses on rare occasion. So why was she offended? She must have faced this question before. Please allow me to speculate. I think Naber created the 'nastiness' by throwing in “... by a forty one year old” and in doing so moved the question’s emphasis from Natalie losing to Dara Torres winning. In a single, unmistakable gesture, Naber clearly indicated where he thought was the real story of the race was – Torres absolutely phenomenal, unprecedented swim – and was prodding Natalie to talk about Dara. I believe he wanted her to say what a giant she was in the sport and how inspiring to everyone around her, including the great Natalie Coughlin herself. That is, Naber wanted her to give the standard response. It was the only answer she could give standing there in front of thousands, knowing they would be teammates in Beijing, and even sharing some sponsors with her. But it didn’t happen did it? Why not? Because I think Natalie Coughlin, faced with an instantaneous decision, couldn’t bring herself to say those words. And that’s where the “that’s not a nice question” came from. She seems to be sure Naber, another great individual gold medalist, would know she’d be reluctant to praise Torres. But Naber went ahead and asked anyways. She was right – it wasn’t nice. But it was ever so revealing.

Fair and Balanced

In my post “It’s Getting Surreal Out There” I wrote about the recent improvement in swimming world records and speculated as to the reasons why the sudden lurch forward. The queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach it may be because illegal doping has become commonplace, however, was hard to ignore. To deny this I followed up with “Believe”, a post about why this worse possible scenario isn’t necessarily the right or even most logical conclusion and provided several perfectly valid reasons for the outstanding times we’ve seen recently. Yet I find myself drawn back in uneasy speculation about the marked improvements being shown by so many: improvements which in normal times would draw immediate suspicion or outright denouncement. So in this post I’m going to look at the dark side of swimming; of the apocalyptic possibility which in polite circles cannot be spoken of. If you tremble with anticipation for the Beijing Games to begin so you can watch some spectacular swimming and cheer on your favourite stars you’ll want to seriously consider not reading any further. For, as one popular movie’s protagonist was told, “this is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes”.

Where is swimming really trending with regards to performance enhancing drugs (PEDs)? Just how deep is the rabbit-hole? When I came out last year and publicly accused Dara Torres of using PEDs it wasn’t personal maliciousness on my part. It was my concern for the possible impact her story may well have on our sport. Every professional coach and elite swimmer in the world knows a forty year old woman cannot come back after several years of retirement, train for less than a year, and then dramatically improve enough on what was originally only a moderately successful career to become one of the leading sprinters in the world. Even her personal coach is on record¹ stating it’s not supposed to be possible. Dara Torres has quite literally thumbed her nose at WADA daring them to figure out how it’s being done. And no doubt the swimming world has watched in sick fascination to see if WADA would discover her secret. It was then and remains my belief Dara Torres standing up on the podium at Beijing would signal not only successful cheating is possible but unstoppable; and the money and fame following from her triumph would usher in a new age of unprecedented rampant cheating. Eventually such a debased culture must destroy swimming as a viable professional sport. Dara Torres, I personally believe, is our generation’s Typhoid Mary, a harbinger and bringer of disaster. It now seems possible, perhaps even likely, that after watching for over a year the rest of the swimming world has decided not to wait to see Torres to mount the Olympic podium. They’ve decided to follow her lead in time for this Olympics.

Let’s start with the question of whether or not PEDs work. Well do they? Oh, absolutely they do. In their post “Drugs Work – But by How Much? A Look at Doping and Performance Improvements” South Africans Jonathan Dugas and Ross Tucker analyze a paper authored by Franke and Berendonk which was published in the journal Clinical Chemistry in 1997. The paper compiles data from scientific studies produced from East Germany’s extensive state doping program. The paper’s abstract discloses:

Top-secret doctoral theses, scientific reports, progress reports of grants, proceedings from symposia of experts, and reports of physicians and scientists who served as unofficial collaborators for the Ministry for State Security (“Stasi”) reveal that from 1966 on, hundreds of physicians and scientists, including top-ranking professors, performed doping research and administered prescription drugs as well as unapproved experimental drug preparations. Several thousand athletes were treated with androgens every year, including minors of each sex. Special emphasis was placed on administering androgens to women and adolescent girls because this practice proved to be particularly effective for sports performance.

Of course, as this was in the very early stages of employing drugs for performance enhancement, the studies concentrate on the more obvious hormones, primarily testosterone. Ross and Jonathan expand on this to include analysis on the effectiveness of EPO vis-à-vis cycling. Their conclusion? It seems doping works “very well”, estimating benefits of at least 15% in the power sports and slightly less in endurance sports such as cycling. When we saw again and again finalists in the last Olympics all finishing within fractions of a second of each other the effectiveness of doping can not be debated.

What about health risks? It didn't take long to learn that though the hazards of steroid use and other performance enhancing drugs are well known and documented it’s also true they stem almost entirely from overdoses rather than any inherent pharmacological problem. It is safe to assume today’s elite athlete will be under strict medical supervision, if only to ensure his or her doping goes undetected, and consequently any potential for overdosing on these drugs is going to be either minimal or virtually non-existent. Of course injecting anything isn’t the preferred method of taking ‘health’ supplements but practically speaking the risk is minor compared to the serious and potentially crippling injuries from training and competition most athletes must contend with. Not that I’d recommend their use. If you want to vicariously experience what taking performance enhancing drugs actually entails you could do a lot worse than read Writer’s Workshop novelist Craig Davidson’s description of his short foray into this world here, all done in a misguided effort to give verisimilitude to his first novel.

What are the chances of being caught? Well the correct answer here is, of course, it depends. But for this article’s purposes we’re going to limit ourselves to looking at the sophisticated cheats, the ones who stand to make a great deal of money and therefore can afford to have the best medical advice and doping procedural experts close at hand to guide them through the potential traps and pitfalls of WADA and its national federations.

The first line of defense is to simply avoid being tested at the wrong time. Doping can be, and often is, done in cycles. Normally the athlete will go on his or her drug regime during heavy training, and then ‘coast’ for a period of time off. Not coincidentally this seems to invariably align with competitions. To forestall this WADA implements “out-of-competition” testing where athletes can be tested without notice at any time. Critiques of the current testing procedures, however, have pointed out the relatively small number of these unannounced tests when compared to the population under scrutiny. Then there's the problem posed by the three strikes rule for missed tests. Presently a doping athlete can avoid giving a positive test by providing just enough information to WADA about their whereabouts to be in compliance but not enough for them to actually be found should they, by bad luck, be one of the few selected for random testing (ex. ensuring their mobile phone message box is always full). Certainly this results in a missed test but with another two in hand the exception isn’t a big deal. The cyclist Michael Rasmussen, for example, just recently won damages for his ‘wrongful’ firing from the cycling team Rabobank during last year’s Tour de France, something Rabobank carried out despite his wearing the treasured maillot jaune at the time. He was fired because he was discovered to have lied about his whereabouts prior to the race. The implications were obvious to all and personally speaking I think Rabobank was correct to fire him. Yet according to the rules currently in play Rasmussen had merely made a mistake. There's little doubt this technicality was crucial to his successful lawsuit.

But why go through all this bother and subterfuge if the desired performance enhancing drugs can be made undetectable to any the known test. The BALCO scandal opened the world’s eyes to this possibility. With only the help of an organic chemist Victor Conte created tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) aka “The Clear”. “The Clear” would probably still be in circulation today if it wasn’t for a coaching rivalry and a sample sent to WADA. In another sobering Science of Sport article “Drugs in Sport – Could It Be Bigger Than We Thought?”, which is in turn heavily reliant on the investigative writings of ESPN’s Shaun Assael, the two trudge through the depressing success story of steroid manufacturing today. The hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, the dozens upon dozens of manufacturers, the huge profits, the surging demand, they’re all covered in excruciating detail – including the plentiful availability of undetectable drugs.

Having set up a supplement company, the journalist orders products that are sold to him on the premise that they work and are undetectable. Sure enough, he has them shipped to his address from a company based in the USA, and has them tested for the 11 known classes of steroids. The result - negative.

Experts believe there could be up to a hundred custom steroids, all requiring their own special test to be detectable, floating around for sale. If you think all these drugs are headed for high school students, bodybuilders, and recreational athletes (after all what wouldn’t you do to be able to hit the ball out of the park in the company’s recreational softball league?) then I suggest you consider why the demand for undetectable steroids has soared. The very existence of devices for cheating tests, such as the Butt Wedge (no longer marketed but apparently very popular during the 2004 Athens Games) and the surprisingly still available Whizzinator, will undoubtedly come to those who deny drugs are a serious problem as quite a shock. I was also interested to discover it’s possible to purchase synthetic urine, though I’m not sure why anyone with a modicum of intelligence would be comforted by the double-your-money back guarantee offer.

But whatever I've written here the decision to use or not use drugs ultimately comes down to each athlete’s sense of ethics and economic need. And that I feel will be determined in large part by whether athletes believe the competitors lining up beside them aren’t doping. Sadly when I look at what’s going on right now I’d have to believe the chances for a drug-free Olympics aren’t very good. Not good at all.

Post Script:

Recently we’ve been hearing about American athletes who have been volunteering to contribute samples at frequent intervals both in and out of training and during competition. They belong to a USADA pilot program modeled on the “Passport” programs first implemented in Europe. I’m not quite as confident in the project’s infallibility to catch cheats as the mass media presents it to be so I’ll reserve any judgment until I can gather enough information together to give a reasonably informed opinion (i.e. contact experts). I will say at this time, however, that WADA withholding the program's protocols from the scientific community suggests there are ways to beat the test. USADA’s problem is reverse engineering applies as much to science as it does to manufacturing, and with enough effort the applicable protocols can be established and appropriate counter-measures taken. Nor can flat out espionage be ruled out. Secrets are notorious for being short lived. Sometimes they have no life at all.

I also want to take the time to thank Jonathan Dugas and Ross Tucker for their excellent selection of articles on doping practices. Their blog The Science of Sport was a tremendous source of scientifically grounded information. If I find their doping articles individually crushing in import, taken together they are absolutely devastating for those who believe drugs have no place in sports. Another most informative overview of the testing process and what athletes do to beat them can be found on the Meso-Rx blog in an post entitled "The History of Drug Testing in Sports & How Athletes Beat the Drug Tests". Read all the links, you won't understand the depth of the problem until you do.

¹"Her comeback is just mind-boggling," said Michael Lohberg, Torres's coach in Coral Springs, Fla. "I don't think people can actually comprehend what's happening here. It hasn't happened before and it probably won't happen again. A 40-year-old who hasn't been swimming for years should never go this fast." – At 40, Torres is Back in the Fast Lane, Washington Post, Aug.2, 2007 (my italics)

A Reader Weighs In

My major piece on Dara Torres is without question my three part post dated almost a year ago titled "I Came to Praise Dara Torres, But Intend to Leave Seeing Her Drowned", an article which continues to attract comments that, if an honest attempt to discuss the issues is raised, I dutifully try to answer.

Note to readers using this link the article is split into three parts and the other two can be accessed from the first by scrolling to the very bottom and double clicking on the blue highlighted "Newer Post" located after the comments.

The most recent visitor to the post has been Robert. His rejection of my entire premise covers ground already well traveled and, in an attempt to forestall repeating the same arguments over and over again, I thought I'd republish both his observations and my response for the more recent readers of this blog. Consider reading the comments section after the last part where I defend my blogging. Several readers clearly put considerable effort in arguing both for and against and overall I think they have reasonably delineated the strengths and weaknesses of flatly asserting Dara Torres is cheating with performance enhancing drugs.

Robert writes: Scott, because of recent high-profile doping cases, one can understand you having your stated point of view. We've been disappointed by athletes too numerous to name in just the last couple years. I have to admit myself that this remarkable comeback by Dara Torres evoked a skeptical reaction in my own head.

However, I don't want to address whether or not she's doping. She could be taking undetectable drugs, or have taken drugs while "retired". She could be completely clean. She's never tested positive in her life for anything.

I want to address, as some previous posters already have, your lack of knowledge about the sport of swimming. You know a little about swimming. Just enough to be dangerous. Dangerous enough that I wouldn't want you anywhere near a pool deck coaching children or masters swimmers.

You also make some bold statements about the body's [in]abilities that you provide no references for. You intermixed your personal beliefs in a manner that make them appear to be fact. However, when you see through the smoke and mirrors, your argument rests on baseless assumptions.

I personally know many masters swimmers who re-entered the water after considerable layoff and returned to their previous levels of competition, and even faster. And most of them do it on 3 workouts a week. Why should it be that Dara Torres could not re-enter the pool and return to her previous level (world class) and then surpass it? We're all human and we all have limitations. But masters swimmers have shown time and again that they can return to and surpass their personal previous level of competition.

I think that you have a good topic to work with, but I'd like to see you remove your personal agenda and anecdotal arguments from the piece. I want to see you back up your claims about physiology, and show modern research behind your swimming-specific statements.

P.S. I believe that definition of insanity is attributed to Benjamin Franklin?

I respond: Well of course I disagree with you, first and most of all with your statement about my “lack of knowledge about the sport of swimming”. Actually I have a long history of competing at a reasonably high level in several sports as an adult and consequently possess what I consider a reasonable grounding in physiology as it applies to performance, even if swimming wasn’t included in the mix. But when I wrote this article I consulted many scientific sources to establish the veracity of my statements, as well as discussed my opinions with friends who happen to be in the medical profession. It’s as objective as I can make it and now, after over a year of accumulating quite a file of books, articles, scientific papers on athletic performance, current practices in the training of elite swimmers, and the physical effects of aging and detraining, I’m gaining considerable confidence in the truth of my position. If anyone is flinging unsubstantiated personal beliefs around surely it is you.

To compound your problem you then raise a very common rebuttal to my position – that many, many masters swimmers have seen improvements in their times, so why can’t Torres? This is a completely fallacious argument and invariably comes from individuals who have never competed at a high level in anything, certainly far below the level Dara Torres has competed her entire life. She’s now more than 4% faster than the fastest she ever went during the span of her first three Olympics (not counting her recent improvement with the LZR Racer) and that percentage, in Olympian terms, is a massive improvement. Olympians improve by tenths and hundredths of a percent, not several. Read my rebuttal in the above comments. Just what is she doing now so differently that she didn’t do in ten years of performing and being coached at an elite level? You are also totally disregarding the negative effect of aging on athletic performance. I think that’s a pretty big deal. How can Torres beat the finest sprinters in America but then joke about how her failing eyesight makes reading her time off the board difficult? How can she swim as fast as she does, but then be forced to drop an individual event, a sprint event mind you, because of concerns over her ability to recover adequately enough to compete in her remaining individual and relay events? It’s illogical – on one hand she’s showing the performance and athleticism of a twenty year old, but on the other she’s exhibiting plenty of evidence of a deteriorating, middle-aged body. Bob, you’re looking at Dara Torres with Pollyanna eyes and you clearly had made up your mind before you even read my post. If you want to argue my position is premised upon baseless assumptions the very least you must do is identify those assumptions and state why they are so. If you do so I’ll be more than glad to defend my position and critique yours.

P.S. Though a great admirer of Benjamin Franklin the definition of insanity quote wasn’t his. According to a recent Wikiquotes, however, apparently it wasn’t Einstein’s either, these being the two most misattributed with the now famous line. It seems to be the creation of Rita Mae Brown, an American playwright.

Update: Robert has responded to my comment with a detailed critique and I thought it would be unfair to leave readers with the possible misunderstanding he meekly accepted my response without rebuff. Of course I answer back ... Part 3 with the bulk of reader comments (and where Robert has posted) can be accessed directly here

Dara Torres Sets Two New American Records & Another Personal Best

Update:

With the U.S. Olympic Trials over I can report Dara Torres, competing now with the help of a LZR Racer, set two new American records this past weekend - both in the 50 free by dropping her time first to 24.38 and then lowering that to 24.25. To round everything off she set a new PB of 53.78 in the 100 free. That's an improvement of just a touch under seven percent (6.98%) over the best 50 free time she could manage at the 1992 Olympic Trials. Her 100 free time is unspeakably fast. Really, when I try to talk about it I start choking. In a post written several months ago I flippantly wrote that at her present rate of improvement she would be setting world records by the time she started collecting social security. I thought I was being sarcastic, certainly not prescient. Apparently I was wrong.

Trojan Says

Gary Hall Jr. hit the news yesterday once again with a controversial statement that his guts told him the recent glut of world records this year is as much due to doping as it is to technological advances in suit design – and he feels the problem is world wide ... his beloved United States included. While he certainly won’t get an argument from me there are many prominent individuals more than willing to take up the banner of drug-free swimming. You can find them every where. A few days ago on Gary Hall Jr.’s very own Race Club message board the subject of thirty eight year old Briton Mark Foster setting a new personal best of 21.96 was raised. For those who aren’t immersed in the minutia of sprint swimming Mr. Foster formerly held the short course 50 free world record several years back. He’s also known for the longevity of his career. Refused a place on Britain’s Athens Olympic team he quit for a spell but returned to successfully qualify for Beijing. A blogger going by the moniker Trojan immediately claimed vindication for Dara Torres. His comment, “He just dropped his PR in the 50 by .16 (sic¹) – he has been at this since 1987. Where are all the Dara doubters now?” was met with the collective equivalent of a polite pat on the head along with reminders the questions about Torres’ performance weren’t just based upon her age. Undeterred Trojan hit back. “Sorry – but you guys are rather selective in your reasoning” he wrote, “his time is 0.66 (sic) off the WR – Dara is 0.59 off the WR. The 50 is the main question here – I don't think swimming a 54+ when you are able to go 24.5 is any "miracle". Since the thread was about Mark Foster and not about Dara Torres there were only a couple more desultory posts on the subject before the conversation switched back to Foster and his achievement.

But I’d like to respond to the challenge. By all means let us compare the two and their achievements. When Trojan asserts Torres’ times are equivalent to Foster’s I’d like to quote Mark Twain, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. Rather than relying on the two’s relative proximity to different world records (something not possible because they’re independent of each other) I submit to use instead the much more defensible analysis of relative improvement over time. For this I’ll rely on Olympic Trial performances for my source data: one because they provide both a regular flow of data over time and also because they provide reasonable guarantees they reflect peak efforts. Foster at thirty four, for example, swam a 22.49 50 free at the 2004 British Olympic Trials (good enough for the IOC but not good enough for Bill Sweetenham). Thus his recent 21.96 translates into a 2.36% improvement over that, or a 0.77% improvement over his previous personal best (PB) established seven years ago. To me this appears plausible after factoring in he was wearing the new LZR Racer. Regrettably Dara Torres’ situation is rather more complex so you’ll have to bear with me here. Today her career best is 24.53, achieved last year at the age of forty, and it’s important to note this was done without the aid of today’s advances in suit technology. Now let’s go back ... waaay back ... to Dara’s first retirement. It came right after the 1988 Olympics where in Trials qualifying she had swum 25.83. Her 25.61 PB at that time (which was for a short while the world record) had been achieved fully four years earlier. Thus now over forty she’s able to swim 5.03% faster than at twenty one, or 4.22% faster than what she could do as a seventeen year old with her best ever world ranking. After a short retirement she returned for the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Trials but once again finished without an Olympic berth in an individual event, swimming a 26.07 in prelims and a 26.15 in the finals. Three different times, three different Trials, but surely the trend which led to her second retirement is easy to see – she was getting slower. Now sixteen years later, thirteen of which were spent out of the pool in retirement, she’s swum an amazing 5.91% faster than her 1992 trial performance without any help from the new suits. Contrast this to Mark Foster’s bettering his 2004 performance by 2.36% with a LZR Racer. Trojan thinks their performances are comparable? I have to disagree.

Of course I have no actual evidence to support my contention Dara Torres is cheating as, because she’s never recorded a positive test result for performance enhancing drugs, it’s just pure supposition and a wheel barrowful of circumstantial evidence on my part. Neither does Gary Hall Jr. have anything to support his “gut feeling” doping is wide spread in swimming. The response to his statement has been swift and furious. Australian Libby Trickett, current world record holder in the women’s 50 sprint, thinks he needs “to keep his mouth shut, especially when he doesn’t have anything to back it up with”. American Amy Van Dyken, a former world record holder in the event and someone Hall specifically mentioned being on the same BALCO list as Marion Jones, sputtered in an email to the Associated Press “It is ridiculous that Gary would say something like that. It’s slanderous, outrageous, and unfounded!!!” Give me a break ladies. The history of the women's 50 free absolutely reeks of doping. In fact it’s a source of considerable personal amusement I actually believe it possible Dara Torres was likely the last clean world record holder in this event; at least until perhaps a couple of months ago when Veldhuis and Trickett stepped in with a big assist from the new suit technology. But listening to Trickett saying “If you are doing it here in Australia you are definitely going to get caught” and “FINA and WADA are doing a great job” knowledgable insiders of the sporting world must wonder, performance enhancing drugs or not, what recreational hallucinogen she’s indulging in.

¹ Actually Foster's new personal best was an improvement of 0.13 seconds and he’s 0.68 off the world record (WR). Not much of a difference but in the 50 sprint hundredths of a second take on enormous importance.

Wherefore Art Thou?

Yes, I’m still around. Regrettably both circumstances and other factors have conspired to keep me from posting the past couple of months. April, May, and June are at the best of times exceedingly stressful for me as the busiest time of year workwise and this year was no different. The time required to research, outline, and grind through drafts of even one article a week is surprisingly time consuming and this year with its changes there's been little or no time to write. Most of all, because I’ve decided on a long term approach to swimming fast, I've radically increase my swimming kilometrage and therefore this busy season instead of cutting back to considerably less than 5,000 meters a week my meters only dropped to around 12,000. A significant change which entailed not only more time but left me with less energy to tackle my day-to-day commitments. The other major reason for not posting at least something is more complex. Originally this blog was to be a personal training log which merely tracked my progress in rehabilitation. As I grew to better understand swimming as a sport, however, I also wanted to join in the swimming community’s discussions. In short order I went public and started posting ‘articles’ exploring certain aspects of the sport in more detail. To my delight I’ve discovered swimming is an incredibly complex sport to master – there’s plenty of subjects to choose from (I have some thirty topics on my list right now waiting for enough time to address them). Some articles write themselves, others take considerable effort, and still more find themselves in limbo due to problems in construction, research into underlying facts, or simply falling into disfavor. Over time the numbers of these work-in-progress/on hold drafts started to accumulate (one nice thing about a personal blog is having neither deadlines nor an editor/instructor requiring any particular assignment to be handed in). If I ran into a problem I’d just walk away from it and go onto the next subject on my list which attracted my fancy. Still, it was bothersome to have considerable time and effort invested and no publishable results. Eventually the unpublished articles were reduced to just those less favored and unpleasant as compositional difficulties and deficient research can be, and were, dealt with. After a year and a half I have four partially completed posts in various stages of completion – all of considerable merit, a couple to my mind actually a source of considerable pride – but all generally depressing in nature. Frankly I avoided dealing with them by immersing myself in writing posts on current topical swimming issues. That is, until two events happened. The first was Eamon Sullivan’s mind-blowing 21.28 50 free. The second was the introduction of the Speedo LZR Racer. Addressing Sullivan’s massive improvement lead me to eventually look to what extent doping might have penetrated swimming and what I found was devastating to me ... absolutely crushing. And the more I look at the LZR Racer the more I’m convinced the suit is illegal even under FINA’s existing rules. The intended follow up post on FINA’s selling out of what was a relatively pure sport was equally demoralizing. By April I was stuck with choosing to finish off depressing posts with topics such as yet more evidence of the inevitability that Dara Torres dopes, humankind’s natural inclination to cheat, what is clearly a doping epidemic in sport, FINA’s hand over of swimming to corporate interests, the tacit acceptance of doping by the IOC and WADA, or how I can’t reasonably expect any significant progress in my times for at least a year or two. If you were handed a subject list like that to write about would you be posting regularly?

Now I’m going to start writing again in July but I intend on clearing off my slate before continuing anew. If I get them dealt with quickly hopefully you readers can use the Olympic experience to wash away the bad taste left in your mouths. But for me my romance with elite swimming was, like a summer affair, wonderfully intense but short-lived. My blog will be returning to its roots as my personal training blog with only the occasional foray into commentary. In a month’s time I think you’ll understand why.

Scott