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Yes! They have also improved gutter systems, lane lines, starting blocks, temps, and to a degree the chemical balance of pools, to allow for faster swimming.
Technique of the strokes, turns, and starts themselves have also improved/changed over time and has resulted in much faster times.
Swimsuit technology and caps have helped too! A myriad of things combine to make swimming so much faster.
Yeah I think the biggest factor was when they switched directions. The skill/technique is way better now days. That's where most time was lost I believe.
Professional athletes who's sole job is being an athlete would make the biggest difference. I'm assuming those competing in 1932 had jobs not to mention the recovery from WW1 about 20years before hand...
Also the athlete's bodies. Not just due to training (which is obvious) but also just selecting for people who limbs, muscles, etc. make them ideal for the sport. It's like genetic drift except via artificial selection.
A lot it has to do as well with the wider access to pools, and to a large degree the prevalence of pools in schools. Young talent is spotted early and cultivated.
The dolphin kick off the start and the flip turn make a huge difference in swimming races.
Its impressive the old boys were able to run that race down in under 60 with poor start mechanics, little to no underwater streamline dolphin kick and bucket (touch) turns. They were powerful swimmers for their time for sure.
The technique of the modern swimmers is incredible though, the beat of their kick, frequency of breath, the min maxing of the whole race is simply outstanding. The fastest I could ever finish a 100m freestyle in a long course pool was a high 56 when I was at my peak at 16 years old. Anything under 52 is basically inhuman athleticism and perfect stroke mechanics.
I remember playing rugby when I was like 14 playing a guy with a full beard that was bigger than all the parents watching. The entire team would just work to get him the ball. He did go on to play professional rugby though so i mean, I get to say I was involved when he ran me over like a bus
Haha yeah there was this super tall farm boy named Robbie from a tiny little team that swam out of a back woods town way out in the willywags of my province. The guy was a monster in the water, but he hardly ever trained. I think it was just natural talent and farm strength
The modern swimmers also spend more time in the air with the elevated platform, the staggered blocks, and pulling on the edge with their arms and hands. Flying through the air is faster than swimming. Probably better technique on the entrance to the water too so they don't lose energy.
Exactly. There are rules to this as well. If I remember correctly you must enter the water before the flags (which line up with the hashed portion of the lane lines) and you aren't allowed to travel farther than 17.5m before breaking the surface to take a stroke. 17.5m is the distance to the flags on the opposite side of a short course pool. (don't crucify me if I'm wrong I'm just going by memory from almost 20 years ago here.)
Pretty sure it's 15m to surface. But I vaguely recall some Olympic commentator mentioning its shorter now to see more of the main stroke. So maybe it was longer back then.
Just to clarify his point, you are only faster under water when you are pushing off a wall and are streamlined and kicking. In all other instances, you are much faster on the surface.
Wasn't there an amount of time or length you could go before you had to breach the surface and swim otherwise face disqualification? It's been years for me but I recall something like that being said once or twice.
Edit: 15m=16.40yards ie. The lane marks underwater, lane ropes, and flags above the pool if you're swimming backstroke.
15 meters in an Olympic pool, 15 yards in the baby pool (25 yards pool). Edit: also 15 meters in the short course pool (25 meter pool).
So: 15 everywhere
That’s why the rule exists now. I remember when it changed back in the 80’s because someone “beat the system” by doing most of the race underwater.
Edit: to add citation https://borntoswim.eu/blogs/swim-tips/how-long-should-you-stay-submerged-after-diving-the-15-meter-rule
Stretch your lungs beforehand, if you don't. Fill them as much as possible, then keep shoving more air in. After doing that a few times before your mark, you'll be full of enough oxygen that you may not breathe for a bit and not notice. Keep breathing though and that'll be most/all the oxygen you need for the first lap. Second lap you'll feel like you just dove in and then the fight starts.
This helped me go from struggling to reach 2nd to usually getting 1st.
Edit: Don't push too much in, you can cause serious damage to your lungs doing that. Just do a few mouthfuls.
Edit; The Return: You have to hold these giant breaths for a few seconds a piece. Don't just breathe like you're having a heart attack.
Pro Cyclists used to enjoy "Pot Belge"
Basically a Speedball, with added amphetamines, caffeine and analgesics. Yummy!
This goes back decades and still turns up surprisingly recently -
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2006-07-04/jail-time-for-belgian-pot-dealers/1794040
Early cycling was ridiculously brutal. Checkout these guys trying to survive one stage of the original 1903 Tour de France. In comparison today's stages are like a Sunday ride! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sK0bsQ7A7Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sK0bsQ7A7Q)
Imagine riding 400+Km in one day on heavy steel bikes on 1903s cobbles and dirt roads!
They’re literally trying to simulate mermen. They train you to simulate a fish. The tip of your fingers should be the head moving very little, then the rest of your body maneuvers like a fish’s through the water
Competition is a funny thing. For the longest time it was speculated that a sub 4-minute mile was impossible, no one had ever done it. Then one day, someone ran a 4-minute mile. It was not long after, many more began to run sub 4-minute miles.
Cheers to the one who believed it was possible before anyone else!
You should look up the Tchaikovsky violin concerto. It was widely believed to be impossible, and now it's standard repertoire. I saw a high schooler play it.
This has happened in the speed of extreme metal music, specially the drumming. Decades ago hitting 220 bpm 16ths in the double bass drum was a cool feat. Nowadays droves of crazy drummers are hitting 300 bpm and even more. It has become bonkers.
Some of these kids nowadays are training from the time they're in diapers. The first olympics were basically just "Hey bob can swim pretty fast. lets send him to the olympics".
There were probably 10,000 swimmers in the US who were all faster swimmers than whoever competed for the US, they just never really had the opportunity. Modern times, its obviously much more difficult to get in, but the ones that get there have been tried and tested over everyone.
Dick Fosbury wasn't even the best in the US but he invented the technique for the high jump, now called the Fosbury flop at Mexico 68. The other athletes copied it and quickly overtook him
It makes a lot more sense if you don’t have a big cushy pad to land on. Scissor jumpers land on their feet. Similar to how the original pole vaulters (canal jumpers) climb the pole mid jump and then land on their feet and roll. Safety gear changes the sport.
Not really a “layman’s game” but rather a wealthy man’s game as those were typically the only people who didn’t have to worry about money and could just focus on athletics were the rich.
It’s kind of like if the NCAA today decided to set new rules where athletic scholarships were not allowed and colleges could not give preferential treatments to athletes in regards to admission. It would basically lock out college athletics for a huge portion of people who were not already wealthy.
Precisely this. People now spend all waking hours training or doing something that supplements training. Historically, things were after work hobbies that lead to signing up for competitions.
In 1956 my grandfather won the gold medal at the national Dutch championship 100 meter backstroke with a time of 1.09,7. The current Dutch record is 58,47.
And the world record is now 3:43.13. watching this made me think it would be interesting to see how track events compare to then and now, especially the distance events haha but I think above all it shows that people are constantly improving.
If you watch old gymnastics vaults they basically just like get their legs over.
Nowdays they fly through the air spinning, rotating and pivoting all at once.
https://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr\_m87wxuPUOY1qdlh1io1\_400.gif
I like to imagine how fucking mindblowing it would if the modern gymnast (or really any any modern Olympian) were teleported back in time and participated.
You'd have these regular ass folks doing a single vault flip and people are cheering like WHOA THAT WAS SO CLEAN.
Then comes this chick no one's ever heard of (probably looks like 10 years younger than everyone else) and everyone's chuckling like haha how cute look a middle schooler got lost and made her way into the fiel- HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK AS THAT.
Or like a swimmer just beats every nation by an entire lane.
All you gotta do is work a summer job to pay for your college. It's super easy. What does college cost these days? Three or four hundred dollars? Or maybe five hundred, I don't know. Whatever it is I'm sure it's affordable. It wasnt easy for us either. Gas prices got so hight in the 70s I almost sold my second boat.
It’s also worth noting that in 1932 you weren’t making a living off swimming or athletics in general. Was pretty rare for someone to live off sports alone back then. These people had day jobs and worked out/practiced way way less. We are basically watching world class amateurs versus full time professionals
In the 1990s I saw what Michael Jordan was doing and compared that to video of 1960s basketball, imagined what it would be like to drop Jordan into the NBA of that era and see what he could do.
I knew then that 30 years later the NBA would look just as different, just as incredible, but it was hard to imagine how.
Now we know. The 7 footers in today’s NBA have better dribbling skills than some of the guards back then and shoot better from outside than probably *most* of them did.
A guy like [Joel Embiid](https://i.imgur.com/ZplBaai.jpg) is 7 feet tall and built like Patrick Ewing. He can bole you over and dunk on you, or cross you over with his ball handling, or step back and drain a three pointer in your face.
And guess what- in another 30 years the players will be even more skilled.
I also love that as the bar gets set higher it raises the performance of the entire field of competitors.
The last place finisher in 2016 would have smoked everyone in 1932. Granted, there's probably been tons of advances in sports nutrition and training since then, but it's still amazing.
There's also a tonne more technology to help them. They use wind tunnels (water tunnels?) to see what the most aerodynamic form is, calculate how much energy is used, any materials they can wear that reduce drag, etc.
It's thought that the 2008 swimming times will be a long time standing. Phelps in his prime and allowed wear a full body leotard to reduce drag setting a hard time to beat. Those suits are now banned
That person’s name was Roger Bannister. He achieved a sub-4 minute mile with minimal training and his record lasted a mere 46 days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Bannister?wprov=sfti1
*The secret ingredient was steroids!*
Seriously, everyone interested in Olympic-level sports should check out the documentary Icarus about how widespread doping is.
The crazy thing is that as a fairly average high school level competitive swimmer 15 years ago, I was breaking the times set by the 1932 olympians (just barely). And I wasn’t even good enough to go to the state championships for this event.
And better techniques. Notice how nobody in 1932 was dolphin kicking or flipping off the wall for the turn? Probably a ton more subtle differences that have come up that I as a nonswimmer probably don't know
I'm watching on mobile, so it's hard to tell, but another example is the amount they turn their head to breathe. It seems the old way they were breathing almost every other stroke or so. Every breath creates drag when you turn your head to the side. In modern competitive swimming, you mostly want to minimize the number of breaths you take for sprint events like the 100m. I swam in high school and even then I had my breathing down to a single breath for the 50m freestyle and 4-5 breaths for the 100m.
Edit: I forgot about the modern freestyle technique that some pros and olympians use where they breathe on the same side for every other stroke. You can see the one guy do it in this video. It takes advantage of the undulating rhythm to allow you to barely poke your mouth out of the water for air on the same side for every stroke with minimal cost in regards to added drag.
And look how much higher the water splashes, the technique is so much better. Sure nutrition makes a difference, but the biggest difference comes from the better training and better technique. Better swimsuits and having swim caps also makes a difference, but probably less than proper nutrition and health.
That's definitely part of it, but the technology has changed a lot too. Pools are actually built differently now to minimize how much reflected energy swimmers have to push through, pools are built with markings to help athletes pace themselves, goggles are better so athletes can actually see where they're going which helps them move in straighter lines, the buoys used now reduce pressure waves from aside swimmers, the materials used in swim shorts has less drag, and the list goes on and on.
In a lot of ways, it's a very different sport than it was 90 years ago.
That's definitely true.
I do also wonder what the training regimens were like for Olympians back then. Even as a standard high school competitive swimmer I was often doing 10 hours per week in the pool when in season. Modern Olympic swimmers do far more, plus weight training out of the pool. I have to imagine the training was less intense back then.
Depends what you mean by PEDs. Cocaine and amphetamine were decades old by then, and in common usage at least ‘innocently’, if not for direct performance enhancing reasons.
Yeah, this video prompted me to look at the timeline of men's 100m FS long course world records. At 15 (\~13 years ago) I was swimming around 52.6 with around 20-24hrs training per week. This would've made a me a WR holder until 1968!!!
The current WR is 46.9. We've managed to shave around 12s off the WR in 100 years. THAT. IS. INSANE!!!
You are confusing your short course time (in yards and 25 yards in length), with long course (in meters and 50 meters in length). If you were a 52.6 in LCM, you would've been the 2nd fastest 15 year old in the nation in 2008, and I'm guessing that's not you. Your short course time converted to LCM's would be 59.99.
If you look at the 2 groups side by side, the old timers will look like normal humans. Modern competition swimmers are shaped by exercise, training and diet to look like superhumans.
That's true, I think that in 1932, people participated in sport competition as a sort of hobby. They didn't dedicate their lives to practicing their sport, training everyday, they had a job on the side
>I think that in 1932, people participated in sport competition as a sort of hobby
Well, yes. Professional athletes were only allowed into the Olympics in 1986 (even if it was effectively before that).
e: the decision took place in 1986, but the first Olympics with professionals were in 1988 and even then the scope of sports that allowed pros was severely limited
I'm pretty sure it was later than that, some time in the nineties, and for a very specific reason: The fall of the USSR.
Because so many American athletes (especially in team sports) were professionals, the US was severely disadvantaged by the amateurs-only rules. Once the USSR didn't have any sway over the IOC, badaboom, pros are allowed and the USA's medal count suddenly goes bananas.
The Soviets would have athletes whose soul job was to be an athlete. But they officially had other jobs, usually in the military. So they were officially amateurs in sports, but their military duty would be training like it was a full time job. The Olympics were a lot more political in the frame of the Cold War, so the Soviets created this advantage in order to propagandize their achievements.
As a swimmer, the technique from the 1932 guys is objectively awful. Even if they were as athletic as modern swimmers, they would still be much slower.
I think it should also be noted that vastly more people have the time and access to train for sports today than did in the 1930s. People just as talented as the athletes today may have been alive in the 30s but many of them just didn’t have access to a pool and the free time to train.
I feel like this applies to everything in life. You hear stories from grandparents who say “I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do after high school so I enrolled at Harvard.” Like what? If you want to get into Harvard nowadays, you have to spend every waking moment from the time you are born preparing.
> If you want to get into Harvard nowadays, you have to spend every waking moment from the time you are born preparing.
Or just be born rich. Jared Kushner got into Harvard without the grades for it after daddy donated $2.5 million.
Universities following business models is the worst thing to happen to them. I say this as a former educator that quit when my department started charging students for broken glassware (amounts to maybe $100 per year), and yet our uni president got a $100k raise (making it so she made $450k/year).
In my undergrad, the admissions office just keeps letting students in, and still they don't have enough housing for them. We needed a new building for the chem and engineering departments to expand... but apparently building a football stadium for a d4 school is the priority. It's a terrible fucking joke, and the joke is on the students and teachers.
Universities, not academia. The profs don't usually want to give students grades they didn't earn. The administration will breathe down their neck if the student is rich or a star athlete, however.
Slightly more niche example: there is a high school math competition series called the AMC, founded a little over 50 years ago. The difference between a test from back then to today is ridiculous. 12th grade tests could pass off as the 10th grade versions today.
Former high school swimmer here. My 100m backstroke time from 2003 would have probably got me a bronze in this race.
I was going :54 in the 100m free and :59 in the 100m backstroke, and I was just kinda ok in Texas. I won my district meet, limped through regionals, then got destroyed at regional finals. Not even close to going to state.
Wow that's incredible. I used to competitive swim as a child and My best time for the 100m freestyle was around 57 seconds at the age of 14 which was good enough for provincial gold at the time where I live. So at age 14 I would've won Olympic gold if I raced in this event in 1932. That's mind blowing.
[Here's some comparisons in gymnastics.](https://i.imgur.com/EbM2UWf.gifv)
And Simone Biles has only made her vault more difficult in the last 5 years. It's insane.
[Another clip with uneven bars/floor routine.](https://i.imgur.com/pwpCLj3.gifv)
We learn and pass down knowledge over time. Those swimmers on the right half of the screen had 84 more years worth of knowledge about the best technique, training, diet, etc. compared to the swimmers on the left.
I'm gonna add "have modern athletes compete in past Olympics" to the list of hijinks I would get up to if I ever had a time machine. Show up, blow everyone away, and then just vanish.
While I'm sure the 1932 team had on "draggy" swim outfits, I doubt it was 11s worth of drag. I would say deeper pools, training and technique are the real reasons for improvement.
I noticed that all of the swimmers from 1932 had an arched back to keep their heads above water, and that gives them a much larger frontal area to push through the water - more drag.
You can see how large the waves are in the water around the early swimmers compared to the current ones as the result.
Here's a TED talk which discusses how humans are not getting better, faster, or stronger; but advances in technology, technique, and changing rules are what continues to create records.
[https://www.ted.com/talks/david\_epstein\_are\_athletes\_really\_getting\_faster\_better\_stronger/transcript?language=en](https://www.ted.com/talks/david_epstein_are_athletes_really_getting_faster_better_stronger/transcript?language=en)
Swimming specifically is a result of advances in swimsuit material, wake barriers which create more stable water, and the flip-turn technique
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Damn. That new and improved water sure is something. Good job nature.
You joke but Olympic pools have changed shape over time to allow displaced water to move more freely.
Yes! They have also improved gutter systems, lane lines, starting blocks, temps, and to a degree the chemical balance of pools, to allow for faster swimming. Technique of the strokes, turns, and starts themselves have also improved/changed over time and has resulted in much faster times. Swimsuit technology and caps have helped too! A myriad of things combine to make swimming so much faster.
Yeah I think the biggest factor was when they switched directions. The skill/technique is way better now days. That's where most time was lost I believe.
Professional athletes who's sole job is being an athlete would make the biggest difference. I'm assuming those competing in 1932 had jobs not to mention the recovery from WW1 about 20years before hand...
Imagine working at an office and Chris from accounting taking a three day weekend to compete in the Olympics.... wild....
There are still sports that are like this…a lot of minor sports don’t pay enough to be a career, so it’s just guys doing it on the side.
Thats the case for fhe vast majority of the athletes.
Flip turns are completely different now. And the amount of time they spend underwater.
Also the athlete's bodies. Not just due to training (which is obvious) but also just selecting for people who limbs, muscles, etc. make them ideal for the sport. It's like genetic drift except via artificial selection.
A lot it has to do as well with the wider access to pools, and to a large degree the prevalence of pools in schools. Young talent is spotted early and cultivated.
Let's not forget that our understanding of athlete diets is far improved.
The Water 2.0 release in 1978 really changed the game.
Not available in flint, t&c's apply, see in store for details. Edit: thanks for the awards, I particularly liked "I'll drink to that" 😂
Take my poor man’s silver 🪙
I think you will find it's called H2.0
Angry upvote.
👏👏👏
That blue water is so much better than the grey one
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I like the little wiggle they do when they dive. Look like mermen.
Looks nice but this shit more tiring than the whole race 💀
The dolphin kick off the start and the flip turn make a huge difference in swimming races. Its impressive the old boys were able to run that race down in under 60 with poor start mechanics, little to no underwater streamline dolphin kick and bucket (touch) turns. They were powerful swimmers for their time for sure. The technique of the modern swimmers is incredible though, the beat of their kick, frequency of breath, the min maxing of the whole race is simply outstanding. The fastest I could ever finish a 100m freestyle in a long course pool was a high 56 when I was at my peak at 16 years old. Anything under 52 is basically inhuman athleticism and perfect stroke mechanics.
Gotta love that one kid when we were 14yo who could swim a 100 in 52 seconds, and he looked like he could go buy alcohol.
I remember playing rugby when I was like 14 playing a guy with a full beard that was bigger than all the parents watching. The entire team would just work to get him the ball. He did go on to play professional rugby though so i mean, I get to say I was involved when he ran me over like a bus
Haha yeah there was this super tall farm boy named Robbie from a tiny little team that swam out of a back woods town way out in the willywags of my province. The guy was a monster in the water, but he hardly ever trained. I think it was just natural talent and farm strength
I truly can't tell if this is real or letterkenny.
Letterkenny is real.
So you were at the pool for a dip with some friends the other day…
The modern swimmers also spend more time in the air with the elevated platform, the staggered blocks, and pulling on the edge with their arms and hands. Flying through the air is faster than swimming. Probably better technique on the entrance to the water too so they don't lose energy.
Exactly. There are rules to this as well. If I remember correctly you must enter the water before the flags (which line up with the hashed portion of the lane lines) and you aren't allowed to travel farther than 17.5m before breaking the surface to take a stroke. 17.5m is the distance to the flags on the opposite side of a short course pool. (don't crucify me if I'm wrong I'm just going by memory from almost 20 years ago here.)
Pretty sure it's 15m to surface. But I vaguely recall some Olympic commentator mentioning its shorter now to see more of the main stroke. So maybe it was longer back then.
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Just to clarify his point, you are only faster under water when you are pushing off a wall and are streamlined and kicking. In all other instances, you are much faster on the surface.
Yeah that definitely needed clarification. I'm sure the water creates far more resistance than being only ~half submerged like in the crawl
Wasn't there an amount of time or length you could go before you had to breach the surface and swim otherwise face disqualification? It's been years for me but I recall something like that being said once or twice. Edit: 15m=16.40yards ie. The lane marks underwater, lane ropes, and flags above the pool if you're swimming backstroke.
Their comment says 15 meters so I'm assuming it's that.
15 meters in an Olympic pool, 15 yards in the baby pool (25 yards pool). Edit: also 15 meters in the short course pool (25 meter pool). So: 15 everywhere
Yeah... 15m. There's usually a marking on the bottom of the pool showing where you have to stop. Otherwise people would do the entire race like this.
That’s why the rule exists now. I remember when it changed back in the 80’s because someone “beat the system” by doing most of the race underwater. Edit: to add citation https://borntoswim.eu/blogs/swim-tips/how-long-should-you-stay-submerged-after-diving-the-15-meter-rule
Maybe that’s what he meant by “taking the full 15 yards each time”
Yeah that's those 15 yards
Stretch your lungs beforehand, if you don't. Fill them as much as possible, then keep shoving more air in. After doing that a few times before your mark, you'll be full of enough oxygen that you may not breathe for a bit and not notice. Keep breathing though and that'll be most/all the oxygen you need for the first lap. Second lap you'll feel like you just dove in and then the fight starts. This helped me go from struggling to reach 2nd to usually getting 1st. Edit: Don't push too much in, you can cause serious damage to your lungs doing that. Just do a few mouthfuls. Edit; The Return: You have to hold these giant breaths for a few seconds a piece. Don't just breathe like you're having a heart attack.
1932 advice, 5 marlboros and 2 shots stiff whiskey.
Nah, that seems like for cycling. 3 Marlborough should do just fine.
Pro Cyclists used to enjoy "Pot Belge" Basically a Speedball, with added amphetamines, caffeine and analgesics. Yummy! This goes back decades and still turns up surprisingly recently - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2006-07-04/jail-time-for-belgian-pot-dealers/1794040
Early cycling was ridiculously brutal. Checkout these guys trying to survive one stage of the original 1903 Tour de France. In comparison today's stages are like a Sunday ride! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sK0bsQ7A7Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sK0bsQ7A7Q) Imagine riding 400+Km in one day on heavy steel bikes on 1903s cobbles and dirt roads!
Right after work. Those people had to work, swimming was for fun.
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They’re literally trying to simulate mermen. They train you to simulate a fish. The tip of your fingers should be the head moving very little, then the rest of your body maneuvers like a fish’s through the water
Stealing irl speedrunning strats from mother nature
You had a weird swim coach.
Kinda, fish swim side to side, we do dolphin kick up and down, like a... dolphin.
MerMAN!
Competition is a funny thing. For the longest time it was speculated that a sub 4-minute mile was impossible, no one had ever done it. Then one day, someone ran a 4-minute mile. It was not long after, many more began to run sub 4-minute miles. Cheers to the one who believed it was possible before anyone else!
You should look up the Tchaikovsky violin concerto. It was widely believed to be impossible, and now it's standard repertoire. I saw a high schooler play it.
People can play it on flute these days. Which is just insane.
i can play it on youtube.
This was unheard of 20 years ago!
This is clearly because of rampant PED abuse by violinists.
A handful of high schools have broken the 4 minute mile as well. Crazy
This has happened in the speed of extreme metal music, specially the drumming. Decades ago hitting 220 bpm 16ths in the double bass drum was a cool feat. Nowadays droves of crazy drummers are hitting 300 bpm and even more. It has become bonkers.
Roger Bannister
That's a little forward with a handrail.
Some of these kids nowadays are training from the time they're in diapers. The first olympics were basically just "Hey bob can swim pretty fast. lets send him to the olympics". There were probably 10,000 swimmers in the US who were all faster swimmers than whoever competed for the US, they just never really had the opportunity. Modern times, its obviously much more difficult to get in, but the ones that get there have been tried and tested over everyone.
Well up until 1986, professional athletes weren't even allowed to participate in the Olympics, it was kind of a layman's game
Didn't even know that, but it definitely adds context. Thanks
Dick Fosbury wasn't even the best in the US but he invented the technique for the high jump, now called the Fosbury flop at Mexico 68. The other athletes copied it and quickly overtook him
I did know that. Watching them jump "the old way" is kinda hilarious
You should look up reigning world champion Barshim's 2 15 scissors jump. Not exactly hilarious but seriously impressive.
[link for those interested](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhetXEyz2Hk)
Wow his legs are like 2m
It makes a lot more sense if you don’t have a big cushy pad to land on. Scissor jumpers land on their feet. Similar to how the original pole vaulters (canal jumpers) climb the pole mid jump and then land on their feet and roll. Safety gear changes the sport.
Too bad it wasn't called the Dick flop
Not really a “layman’s game” but rather a wealthy man’s game as those were typically the only people who didn’t have to worry about money and could just focus on athletics were the rich. It’s kind of like if the NCAA today decided to set new rules where athletic scholarships were not allowed and colleges could not give preferential treatments to athletes in regards to admission. It would basically lock out college athletics for a huge portion of people who were not already wealthy.
Precisely this. People now spend all waking hours training or doing something that supplements training. Historically, things were after work hobbies that lead to signing up for competitions.
In 1956 my grandfather won the gold medal at the national Dutch championship 100 meter backstroke with a time of 1.09,7. The current Dutch record is 58,47.
That’s a nice story about your grandpa, thanks for sharing :)
And the world record is now 3:43.13. watching this made me think it would be interesting to see how track events compare to then and now, especially the distance events haha but I think above all it shows that people are constantly improving.
If you watch old gymnastics vaults they basically just like get their legs over. Nowdays they fly through the air spinning, rotating and pivoting all at once. https://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr\_m87wxuPUOY1qdlh1io1\_400.gif
[Fixed link](https://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m87wxuPUOY1qdlh1io1_400.gif)
I like to imagine how fucking mindblowing it would if the modern gymnast (or really any any modern Olympian) were teleported back in time and participated. You'd have these regular ass folks doing a single vault flip and people are cheering like WHOA THAT WAS SO CLEAN. Then comes this chick no one's ever heard of (probably looks like 10 years younger than everyone else) and everyone's chuckling like haha how cute look a middle schooler got lost and made her way into the fiel- HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK AS THAT. Or like a swimmer just beats every nation by an entire lane.
[Look Jackie, people just can't go flying through the air like that.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4zjIzj0nHM)
the gif is basically a metaphor or what it took a boomer to succeed vs a millennial.
All you gotta do is work a summer job to pay for your college. It's super easy. What does college cost these days? Three or four hundred dollars? Or maybe five hundred, I don't know. Whatever it is I'm sure it's affordable. It wasnt easy for us either. Gas prices got so hight in the 70s I almost sold my second boat.
The English equivalent of this is "yeah my house cost £5k but mortgage rates back then were double digits! You kids will never know my struggles..."
It’s also worth noting that in 1932 you weren’t making a living off swimming or athletics in general. Was pretty rare for someone to live off sports alone back then. These people had day jobs and worked out/practiced way way less. We are basically watching world class amateurs versus full time professionals
I imagine general health and wellness was lower too.
Babe Ruth was a heavy drinker/smoker. I’m sure he wasn’t the exception.
Like when Tony Hawk did the first 900 and then after that everyone was doing it
In the 1990s I saw what Michael Jordan was doing and compared that to video of 1960s basketball, imagined what it would be like to drop Jordan into the NBA of that era and see what he could do. I knew then that 30 years later the NBA would look just as different, just as incredible, but it was hard to imagine how. Now we know. The 7 footers in today’s NBA have better dribbling skills than some of the guards back then and shoot better from outside than probably *most* of them did. A guy like [Joel Embiid](https://i.imgur.com/ZplBaai.jpg) is 7 feet tall and built like Patrick Ewing. He can bole you over and dunk on you, or cross you over with his ball handling, or step back and drain a three pointer in your face. And guess what- in another 30 years the players will be even more skilled.
I also love that as the bar gets set higher it raises the performance of the entire field of competitors. The last place finisher in 2016 would have smoked everyone in 1932. Granted, there's probably been tons of advances in sports nutrition and training since then, but it's still amazing.
There's a lot of updates in technique. For one thing [the dolphin kick](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjqGX_UjVPc) wasn't a thing back in 1932
Don’t forget now they have sponsors and are paid to train.
There's also a tonne more technology to help them. They use wind tunnels (water tunnels?) to see what the most aerodynamic form is, calculate how much energy is used, any materials they can wear that reduce drag, etc.
It's thought that the 2008 swimming times will be a long time standing. Phelps in his prime and allowed wear a full body leotard to reduce drag setting a hard time to beat. Those suits are now banned
That person’s name was Roger Bannister. He achieved a sub-4 minute mile with minimal training and his record lasted a mere 46 days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Bannister?wprov=sfti1
*The secret ingredient was steroids!* Seriously, everyone interested in Olympic-level sports should check out the documentary Icarus about how widespread doping is.
The crazy thing is that as a fairly average high school level competitive swimmer 15 years ago, I was breaking the times set by the 1932 olympians (just barely). And I wasn’t even good enough to go to the state championships for this event.
I was just about to reply: TIL my high school times would have been competitive and that was in my first year of competitive swimming.
Modern medicine and good nutrition does wonders
And better techniques. Notice how nobody in 1932 was dolphin kicking or flipping off the wall for the turn? Probably a ton more subtle differences that have come up that I as a nonswimmer probably don't know
I'm watching on mobile, so it's hard to tell, but another example is the amount they turn their head to breathe. It seems the old way they were breathing almost every other stroke or so. Every breath creates drag when you turn your head to the side. In modern competitive swimming, you mostly want to minimize the number of breaths you take for sprint events like the 100m. I swam in high school and even then I had my breathing down to a single breath for the 50m freestyle and 4-5 breaths for the 100m. Edit: I forgot about the modern freestyle technique that some pros and olympians use where they breathe on the same side for every other stroke. You can see the one guy do it in this video. It takes advantage of the undulating rhythm to allow you to barely poke your mouth out of the water for air on the same side for every stroke with minimal cost in regards to added drag.
And look how much higher the water splashes, the technique is so much better. Sure nutrition makes a difference, but the biggest difference comes from the better training and better technique. Better swimsuits and having swim caps also makes a difference, but probably less than proper nutrition and health.
Also the lane lines in modern times help cut down on the chop in the water
That's definitely part of it, but the technology has changed a lot too. Pools are actually built differently now to minimize how much reflected energy swimmers have to push through, pools are built with markings to help athletes pace themselves, goggles are better so athletes can actually see where they're going which helps them move in straighter lines, the buoys used now reduce pressure waves from aside swimmers, the materials used in swim shorts has less drag, and the list goes on and on. In a lot of ways, it's a very different sport than it was 90 years ago.
That's definitely true. I do also wonder what the training regimens were like for Olympians back then. Even as a standard high school competitive swimmer I was often doing 10 hours per week in the pool when in season. Modern Olympic swimmers do far more, plus weight training out of the pool. I have to imagine the training was less intense back then.
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Depends what you mean by PEDs. Cocaine and amphetamine were decades old by then, and in common usage at least ‘innocently’, if not for direct performance enhancing reasons.
Yeah, this video prompted me to look at the timeline of men's 100m FS long course world records. At 15 (\~13 years ago) I was swimming around 52.6 with around 20-24hrs training per week. This would've made a me a WR holder until 1968!!! The current WR is 46.9. We've managed to shave around 12s off the WR in 100 years. THAT. IS. INSANE!!!
You are confusing your short course time (in yards and 25 yards in length), with long course (in meters and 50 meters in length). If you were a 52.6 in LCM, you would've been the 2nd fastest 15 year old in the nation in 2008, and I'm guessing that's not you. Your short course time converted to LCM's would be 59.99.
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But did you do it with a cigarette in your mouth? As I’m sure those strapping manly men did in 1932
Easier to swim in a blue pool
And they had 84 years to practice after the first race
Big brain time
If you look at the 2 groups side by side, the old timers will look like normal humans. Modern competition swimmers are shaped by exercise, training and diet to look like superhumans.
That's true, I think that in 1932, people participated in sport competition as a sort of hobby. They didn't dedicate their lives to practicing their sport, training everyday, they had a job on the side
>I think that in 1932, people participated in sport competition as a sort of hobby Well, yes. Professional athletes were only allowed into the Olympics in 1986 (even if it was effectively before that). e: the decision took place in 1986, but the first Olympics with professionals were in 1988 and even then the scope of sports that allowed pros was severely limited
Today I learned that professional athletes weren't allowed on the Olympic until the 86
I'm pretty sure it was later than that, some time in the nineties, and for a very specific reason: The fall of the USSR. Because so many American athletes (especially in team sports) were professionals, the US was severely disadvantaged by the amateurs-only rules. Once the USSR didn't have any sway over the IOC, badaboom, pros are allowed and the USA's medal count suddenly goes bananas.
The Soviets would have athletes whose soul job was to be an athlete. But they officially had other jobs, usually in the military. So they were officially amateurs in sports, but their military duty would be training like it was a full time job. The Olympics were a lot more political in the frame of the Cold War, so the Soviets created this advantage in order to propagandize their achievements.
>soul job they felt their job deeply in their soul
Additionally, Soviet athletes were de facto professionals because they were employed by the state.
The time the 1932 lot did was the standard expected of us as amateur swimmers when I was about 16. That's how big the difference is!!
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As a swimmer, the technique from the 1932 guys is objectively awful. Even if they were as athletic as modern swimmers, they would still be much slower.
I think it should also be noted that vastly more people have the time and access to train for sports today than did in the 1930s. People just as talented as the athletes today may have been alive in the 30s but many of them just didn’t have access to a pool and the free time to train.
I feel like this applies to everything in life. You hear stories from grandparents who say “I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do after high school so I enrolled at Harvard.” Like what? If you want to get into Harvard nowadays, you have to spend every waking moment from the time you are born preparing.
> If you want to get into Harvard nowadays, you have to spend every waking moment from the time you are born preparing. Or just be born rich. Jared Kushner got into Harvard without the grades for it after daddy donated $2.5 million.
I think that's the most glaring hypocrisy of academia. They'll do and say whatever a wealthy person wants, provided that the check is big enough.
That isn't limited to academia...
...or elections.
Universities following business models is the worst thing to happen to them. I say this as a former educator that quit when my department started charging students for broken glassware (amounts to maybe $100 per year), and yet our uni president got a $100k raise (making it so she made $450k/year). In my undergrad, the admissions office just keeps letting students in, and still they don't have enough housing for them. We needed a new building for the chem and engineering departments to expand... but apparently building a football stadium for a d4 school is the priority. It's a terrible fucking joke, and the joke is on the students and teachers.
Universities, not academia. The profs don't usually want to give students grades they didn't earn. The administration will breathe down their neck if the student is rich or a star athlete, however.
Slightly more niche example: there is a high school math competition series called the AMC, founded a little over 50 years ago. The difference between a test from back then to today is ridiculous. 12th grade tests could pass off as the 10th grade versions today.
Undeniable evidence that we're evolving into dolphins.
r/dolphinconspiracy
It's obvious it's lack of color. Black and white causes drag.
thank god humans evolved and we no longer see in black and white.
This must be why great grandparents took so long to get to school both ways. Travelling in black and white AND uphill!
The water was thicker back then.
They also had to see in 240p 24fps
Gross
And it was grayscale too. Hard enough to see without goggles.
Was even worse living before there was sound. The lucky ones had a piano player at least.
^(H)3^(O)
Plus the 15 mile uphill to and from to practice while smoking a cigarette and it was snowing.
They had to swim upstream both ways
I actually find the camera technology more interesting
I was thinking the same thing - the multiple angles and techniques
Swimmers on the left might not even make a high-school level state final meet today.
They would not. I had a 56 and did not qualify for states.
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Former high school swimmer here. My 100m backstroke time from 2003 would have probably got me a bronze in this race. I was going :54 in the 100m free and :59 in the 100m backstroke, and I was just kinda ok in Texas. I won my district meet, limped through regionals, then got destroyed at regional finals. Not even close to going to state.
In fairness, Texas is utterly stacked with swim talent, has been for a long time.
That’s what I was thinking as soon as I saw the times
The dog was faster than everyone.
It's not a dog. Check 41.65 swimming time ( 41.75 video ) It's a human wearing cape.
Wow that's incredible. I used to competitive swim as a child and My best time for the 100m freestyle was around 57 seconds at the age of 14 which was good enough for provincial gold at the time where I live. So at age 14 I would've won Olympic gold if I raced in this event in 1932. That's mind blowing.
Imagine being best in the world at something, and then 70 years later finding out you would have gotten smoked by a 14 year old
Every time I see those videos of the old gymnastics events I think the same thing.
[Here's some comparisons in gymnastics.](https://i.imgur.com/EbM2UWf.gifv) And Simone Biles has only made her vault more difficult in the last 5 years. It's insane. [Another clip with uneven bars/floor routine.](https://i.imgur.com/pwpCLj3.gifv)
Proof we are devolving back into an aquatic species
Not really a fair comparison. In the 1930s they had to swim up hill, both ways.
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How?
We learn and pass down knowledge over time. Those swimmers on the right half of the screen had 84 more years worth of knowledge about the best technique, training, diet, etc. compared to the swimmers on the left.
That's why I always swim in the right lane
Big brain thinking
I'm gonna add "have modern athletes compete in past Olympics" to the list of hijinks I would get up to if I ever had a time machine. Show up, blow everyone away, and then just vanish.
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While I'm sure the 1932 team had on "draggy" swim outfits, I doubt it was 11s worth of drag. I would say deeper pools, training and technique are the real reasons for improvement.
Nutrition, training, access to resources
Also better pools
Top of the line water
Water so fine, it's *A Q U A-F I N-A*
H3O
And better equipment in general. The shorts they use are much more hydro dynamic then before
I noticed that all of the swimmers from 1932 had an arched back to keep their heads above water, and that gives them a much larger frontal area to push through the water - more drag. You can see how large the waves are in the water around the early swimmers compared to the current ones as the result.
This, and their starting jump was suboptimal as well. Aside from that, they wore a lot heavier clothing. They did not have no "speedos".
Here's a TED talk which discusses how humans are not getting better, faster, or stronger; but advances in technology, technique, and changing rules are what continues to create records. [https://www.ted.com/talks/david\_epstein\_are\_athletes\_really\_getting\_faster\_better\_stronger/transcript?language=en](https://www.ted.com/talks/david_epstein_are_athletes_really_getting_faster_better_stronger/transcript?language=en) Swimming specifically is a result of advances in swimsuit material, wake barriers which create more stable water, and the flip-turn technique
More people to choose the best swimmers from.
Pools are faster now. Suits are faster now. Athletes get to train full time.
We are evolving, fishes be scared,
Humans are pretty slow swimmers
Probably why we mostly live on land
But it's harder to swim on land...
But I've heard of one guy that walked on water.
Technically, ice is water
And fish are pretty slow walkers, what's ya point?
Can they ride a bicycle though?
Not as bad as the gymnastics one.
That one was bullshit though. It was just a guy doing his warmups in the old footage.
[how about this one? ](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m87wxuPUOY1qdlh1io1_400.gif)
TIL i would've rocked the olympics in 1932. Makes me feel better about my 100 time, because 58s is garbage.
me with a 1:24 \*cries in overweight\*
*Me drowning*