I don’t understand…

[4everchan]

I suspect that 25 yard pools are much cheaper to construct and maintain than Olympic size pools, and that's a consideration for public high schools. I think that even most college pools are 25 yards rather than 50.

USA sticks to yards because we don't widely recognize the metric system. Sometimes I wish we did, sometimes I'm glad we don't.

Edit: Obviously we "recognize" the metric system exists, but if you asked most Americans "What's longer? 1500 meters or a mile?" they wouldn't know the answer with certainty.

Your point about MacNeil is valid. I think the same can be said about Dressel's turns, which are spectacular. His finishing stroke is not the best though - he always looks "long" to me - and I wonder if training yards but competing meters has anything to do with that.

of course it's cheaper to maintain and build smaller pools... i meant 25 Meters instead of 25 yards... i trained in 25 meter pools until i got grown up

 

[NanaPat]

I suspect that 25 yard pools are much cheaper to construct and maintain than Olympic size pools, and that's a consideration for public high schools. I think that even most college pools are 25 yards rather than 50.

I would say offhand that in Canada 25m pools outnumber 50m ones by a factor of 10 or more.

In addition, not all 50m pools are Olympic pools. Olympic pools are wide and DEEP as well as long. They aren't suitable for teaching children how to swim, aquafit, or really anything except training top-level swimmers and divers.

The most popular configuration for municipal pools (in places that can afford them) are a 6-lane 25m lap pool accompanied by a separate leisure pool that is smaller, shallower, and kept at a higher temperature than the lap pool. The leisure pool is usually irregularly shaped and has a "beach entrance" to allow easy in/out for wheelchairs and people with limited mobility. It may include a rectangular portion that can be used to swim (very) short laps.

 

[4everchan]

again, my comment is not about 25 versus 50... but yards versus meters just in case ...

 

[TontoK]

Swithing topics... the Games are coming to a close, and tbh, I'm glad.

I am a huge Olympics buff, but these Tokyo Games have just seemed "off" in some way. It may be the empty stadiums. It may be that I'm unimpressed with NBC's coverage in general, which is deep with personality-driven stories, and shallow on news of athletic performance. There's also a lack of pirnt/net coverage of things I'd like to see.

For example, I've seen a good bit about Bruce Springsteen's daughter, but almost nothing else of equestrian events. I am fascinated by dressage, but good luck finding anything about that in USA.

 

[4everchan]

dressage didn't make it to canada much either... but i am glad with the coverage of cbc... everything was also available on live stream when not on tv.... but i agree with you @TontoK : i am glad the games are over with .... I am sleep deprived LOL

regarding the crowds : i couldn't care less

 

[NanaPat]

Not only does CBC have everything on live stream, but the full-event videos are available on the CBC website for watching later. I just hope I get caught up before they disappear.

 

[Mauvedreamer]

I don't understand Rythm

Swithing topics... the Games are coming to a close, and tbh, I'm glad.

I am a huge Olympics buff, but these Tokyo Games have just seemed "off" in some way. It may be the empty stadiums. It may be that I'm unimpressed with NBC's coverage in general, which is deep with personality-driven stories, and shallow on news of athletic performance. There's also a lack of pirnt/net coverage of things I'd like to see.

For example, I've seen a good bit about Bruce Springsteen's daughter, but almost nothing else of equestrian events. I am fascinated by dressage, but good luck finding anything about that in USA.

We had quite a bit of coverage of the dressage here in the UK. I found it fascinating. Never watched it before. With Eurosport and BBC the overall coverage was quite diverse. Prefer Eurosport to BBC which I name the British Biased Corporation..dumbed down coverage, gimmicky and probably similar to NBC by the sound's of it.

 

[moonvine]

i never understood why the USA would stick to swimming in 25 yard pools (and weird distances like 500 yards), when the whole world is swimming in 25 M pools which are slightly longer... (25 yards is only 22.86 meters) but there is a great story about this : Olympic champion in 100M fly is Canadian swimmer Maggie MacNeil. She goes to U of Michigan and trains usually in a 25 yard pool. Which means that she has developed really great turns and underwater dolphin kick compared to swimmers who train in 50 M pools (she has to turn 3 times instead of 1)... So after the first 50m at the games, she was quite behind, but her turn was so good, that she come back to win gold. The smaller pools do have this advantage... When I first started to train/compete in 50M pools, I thought it was much harder.... I lacked endurance. Not being able to turn as often was hell for me at first... especially with butterfly... but I guess that once you overcome that, you can use it to your advantage...

Here in my county, we have one indoor pool. It is a yards pool. The YMCA swim team uses it, the public high school swim team uses it, the Catholic high school teams (they have separate boy and girls teams and have separate practices), the Master Swim and Senior Olympians use it, and random people doing laps and water exercises use it. All the YMCA teams are yards and the high school teams are yards and the Senior Olympians are yards. I would love to swim in a meters pool to say I have done it but literally I would not know where to find one.

Our longest competition is 500 yards.

A mile is 32 laps. I’m glad I have a watch that keeps up with it.

Funny story, my first race was a 50 yards butterfly. Oh easy, I swim way more butterfly in a workout than that. Well 1. I started swimming as fast as I could and completely died 10 yards from the end. I thought I was going to have to quit 2. Never wear a new bathing suit to a race for the first time. Every pull it was coming down over my eyes so I couldn’t see. Someone ended up getting a huge binder clip from the office to hold it back. Since then I have had all kinds of stuff happen in races…goggles come off, I just throw them on the pool deck and keep going.
I told my coach what happened and she said swim the first length as slow as you can and then you can swim as fast as you want the next length. Which is horrible advice for an actual competitive swimmer but for someone who doesn’t want to have to quit in the last 10 yards has been ok advice.

 

[moonvine]

Swithing topics... the Games are coming to a close, and tbh, I'm glad.

I am a huge Olympics buff, but these Tokyo Games have just seemed "off" in some way. It may be the empty stadiums. It may be that I'm unimpressed with NBC's coverage in general, which is deep with personality-driven stories, and shallow on news of athletic performance. There's also a lack of pirnt/net coverage of things I'd like to see.

For example, I've seen a good bit about Bruce Springsteen's daughter, but almost nothing else of equestrian events. I am fascinated by dressage, but good luck finding anything about that in USA.

You can watch all equestrian events as well as all other events in the International feed provided at nbcolympics.com. I have not heard anything about Bruce Springsteen’s daughter. Dressage is available in its entirety along with all other sports with International commentators who do research on all athletes, not just the US ones. Only exception I have found is that Gymnastics was commentated by John and Bridget (I prefer John and Alicia but that’s a very small quibble) but they do commentate on the entire International feed and not just the American gymnasts. I don’t know why anyone continues to watch the NBC coverage with the full event replays (and live broadcasts) available.

 

[moonvine]

Not only does CBC have everything on live stream, but the full-event videos are available on the CBC website for watching later. I just hope I get caught up before they disappear.

This is true of NBC as well. I guess people don’t know? I have loads of track to catch up on.

 

[4everchan]

Here in my county, we have one indoor pool. It is a yards pool. The YMCA swim team uses it, the public high school swim team uses it, the Catholic high school teams (they have separate boy and girls teams and have separate practices), the Master Swim and Senior Olympians use it, and random people doing laps and water exercises use it. All the YMCA teams are yards and the high school teams are yards and the Senior Olympians are yards. I would love to swim in a meters pool to say I have done it but literally I would not know where to find one.

Our longest competition is 500 yards.

A mile is 32 laps. I’m glad I have a watch that keeps up with it.

Funny story, my first race was a 50 yards butterfly. Oh easy, I swim way more butterfly in a workout than that. Well 1. I started swimming as fast as I could and completely died 10 yards from the end. I thought I was going to have to quit 2. Never wear a new bathing suit to a race for the first time. Every pull it was coming down over my eyes so I couldn’t see. Someone ended up getting a huge binder clip from the office to hold it back. Since then I have had all kinds of stuff happen in races…goggles come off, I just throw them on the pool deck and keep going.
I told my coach what happened and she said swim the first length as slow as you can and then you can swim as fast as you want the next length. Which is horrible advice for an actual competitive swimmer but for someone who doesn’t want to have to quit in the last 10 yards has been ok advice.

again, it seems to me from your previous post that you need to work on endurance, cardio, breathing and pacing... 50 yards is very short.. you shouldn't have to swim as slow as possible in the first lap... but hey... i will stop the swimming advice here and leave it to your coach.. though i find this weird to tell a sprinter to swim that slowly on such a short race... there are probably other things to work on than that.