| |
| | Inwit Publishing, Inc. and Inwit, LLC -- Writings, Links and Software Demonstrations - The Science of the Summer Games ... (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20) |
 | | Organized swimming hardly existed until the nineteenth century, although the Japanese did have competitive swimming as far back as 36 B.C. During the Middle Ages Europeans swam very little the feeling was that water spread disease, and should be avoided (for washing too!). |
 | | James Counsilman, the hugely successful Indiana University swimming coach, wrote, "Although a swimmer may swim in an almost straight line, his movements to accomplish this are all circular or rotary...." World-class swimmers used to try to root out the s-curve from their strokes, but "it kept winning races," and now the s-curve is lovingly cultivated. |
 | | Obviously, some wavemaking is inevitable in vigorous swimming, but in modern pools the effect is reduced in two ways: by contoured "gutters" around the edges of the pool, which damp out wave action, and by dividing the competition lanes with finlike disks or perforated floating cylinders. |
| www.inwit.com /inwit/writings/scienceofthesummergames.html (5160 words) |
|