The Shortest Swim May Be the Most Complicated
After swimming the 50-meter freestyle in under 22 seconds at the United States Olympic trials in July, Jones spent several minutes huddled over a piece of paper with his coach, trying to identify why his Olympic dream had coughed and sputtered.
Jones, a Bronx native, was third in the final, missing a berth to Beijing by 0.16 second. He was pretty sure he knew what went wrong. His hunch was corroborated by the printout, which listed his reaction time on the start; the elapsed time from when he hit the water after the dive to his first stroke; his splits at 15, 30 and 45 meters; and his stroke-rate count.
Jones’s stroke rate was high, indicating he was spinning his wheels, not catching the water as efficiently with each arm pull as he had in the preliminaries when he was clocked in an American record of 21.59 seconds. Garrett Weber-Gale, who took first at the trials, lowered it to 21.47.
The 50 freestyle is perhaps the most misunderstood of Olympic swimming events. Because it is the first race most children try when dipping their big toes into year-around competitive swimming, it is easy to get the wrong impression.
To be a specialist in the event is to continually fight the perception that, to paraphrase former basketball coach Bob Knight, all swimmers learn to race the 50 freestyle in the second grade and most go on to better things.
Weber-Gale, a 22-year-old who swims for United States Olympic men’s Coach Eddie Reese at Texas Aquatics, warmed up for his victory in the 50 free at the trials with a first-place finish in the 100 freestyle. The 50 free, Weber-Gale said, is the more complicated of the two events. “A lot of people think you’re just thrashing in the 50,” Weber-Gale said. “But there’s a lot more to it than that. You’re trying to go as fast as you possibly can without trying.”
Swimmers who specialize in the 50 freestyle have no margin for error and no time to settle into a comfort zone.
“In the 100,” Weber-Gale said, “if you have a bad start you can probably make up that one- or two-tenths of a second you lost. If you have a bad start in the 50, good luck, because you’re probably not going to be in the ballgame.”Perhaps that is why primal screams, thigh-slapping, gun-and-holster gestures, spitting in the lane of an opponent are part of the repertory for those who toil in the 50. “You have to have that edge,” said Dara Torres, who held the world record in the women’s 50 in the 1980s and who clocked an American record of 24.25 seconds en route to victory at the trials.
The American Matt Biondi, who broke the world record in the 50 three times between 1986 and 1988, said, “I’d actually swim faster if I backed off a little bit. I found it helpful to throttle back the first eight, nine strokes.”
In 1986, Biondi was timed in 22.33 to supplant another American, Tom Jager, as the world-record holder. They traded it back and fourth over for the next four years. Eamon Sullivan of Australia clocked a 21.28 in March to set the current standard.
The Zen of the 50 goes beyond slowing down to swim faster. The rule of thumb on breathing, said Ben Wildman-Tobriner, the reigning world champion, is that, “If you take a breath when you need it, it’s too late.”
“People who tend to be cerebral, who are thinking: ‘Don’t forget to breathe; remember to kick; am I ahead?’ are not going to excel in the 50,” Biondi said. “The more people hold onto those thoughts the slower they’ll end up going.”
The shorter the race, the more room for regrets. A race that was over in less than 22 seconds has stayed with the 24-year-old Jones for weeks.
He cannot shake the memory of the 50 freestyle at the trials. He did not gauge the finish right and ended up taking a choppy stroke near the finish that he believes cost him second place.
“It haunts my dreams,” said Jones, who qualified for the 4x100 freestyle relay team that won gold Monday. “I really, really, really wanted to swim the 50 in the Olympics.”
Jones could still have a chance to swim the 50 in 2012. Aleksandr Popov of Russia, whose world record in the 50 stood nearly eight years before Sullivan first surpassed it in February, was 32 when he competed in the 50 at the 2004 Games. Torres, who will compete in the 50 later this week, is 41.
The shorter the race, the longer it takes to master. “The only way you’re going to be able to get super fast,” Weber-Gale said, “is to be as efficient as you possibly can and perfecting your stroke takes a long time.”
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