Swimming
Tips for the Fan
Like any sport, competitive swimming is confusing
to watch if you never participated in swim meets
yourself. However, as a spectator sport, you can
really start enjoying swimming quickly. Below
are a few suggestions for how to learn more about
the sport.
Swimming:
1. Read about the sport. Learn
the basics of the 4 major strokes (crawl/freestyle,
backstroke, breast-stroke, and butterfly), the
events, and scoring basics.
SportSpectator Fan's Guide
to Swimming: Our 10-minute guide to the sport.
Wikipedia:
Good wiki community write-up on the competitive
swimming.
USA
Swimming- Swimming 101: A basic guide by the
national governing body of swimming.
2. Understand the role of records.
At all levels, records are an exciting element
of the sport.
Personal Record: A personal record
(sometimes called a PR) is a great accomplishment
for any level of swimmer. The goal in every race
is to improve over one's best time for that event.
Winning a race is obviously important, but the
only thing a swimmer can control is his own performance.
Other records: Historical times
are used as a benchmark for swimmers. The highest
record to hold is a world record (very, very rare).
There will also be records for just about every
level of swimming (Olympic records, college records,
state high school records, club records, etc.).
Another prestigious accomplishment for elite swimmers
is to win an Olympic medal (also very rare).
3. Appreciate good techinique.
Watch the best swimmers to appreciate good technique.
Here are some suggestions for observing techinque:
CSTV:
Find clips of previous races.
DartSwim:
This is a training tool for swim technique, but
some of the free video clips are a good place
to start observing techinque from the best swimmers
in the world.
Diving:
1. Read about diving basics on
the following sites.
SportSpectator Fan's Guide
to Diving: The page of our guide focusing
on diving.
Wikipedia:
Good wiki write-up on diving.
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