Category: News

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Starts, Turns and Pacing

World Aquatics Championships provide a great opportunity to have a look at the difference in skills, and therefore the effectivness of the execution of race plans.

mywaterworld.life has put together this quick analysis of the Women’s 400 and Men’s 1500m freestyle events and the 4 x 100 freestyle relays.

FINA SC Champs 2022 MelbDownload

In none of the events were the diffences in reaction times and skills off the turns significant enough to affect the results in any meaningful ways.

The events featured are all longer events, or relays, but when you get down to the shorter ones (50s and 100s) , and especially as this is short coure racing, hundreths of a second make the diffrence between a podium finish and not even making a final. This equally applies in relays as there are multipel changeovers and corresponding reaction time. It is so important to make evey push-off and turn in training a skill development pririoty. And as for the starts and turns, try some box jumps and burpees.

Pacing for the distance events is critical so have a look at the tables and see how consistent the pacing needs to be – train that pacing.

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Plannning for 2023

2022 is quickly winding down so mywaterworld.life is turning its attention to a big 2023.

2023 will see the usual menu of club, state, regional and national championships and the, twice postponed, 2021 FINA World Masters Championships which are now back on the competition callendar commencing in Japan on 2 August 2023.

mywaterworld.life has just created a new 2023 Championship Preparation Planning page. That page provides masters swimmers with the entry point for planning their 2023 training and racing campaigns.

On that page, mywaterworld.life sets out the simple step (by contacting mywaterworld.life) that you can take to generate a season plan, based on your major and minor racing dates, and from where you wil be able to access to our 2023 resources.

For our Tasmanian friends, here is a snapshot of the initial high level level plan which you can download.

If you decide to print this high level plan, set your printer to print in “Landscape” mode.

TrainingPlan2023Download

Go to our planning page!

To keep up to date you can subscribe from here.

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LEN Masters Swimming Championships – Day 1

The LEN Masters Swimming Championships are now in full swing with racing on day 1 completed – the 800m freestyle for both women and men.

So how did they go?  Two LEN Records – one female and one male, a high standard of racing and great times across the genders and most age groups.

And now, turning to the winning times. The table below sets out the winning time in each age group. Times in Bold are the new LEN records.

An impossible task, to report on the results from 26 age categories, so here are the links to the downloadable results for each gender.

Results day 1 – including splits

FINA Point* comparisons

FINA points for age group winning times are a great comparative indicator of the standard of each age group competition at the championships. The benchmark for each age group and gender is the FINA world record for the event as at 31 December of 2021.

The table that follows sets out the FINA points achieved by the winning time in each age group.

The average FINA points for the winners in the age categories were 852 for the men and 784 for women. The FINA points for the LEN Record breakers are displayed in bold.

To get a better understanding of the quality of the results, a comparison to the 2022 Australian championships results may help.  At those championships, conducted at the site of the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, the average FINA points of the winners, with the events conducted in short-course mode, were 673 compared to 852 LEN for men, and 624, compared to 784 LEN for the women.   As one would expect, the standard at the LEN Championships was significantly higher and the points confirm that conclusion.

So that’s a bit of a look at the LEN Masters Swimming championships, Day 1.

Day 2 events are the men’s and women’s 400m freestyle and 100m butterfly. You can follow the results and the live stream from here.

* To avoid any confusion, mywaterworld.life points out that the downloadable LEN results include world record times (WR).  These are the WR times at the date of the LEN Championships. These may not be the same times used in the FINA points calculation, which, for Long Course events are the WR times at 31 December 2021.

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European Masters Swimming Championships*

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Pool Racing starts Sunday, 28 August.

If you are on the Australian east coast, remember the 8hr time difference. With racing starting in Rome at say 9:00 am, that equates to a 5:00 pm start on the Aus. east coast.

Five thousand competitors – now that is a sizeable meet so plenty of racing, starting with the 800s on Sunday. You can get the full racing schedule from here.

The championships are being conducted in two pools – the Centro Federale UNIPOL BluStadium di Pietralata and the Stadio Olimpico del Nuoto – takes some of us back to the 1960 Rome Olympics as that is the main site of the refurbished complex for these championships.

Racing is being live-streamed from both the competition pools.
Stadio Olympico – live stream and schedule
Stadio di Pietralata – live stream and schedule

Both pages have event and access to heat lists so you can follow your European friends or check out the form of your competitors.

If you spot something interesting that you think mywaterworld.life should share about these championships , please contact us.

*The image used in this post is from a screen capture from the official championship site.

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Update on the 2022 FINA World Masters Championships

It is only tentative at this stage,  but looks like this is going to be the schedule for the Masters Championships. 

Lots of water to flow under the bridge and possibly some heavy seas before these championships are up and running, starting with making the program final and the entry system being opened.

The promising signs are that the organizing committee is in the process of getting the medals designed and has called for volunteers for the championships. Japan is now also slowly opening up to international travel with Japan commencing to accept foreign nationals coming to the country for business trips, study abroad or technical training starting on Monday, 8 November (Japan Times.)    Still to come of course is news of when other visitors to the country will be able to enter Japan.

The current situation with vaccinations in Japan is that 73.6% of the population is fully vaccinated while 78.3% have had their first shot. The comparative percentages at 4 November for the USA are 58.3 % and 67.7%,  Australia 66.8% and 75.0% and France 68.3% and 76.1%

As for the numbers of new infections in Japan, on 6 November there were 230 with a 7 day average of 201.

It’s looking very favorable for the championships … at this stage.

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Kyle Chalmers – 44.84 – 100m Free World Record

How good is it to get first hand insights into what it took to set a new men’s 100 Freestyle World Short Course Record – Congratulations Kyle Chalmers!!!!

Out in 21.40, (0.32 under world record pace) and back in 23.44 for a new world record mark of 44.84 Wow!!

Thanks as well to Brett Hawke for the interview.

Kyle has been on a journey of racing over the past couple of months, maximizing that imense talent, and racing like he has never raced before.  One of the keys to that world record was Kyle’s racing schedule, week in and week out, and the opportunity to implement what he practices in real racing conditions.

I his own words, Kyle has “ finally started to figure it out”.  The constant racing enabled Kyle to work out and implement what he had to do to execute a great swim for that world record and execute he did.

The fruits of the work Kyle has put in can be seen in the break out off his start, the “execution into the walls”, leg speed in the turns, “pumping five fly kicks off the wall”, stroke rate maintenance, and hitting his goal time at the 50m split. 

Yes, the importance of the work off the wall. In the interview Kyle maintains that this is still “an area [he] needs to improve on to be the best in the world”. He also speaks about the role of his coach in pushing the skills aspect ”day-in, day-out”.  Kyle also talks about his breathing pattern – shows how individual that is.

Check out Brett Hawke interviewing Kyle Chalmers about his short course 100m freestyle world record.

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Sue Mayne – Top Tasmanian National Record Breaker

In our latest news story, mywaterworld.life looks at the Tasmanian masters swimmers who have broken national records over the years. 

Top of the listing is Sue Mayne having set 69 national marks.

You can read all about the record breakers in our latest News story

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Wendy Winzenberg – MST’s top record breaker for 2020

Wendy Winzenberg from the Devonport Masters Swimming Club is Tasmania’s top record breaker for 2020.

In a season’s training disrupted by by the pandemic, Wendy set a total of 15 new marks, five of which were long course and 10 short course.

Showing her versatility, Wendy broke 10 freestyle records over distance from 50m to 1500m, 3 butterfly and 2 backstroke sprint records at distance of 25 and 50m.

There is a full roundup of MST’s 2020 records in mywaterworld.life‘s first story of 2021 in the news section.

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MST SC LD 2020 Championships

A small but enthusiastic group of masters swimmers challenged themselves at the 25th Masters Swimming Tasmania (MST), Short Course, Long Distance championships staged in Launceston on Saturday 12 December.

The mywaterworld.life full story on these championships is in the news section.

The top FINA point scoring swim of the meet was by Damian Bennett in the 1500m Freestyle.  Damian is from the Launceston club and his time of 18:28.08 was a new Tasmanian Masters record in the 50-54 year age group.

As for the racing – there were many Tasmanian personal bests and records established – sixteen records all together- thirteen by the men and 3 by the women.

Records* were shared between four clubs. The Hobart Aquatic Centre topped the records table with seven.

The top record breaker at the meet was Costan Magnussen from the Van Diemans virtual club.  Costan set his records in the 400, 800 and 1,500m Backstroke events and the 800 Individual Medley.

Wendy Winzenberg (Devonport) and Maciej Slugocki (Hobart Aquatic) broke three records each.  Wendy set her marks in the 400, 800 and 1500m Freestyle events while Maciej’s were in the 200, 400 and 800 Backstroke. The other record breakers were Brent Walker Tony Forman and Damian Bennett with two each.

mywaterworld.life earlier published a story about the national records broken by Tracy Clarkson and you can catch up with that news here.

*The status of all records established at this meet, as of 14 December 2020, is pending.

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Clarkson sets new National Masters Swimming Australia Records

mywaterworld.life congratulates Tracy Clarkson, from the Brisbane Northside Masters Swimming Club, on her two new Masters Swimming Australia records*.

Competing at a meet in Tasmania, Tracy set new Australian records in the 70-74 year age group for the 1500m freestyle in a time of 24:07.42 while also capturing the 800 record** on the way in a time of 12:49.34.  Both the times were also new Queensland records.

Tracy also broke the Queensland 400 Individual Medley record in her second race within the space of two hours swimming a time of 7:29.28

To top the meet off, Tracy recorded the top two FINA points swim of the meet – Congratulations Tracy.

Masters Swimming Tasmania held their 25th Short Course Long Distance Championships on Saturday 12 December 2020 at the Launceston Aquatic Center.

* At the time of writing, the records were provisional. Since then they been confirmed.
** The time for the 800 record has been updated as it was incorrectly reported in the original post.