New starting blocks to send swimming records tumbling
The newly-designed platforms — whose forward-leaning wedge shape allows swimmers to propel themselves further into pools — are to be introduced at next year’s World Championships in Rome.
Developed by Omega, the Swiss watchmaker responsible for time-keeping at world competitions, the innovation won the backing earlier this year of FINA, global swimming’s governing body.
The “adjustable slanted footrest allows swimmers to use a crouch start with the rear-positioned leg at a 90-degree angle at the knee, generating an optimal starting profile,” the company said at the time.
The blocks were already tested at the warm-up pool for the 2007 World Championships in Melbourne and a “test event” for the Beijing Olympic Games in January this year.
European swimming experts say their inclined plates and steeper, five-position rear footholds are similar to those already used in track and field events.
“This will obviously bring better performances,” said Claude Fauquet, head swimming coach of the French national team.
“With the rear support, the speed at which one can leave the block will be much more important,” said Fauquet.
“If a swimmer has more speed at the beginning, he will go further into the water. So there will be less swimming and more energy available for the entire race.”
Alain Bernard, the 100m freestyle champion in Beijing who broke four world records in 2008, said the “advantage of these blocks is swimmers can push a bit longer and more towards the back than towards the bottom of the platform.”
For his coach Denis Auguin, these platforms will “change quite a lot”.
“The necessary power that a swimmer could transmit from existing blocks was sufficient only in regard to the fact that there was no support for the rear of the foot,” he said.
Auguin raised concerns that the platforms will prove to be as controversial as the swimsuits that helped competitors like US sensation Michael Phelps break new ground in 2008.
However the blocks were likely to cause the sport “less damage” than the suits, he said, even though “those with more strength will have an advantage.”
“Really it would be a mistake to once again take such a rearguard stance, but maybe all the talk once again will revolve around the equipment and not the swimmers,” he said.
Better performances were also due to hard work and improvements in training, said Auguin. “These boys and girls train a lot,” he said.
“It would be much better to talk about them and not about starting blocks, swimsuits and pools,” he said.
The platforms were to have been installed at pools for the Beijing Olympics, but the move was cancelled as it was not possible for national federations to obtain them in time for the swimmers to get used to them.
“FINA will consider this criterion in order to validate the blocks by mid-March at the latest,” the swimming body’s executive director Cornel Marculescu said.
A technical committee will meet at the end of January in Miami, Florida, to study all proposals suggested by a swimming commission at a World Cup session earlier this month in Stockholm.
But the meeting is only expected to rubber stamp the introduction of the new blocks. Pools at the 2009 World Championships in Rome will be properly equipped.
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