As swimming winds down and track and field begins in earnest, the two glamor events of the Olympic Games make for a study in contrasts.
Swimmers keep going faster and faster, setting world records in virtually every meet. But in track and field, most of the women’s world records were set in the 1980s, and half the men’s marks before 1997.
Doping is a cloud that has enveloped the question of records in Olympic sports. The extent to which it has allowed athletes to make history in the last three decades may never fully be known.
But there is no disputing that as stricter testing regimens have been imposed and public pressure has increased, track records remain mostly frozen in time, while the swimmers continue to beat the clock. Experts aren’t entirely sure why, but they cite factors such as technology, training and even the differing nature of the competitions themselves.
They suggest that while humankind has been running, jumping and throwing for thousands of years and may now be pushing the boundaries of what is possible, competitive swimming is a comparatively recent endeavor, one not yet maxed out physiologically.
Scott Davis, co-author of a USA Track & Field statistical manual, pointed out that American Jimmy Hines ran the 100 meters in a world-record 9.95 seconds at altitude in 1968. That was lowered by Tim Montgomery to 9.78 in 2002.
“We’re 17/100ths of a second faster [nearing] 40 years later,” Davis said. “That’s not a whole lot. You get close to the point of human peak performance in these events.”
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In the water, by contrast, the men’s 100-meter freestyle record has dropped by more than four seconds since 1968 and by more than three since 1972, when Mark Spitz swam a world-record 51.22 seconds at the Munich Olympics. The current mark is 47.84, set at the Sydney Games in 2000 Games by Pieter van den Hoogenband of the Netherlands.
On Wednesday, the U.S. women’s 4×200 relay team erased swimming’s oldest world record, set in 1987 by an East German team. The U.S. team finished in 7:53.42, wiping out the old mark by more than two seconds.
Perhaps nothing, however, underscores the vulnerability of swimming records more than Michael Phelps’ dominance in the 400-meter individual medley. Last weekend Phelps set a world record of 4:08.26. It was the fifth time in two years he had done so.
Among other factors, experts cite:
Breakthroughs in suits, gear and even the pool itself.
A more sophisticated biomechanical understanding of the way human beings move through water.
Better training.
The opening up of the sport to athletes from nations that traditionally have not been swimming powers.
Some in swimming credit old-fashioned grit and dedication.
“The way we get people to go faster the next year is we bring them in and make them work harder,” said Eddie Reese, the 2004 U.S. men’s Olympic coach.
Others point to technology.
“The suits help a lot–I mean, a lot,” said Oussama Mellouli, 20, a Tunisian who finished fifth in the 400 IM.
Mellouli was one of two Africans to win medals at last year’s swimming world championships in Barcelona, evidence of swimming’s increasingly worldwide reach.
But technological advances have contributed in track too. Australia’s Cathy Freeman won the 400 meters at the Sydney Olympics in a special suit. Her gold-medal run of 49.11 seconds was nonetheless a whopping 1.51 seconds slower than the world record–set in 1985 by East German Marita Koch.
In any case, athletes, coaches and others say doping is so widespread in all sports that it must be included in any thoughtful consideration of the matter.
“There’s a sadness that every time people see a great performance, they assume doping,” said Mark Schubert, coach of the U.S. women’s swim team. “It’s just not true.”
Track and field is engulfed with doping issues. The sport’s worldwide governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations, held a 45-minute news conference last weekend, and every question related to doping.
“It’s a bit depressing, to say the least,” IAAF spokesman Nick Davies said. “We’re a news sport now. Not a sport sport.”
A look at recent Olympic history provides some clues about the role doping has played in track and field records.
At Barcelona in 1992, each of the men’s shot put medalists had served drug suspensions. Two of the top three at Atlanta in 1996 ultimately received doping-related life bans, including the gold medalist, American Randy Barnes, who still holds the world record of 75 feet 10 1/4 inches, set in 1990.
Ten years later, after the adoption of stricter doping controls, the winning throw at the Sydney Games was 69-10 1/4 by Finland’s Arsi Harju, which is not among the top 25 of all time. The winning throw in Athens, by Yuriy Bilonog of the Ukraine, fell even shorter at 69-5 1/4.
No world records in track and field were set at the Sydney Games, or at the 2001 or 2003 world championships. Atlanta produced only one mark: Michael Johnson’s 19.32-second sprint in the 200. He tested clean throughout his career.
Three of the 23 women’s all-time track and field marks were set in the 1980s by athletes from the former East Germany, notorious for having systematically doped its athletes.
John Godina, an American shot putter who won silver in Atlanta and bronze in Sydney before taking a disappointing ninth at Athens, has long been an ardent anti-doping advocate. He said of the doping issues now afflicting the U.S. track and field program:
“You can you look at it as you’ve got a lot of people caught and it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Or you can look at it logically: We have a small bunch of cheaters, and the rest of the people are clean.”
The current doping scandal was sparked in large measure by the investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, a nutritional supplements company in Burlingame, Calif. Four men, including track coach Remi Korchemny and BALCO founder Victor Conte, have been charged with multiple felony counts. Authorities allege steroids and other substances were distributed to Olympic and other athletes. All four have pleaded not guilty.
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Swimming has also endured its share of doping issues–in particular, the East Germans in the 1970s and 1980s and, later, the Chinese.
During the 1990s, 32 Chinese swimmers were caught for drug offenses. In 1998, Australian customs inspectors found 13 vials of human growth hormone hidden in the luggage of one Chinese swimmer.
And while Marion Jones, Montgomery and a number of other prominent track and field athletes testified last year before a grand jury in San Francisco investigating the BALCO matter, so did swimmer Amy Van Dyken, who won four gold medals at the Atlanta Games in 1996. She has not commented on her testimony and has not been charged with wrongdoing.
It seems implausible, officials and experts said, to think swimmers somehow have access to better drugs or more sophisticated doping-evasion techniques than track coaches. This is particularly true since the financial incentive to cheat in track is readily apparent to a world-class athlete, with a summer European circuit offering appearance fees and prize money. There is no such lucrative parallel in swimming.
But at the pool the marks keep going down. At the U.S. Olympic trials, swimmers set six world marks. At Sydney: 14 world records, 38 Olympic marks.
Others, however, say it’s foolhardy to believe there’s no cheating in the water.
“To say that swimming is clean is an exaggeration,” said John Leonard, executive director of the American Swim Coaches Association. “There are people who are using things that we can’t catch yet. We’re cleaner than most, I think.”