Michael Phelps.... Deserving of the hype?

[Kevin]

Hi,
Couldn't find the Olympic rules or even the FINA rules online, but did find a primer for USA rules. Since both the USA and the Olympics rule sets are based on FINA, I suspect they are very similar. Note that in the breast stoke and butterfly, the swimmer must touch the wall with both hands on the turns and on the finish. I suspect that, on the finish, it's the second hand touching that is the official finish for that swimmer, but I didn't peruse this further.

--Pete

I was a breaststroker and IMer in High School and college. Yes, both hands have to touch the wall, but it's the first had that touches that stops the timer as best as I can remember. Judges watch all the turns to make sure that both hands touch reasonably close together as simultaneous touches aren't always realistic (neither Cavic or Phelps had simultaneous touches). The touchpads can easily record the multiple touches. I've been disqualified a few times for not hitting with both hands on turns in both butterfly and breaststroke. Doesn't really happen on finishes, it can but generally it means you had an illegal stroke to get your hands that far out of sync. On turns you'll start getting that lead arm moving as soon as you can and sometimes that means you don't get them both hitting the wall because you started the turn too soon.

Which brings up a story of judging. There was one time that I was DQ'd by a judge but we got it over ruled. In HS meets the breaststroke is the 2nd to last event, just before the 4x100 relay. Most HS meets only have pads on one end of the pool because they are generally 25 yard or 25 meter pools, but the shortest event is a 50 so you don't need them on both ends and they are expensive so you don't bother to pay that extra money to get them on both ends. Well the judge said that I didn't get 2 hands on the wall on my 2nd turn, which was a pad turn. My DQ meant we lost the meet by 2 points. Me not DQing was a 2 point win for us. Scoring was 6, 4, 3, 2, 1 points for 1st through 5th. I won the race and my teammates got 4th and 5th. So no DQ we get 9 points they get 7. With a DQ they get 11 points we get 5. My coach suspected the judge of a bias. He filed a complaint the pad records were looked at showed 4 touches. 2 for my hands (.013s apart and 2 for my feet which were I think .08s after my hand touches and .005s apart from each other yes the pads go to thousandths of a second though races only go to hundredths). The pads showed the touches, the other judge said he didn't have a clear view of the turn (he was not the turn judge but the stroke judge so it wasn't his job but he was consulted) the opposing coach also said he thought my turn was clean so I got my win instead of my DQ. I have no idea if they would have giving me the win back without the opposing coach saying he thought the turn was clean as well. It wasn't a good turn, I'll agree, I half stroked into the wall (which is the hands were so off I knew it was a bad finish and I barely hit the wall with the 2nd hand because I was trying to make up for the bad stroke with a faster turn, but it was legal in my mind so I was hot afterwards and told coach to challenge it.