Top 20 Most Significant Swimming Stories Of 2016: #14 The Rio Runes Lie In Ruins

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Updated: December 19, 2016

SwimVortex continues a countdown of the most significant swimming stories of Olympic Year 2016.

We started with progress, the heights of Katinka Hosszu and the Canadian Comeback, turned to a lack of progress in The Swimming Selfie, then considered inspiration and the impact of Michael Phelps on a generation knee-high when he was racing in his first Olympic final. Our list then turned to the theme that will not go away: doping and how to deal with it. We’ll be returning to the topic later in our countdown but yesterday we considered the Australia/ China interface and questions of faith & fair dinky. In parallel context, we then looked at the folk responsible for the environment of all the entries in the list above and most to come, too: FINA, an international federation that is, in all the wrong ways, same as it ever was.

Today, we consider the ruinous nature of runes in an Olympic year that drove home the wisdom of Bob Bowman when he said:

“Those who predict don’t know and those who know, don’t predict.”

No 14 – Runes In Ruins

A fine pub game: guessing who is going to win. No harm in it. Even journalists do it in public these days, some forced to put their heads on the block by those paying them to do so. A group of us used to do it for a bottle of wine as prize at every passing major competition. A little pride sometimes lost sometimes – but lots of fun.

Reading fanzone, these day, it feels like more than that: it all comes with opinion on those being predicted NOT to win, with assertive claim and the comfort of certainty when it comes to too many dubious readings of the runes, the blindspot a failure to hark the herald of history: expect the unexpected. The United States – boy how they were going to get beat; the Brits … nah, won’t happen for them; Horton? No chance, look at what happened at 2015 world titles. And on and on and on.

Rio was the Games that put it all back in the bag. Below is the SwimVortex review of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games for those who want to recall the thrills and spills. This entry makes our list because history has screamed back a reminder: nothing under the sun (not quite in all detail but in the round, spot on, including the eternal nature of pioneering) and feel free to expect the unexpected, let be what is about to be. The age of digital and social media has catapulted the armchair critic and pub pundit out into the orbit of public domain. Mind the Gap: as Bowman noted, if you know you don’t need to predict, while here’s a taste of what those who predicted didn’t know:

Anthony Ervin – by Patrick B. Kraemer

Men:

50 freestyle – Anthony Ervin 100 freestyle – Kyle Chalmers 400 freestyle – Mack Horton 100/200 back double – Ryan Murphy 200 breaststroke – Dmitriy Balandin 100 butterfly – Joe Schooling, 50.39 and fairly widely on the scale of skepticism, 200 ‘fly/IM wins once more – Michael Phelps

Pernille Blume – by Patrick B. Kraemer

Women:

50 freestyle – Pernille Blume 100 freestyle – Simone Manuel and/or Penny Oleksiak, let alone snap 100 backstroke – Katinka Hosszú 200 backstroke – Maya DiRado 200 butterfly – Mireia Belmonte

The biggest example of how and why prediction is best left to the pub and other fun forums – and not writ large as an art form and proof of wisdom – is Australia’s down side to the Games: three double world champion and the fastest woman and man ever over 100m free arrived with a shot at nine medals. The reality was one silver. No-one in the universe predicted that one – nor would knowledge have helped beyond knowing that asteroids do hit the earth just not that often (most burn up before they get to the surface).

Prediction success rates might have been lower this Olympic season than they have been in living memory. Not because fans are worse at guessing these days: it is just that it is now all out there, a permanent record of runes in ruins, the saving grace for many is that they don’t put their real names to any of it.

Swimming leaders with big budgets could improve greatly the way the sport informs its fans and wider public. Poor media services are one thing but in this age of everyone being able to bypass the world in the way of the direct message, the message is shallow and does little to improve knowledge and appreciation of the sport.

One of the most noticeable aspects of feds selling swimming and swimmers is that coaches are often overlooked. The bulk of Olympic profiles and the biographies of swimmers at major events this year ignore the coach altogether. That’s a pity. It is not about a name check. The question is: what’s being lost? The answers include Danyon Loader. Not the man of today but the boy on European tour after his surprise silver in the 200 ‘fly at Barcelona 1992. Loader was described as shy. I’m not sure I ever saw it quite like that. He wanted to think about what he wanted to say but was often not given the chance. Silence or short answers followed. Who to turn to to understand what the boy was about?

Why, Duncan Laing (RIP) of course. What a joy of an interview; what a story, what a journey, what colour to the tale. Talk to Bowman, Gemmell, Reese, Troy, Marshall, McNulty, Nelms, Vergnoux, Miley, Bohl, Best and the rest, one on one if the luck and chance arise but also at media conferences. The lore and lie of the seascape and all its stars is there in the daily lives of the folk at the pool for all seasons.

These are the people who know – sometimes with a quiet smile on their faces, sometimes with a look of resignation after the need to reassure and expose steely confidence is set aside for another day …. and occasionally with a sigh of sorrow at what might have been. The fans now know how that feels.

From the archive

Rio 2016 Olympic Games

SwimVortex Review

The Rio 2016 Olympic Games have now joined the pantheon and archive of all that was. We hope you enjoyed our coverage from Brazil. Below is our overview of the event, lists of top performers and performances on points, medals tables and a compilation of links to our comprehensive coverage, the news and views from Craig Lord and John Lohn, the images by Patrick B. Kraemer. As we head into the last weekend of action in Brazil before heading for a break, we take this opportunity to thank Liz Byrnes, Sabrina Knoll and the other journalists who helped us to cover events in Rio and in return received help from SwimVortex.

We dedicate out home page to the Games, the eight days of racing in the pool and the issues that made Rio 2016 like no other swim meet there has ever been as shoddy governance and tolerance of doping came home to bite.

We start with the obvious: the United States continued to teach a lesson to the wider world of swimming when it comes to stepping up for the biggest event in swimming – some would say, the only event.

The victory, as has long been the case, is one of conversion trials to main event. These – and not medals – would be closer to the mark when the blazers are reaching out for cutting their coat to suit their cloth on funding.

Australia finished second on the overall medals table as the nation that got much closer to the runaway victors than any other nation but there are two key aspects to the Australian result that take the shine off three golds and 13 medals in all: a catastrophic number of of missed chances in which four world champions went home without a solo medal of any colour; and beyond that, a woeful conversion rate in the depths, with less than a third of all swimmers producing a time faster than they had a trials back home four months earlier. The fallout and backwash have begun, inquiry to follow.

Swim Swimgometer: where the USA won the meet and where Australia lost it – Day By Day

That picture is all the more stark when we compare it to what happened to the United States, Great Britain and Japan. The percentages in the chart reflect the balance of numbers of swimmers who raced better in Rio than at trials and those who raced slower in Rio than at trials. In the mix, it is important to note that each nation had different numbers of swimmers in solo events overall (for example 26 USA male solo swims, compared to 10 for Canadians). Also worth noting that the United States had an edge of excellence in some events that translated to a swimmer racing slow than they had at trials still making the medals. That happens on most teams, with Rie Kaneto among the majority of Japanese swimmers who raced down at Rio but was still able to claim gold.

Men Women Overall Up Down Up Down Up Down USA 53.8 46.2 61.5 28.5 57.7 42.3 AUS 27.2 72.8 19.2 80.8 29.7 70.3 JPN 47.8 52.2 28.6 71.4 38.6 61.4 GBR 64.7 35.3 68.7 31.3 66.6 33.4 CAN 60.0 40.0 63.6 36.4 62.5 37.5

In terms of pure conversion rates from trials to main event, Great Britain and Canada have turned themselves around dramatically from previous events, the British tally from a home London 2012 Games more in the region of 30% up, 70% down. The United States has maintained a strong rate of conversion on a plain of excellence that stretches across most solo events.

There was just one men’s event that did not place an American on the podium – 400m free – while among women, the USA missed just two podiums, the 200m breaststroke and the 200m butterfly.

The medals are the measure of how all those conversions stack up. A year ago, the United States survived by the skin of a gold medal as No1 swim nation at the helm of world titles, with eight gold atop 23 medals. Australia has 7 gold, atop 16, And China? 5 gold atop 13 medals as Great Britain claimed 5 gold (2 in non-Olympic events) atop 9 medals. In Rio, China sank to six medals and a gold, after 10 medals and five golds four years ago at London 2012, when the hosts took a silver and two bronzes. Britain’s gold and 5 …

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