Analysis by Jeff Commings
TUCSON – Can you beat Rowdy Gaines’ gold medal winning time from the 1984 Olympic Games? Starting March 1, hundreds of swimmers will try as they begin competing in meets to achieve their goal of earning a place in the 2016 Olympics. When FINA released the list of 2016 Olympic swimming qualifying times last week, the journey to the Rio Games officially began.
Many will decry that the “A” qualifying time in many events are way too fast, but the Olympics is the highest level of competition the sport has, and it’s only natural that only the very best – with a few exceptions under the universality clause – are invited to the meet. And it’s the nature of the sport. If the majority of times at the Olympic Games don’t get faster every four years, then we’ve got a very big problem in the sport.
But let’s put the qualifying times for the 2016 Olympics in perspective. Though FINA has set some very fast standards, none of the times would have won a gold medal at the past four Olympics. A few of the cuts are so “slow” that you’d have to go back as far as 1972 to find a Games that wasn’t as fast as the 2016 qualifying times. Interestingly, the longer the distance, the further back in history one must go to find a time that is slower than the 2016 Olympic swimming qualifying time.
For example, anyone wishing to qualify in the men’s 100 freestyle for the Rio Games must swim faster than Rowdy Gaines’ gold medal time of 49.80 set in the 1984 Olympics. So in some ways, there is a virtual race to beat Rowdy and go a 48.99 to at least have an opportunity to qualify for 2016. (Lookout Rowdy!) Keep in mind, that not everyone who makes the cut will go. Swimmers still have to be selected by their country and each country is limited to just two swimmers per event.
The women’s 200 IM is the only anomaly in the list. The event was not swum at the 1976 or 1980 Olympics, which is why 1972 is listed as the earliest event in which the 2016 Olympic qualifying time would have won gold.
Check out the charts below to see which Olympics was slower than the current qualifying time in each individual event.
Men’s 2016 Olympic swimming qualifying times
[table “” not found /]Women’s 2016 Olympic swimming qualifying times
[table “” not found /]Where does your best time sit in the annals of history? Do you make the cut? Do you know how far back into the history books you have to go for your current best time to win an Olympic Gold Medal?
If I had a time machine when I was 18, maybe I could have beaten Duke Kahanamoku in 1920. He swam 1:00.4 for 100 meters to win the Olympic Gold.
Pools, turns, suits and technique were pretty different then. If you factor all those things in, that was an outstanding swim for the Duke. I would never compare myself to a legend (how many Olympics did he swim in?), but you asked if I could have beaten the time.
It’s interesting that my Princeton teammate Jed Graef ’64 swam the 200 back in 210.3 to win the gold medal in the 1964 Olympics, which would have just barely qualified him for the women’s cutoff today.
Truth be told, those times are not really fast compared to the last olympics. In fact, this is the first time the A cut gets slower from one olymipcs to the next in a few events. Reason for that is that for London, the A cut was the 16th place in the ‘cleaned up’ world rankings of 2010 (cleaned up means 2 per country), for Rio it is the 16th place in the London olympics.
As swimmers around the world keep on getting faster, they will need to swim even closer to the A-Cut this time around than they had to in 2012 in order to get invited by FINA.
Just one quick glance to history, back in 2003 that w100fr 54.43 would have brought silver in World Champs… And 4th place in Athens, .04 from bronze…. oh how much times have gone faster….
A couple of those times seem so fast that your Olympic Trials were held too far out from the actual Olympics, you could theoretically miss the peak of the trajectory from a rapidly-improving young swimmer. The women’s 100 back, for example, at 1:00.2. Only a second faster than that could make Olympic finals and a few tenths more than that you could be down in the 58+ range contending for a medal. Unlikely, yes, but not unheard of, for someone to improve that much at that level in a couple months.
As an aside from that, I’ve always wondered if the USA could do better having their trials earlier. However they do just fine holding them close to the Olympics, and this may be one reason why.