BERKELEY, California, May 7. OLYMPIC gold medalist Nathan Adrian was featured on an episode of MythBusters last night on the Discovery Channel.
The myth being tested on the show was whether "Swimming in Syrup" would be faster than swimming in water. The thought process behind the myth is that the slipperiness of the syrup would more than make up for any added bulk when trying to swim.
According to the Kast-A-Way blog, Adrian swam in a 75-foot long trench in the desert. One was filled with water, and the other was filled with a mixture of guar as the syrup compound. By the end of the episode, "the myth was deemed "Plausible" considering unexplained variables in the results."
While Adrian swam the water length in 9.81 seconds, he finished the syrup swim in 10.87 seconds. The hosts, however, decided that too many variables were not controlled and that the myth would remain plausible. One variable is that Adrian's technique changed by a wide margin when swimming in the syrup.
"It was a really fun experience," Adrian said. "It was cool hanging out with the show's hosts, Jamie (Hyneman) and Adam (Savage), and getting treated like a T.V. star. It was a nice day in November and it allowed me to miss practice."