Day 9

Thursday in Beijing, Min Zu Yuan Rd. Chao Yang PRC

Records, records and a few disappointments for the US team.

But first this:
The first few days here it seemed as if we pretty much had Olympic Green to ourselves. This appears to be as a result of only a few competitions taking place here--- early in the week. All that changed yesterday and in a big way. People from around the world are arriving here and the village is coming alive. I like it. We discussed the possibility that the Chinese had over estimated things given the sparse nature of the crowds we were seeing (were seeing) and now we know differently. The crowds have arrived. It is great! I suspect that once Track and Field events begin it will be very busy here as the Birds Nest is gigantic and seats around 90 thousand.

(This just in…. turns out the Chinese are now selling non-event tickets that allow you into the Olympic Green but don’t allow you to go see an event. You can visit the displays, buy food ( see below) and souvenirs. I am not sure they are selling them.., but if I had to guess, I’d say they are. Given there are 12 million or so people in the city…. What a great idea!)

It is still true that there are very few Europeans and fewer Americans. When you do run into them (them is us!) they are very likely to be affiliated with a team or parent, sister, brother or athlete. The theme the Chinese are shouting loudly appears to be true.. as “we are one world” rings very true here.

I had lunch today at McDonalds. It is very hard to admit this but quite honestly it is the best food choice available. Actually, it is the only choice available. Well, not quite the only choice.

You can, however, buy self-cooked lunches here. Self- cooked doesn’t mean what it means at home. The consumer does little. The lunch cooks itself. You pull a string on the lower portion of the container and it releases water into a chemical pack. The water begins to superheat through a chemical reaction and rapidly reaches phase change or boiling temperature. Your food cooks while you stand at the food kiosk watching. After ten minutes the ‘meal’ is ready to go…. If it weren’t too hot to pick up. Which it is. So you have to wait ten minutes before you can go anywhere.

What is it? Rice and some kind of chicken…. Uhh… parts. “Chicken parts.” That is the only way to describe the contents. But the meal is hot. “Hot chicken parts.” Perhaps that is the Chinese translation. I suppose I should tell you that when they cut up a chicken here, they don’t bother to remove the bones first? So the “hot chicken parts should maybe be something akin to “Crunchy and hot chicken parts.” And while it sounds bland, I can attest to the fact that it is anything but. To make it edible the manufacturer adds plenty of pepper and other spices. Thus, to be exact (which the Chinese usually are) the meal is more accurately referred to as “ Self-cooked, spicy and crunchy, hot chicken parts.” With rice. I almost forgot. “Self cooked, spicy and crunchy, hot chicken parts with rice.” Steamed white rice. Well, you get the idea. McDonalds is a better option.

And as long as we are on that topic, McDonalds is a major sponsor and thus, as the Chinese Organizer have assured sponsors that there will be no competition in the venue…. Mickie D’s is it. So it really does come down to a Big Mac or “self cooked spicy, and crunchy, hot chicken parts with steamed rice.” No competition there.

I am forced to add some personal commentary here. My friend Pan from China has told me "the Chinese will eat everything with legs except the kitchen table.” “And many more things that don’t have legs.” Menus are long and the variety of food stuffs is amazing. You have to wonder why they would embrace a menu with about a dozen realistic choices… all imported directly from America. America where our children face an epidemic of health concerns related to obesity.

And while on that topic… it is very unusual to see anyone from China overweight and even more uncommon to see anyone who could accurately be referred to as obese. Do you think that there is a connection between American fast food and…. traditional Chinese fare… and obesity? Could be. There are probably other factors as well. But the bottom line is that for now…when out on the streets of Beijing… you see fit and trim locals and very few overweight people--- regardless of age. Someone needs to understand how and or why this is true.

And one more thought on this topic. My mother always encouraged me to finish my dinner because there were “starving children in China..” So mom, I gotta tell you right now, I haven’t seen any. You can rest easy after all these years of worry. And Beijing is a city of over twelve million souls! It is not as if the Chinese government has hidden them all. We see children everywhere we go.

It is true that they have far fewer material belongings than we Americans do. We could all live without about 80% of what we have. True? But that is another issue all together. As far as food goes…. there appears to be plenty of it here. And yet, no rampant obesity. Hmmmm. All these thoughts come while sitting in a McDonalds in BOG Olympic Green among an estimated nine hundred Chinese. I want to hold up a sign that says “be careful of what you wish for!”
On to swimming for just a bit. The onslaught (is that the correct expression?) of world records in swimming is perplexing. Maybe even troubling. The causes and or reasons for the recent multiple records in competitive swimming, however, are of interest to both the general public, swimmers and coaches and the scientific community. Why now? Is it a matter of significantly better talent? How much faster can the records get? Is this really an unusual occurrence and are the records being set at an unprecedented rate? It sure seems so! Are the new records a result of new training techniques or enhanced nutrition? Is the technology associated with the new swims suits or novel pharmacology assisting swimmers in a manner that prior to now did not occur? As usual, the questions are much easier to pose than is the process for finding the correct answers to them. There may, however, be evidence available that helps shed light on this ‘record setting’ observation.

In the past, scholarly interest in the prediction of the boundaries of human performance has largely focused upon performance in running events. Similar to swimming, however, there is very little technology required by the track athlete beyond a pair of shoes. That used to be especially true for swimming. Until now.

In track, as a means to predict performances, initial analyses relied primarily upon linear regression models using prior performances to predict future athletic records. Criticism of this approach include the observation that linear models do not allow for an ‘ultimate limit’ to human performance. Eventually, given enough time, the linear models supposed by several authors predict “humans will run negative world record times”. While this is clearly absurd, linear models of performance do not allow or accept that there may be physiological, anatomical and biomechanical limitations that simply cannot be overcome by better training, more practice or better protoplasm.

Neither do these early linear models take into account improvements in such factors as nutrition, coaching knowledge, sociological and or economic factors that might influence performance (in either direction). Finally, linear models do not account for the fact that the characteristics of the competitors and competition used to generate model may influence the slope of the progression line. If the sport has only recently been introduced, it stands to reason that the rate of improvement will be greater early on as compared with that observed twenty or thirty years later simply as a matter of the sport itself approaching maturity.

For example, analysis of women’s events would suggest that their performances are improving at a greater rate than are the men’s. As a result, linear analysis suggests that eventually, in some events, the women’s records will eclipse those of the men. While not impossible, it is more likely that the relationship is not linear and that with time, the rate of improvement in women’s records will slow and become similar to that seen in the progression of the men’s records.
Human movement in the water, i.e., swimming, in many ways is a more complicated athletic performance to understand than is running. This is due, in part, to our current inability to fully understand and explain the fundamental biomechanics of swimming. Because of the complex nature of the relationships between propulsive forces and resistive forces in the water the mechanisms that allow humans to move at speeds in excess of two meters a second are, as yet, only partially described. Nevertheless, statistical analysis of swim performances can be performed in a manner similar to what has been done in running with the singular reasonable assumption that there is a limit to how fast a human can swim over a set distance.
Have I lost you yet? Yes? Maybe it is the double cheese burger I just ate! Or maybe it was the caffeine in the Coke (another major sponsor) which is said to heighten arousal and enhance brain activity. Hang with me.

Let’s try this: pictures are worth a thousand words, right? So here goes.
Chris Brammer, Dave Tanner and Kosuke Kojima and I have been thinking about this for the last couple weeks. Chris put together for me a couple of graphs to illustrate what is taking place. Figure 1 represents the improvement in swim speed in the men’s 100-meter freestyle when represented as speed (meters per second) as a function of time. The values provided are the average of all of the records set within an Olympiad quadrennial. Thus, for example, although the first person to swim faster than two meters per second for 100 meters did so in 1976 (Jim Montgomery, USA, 1976) the mean value for records during that Olympiad was somewhat less than two meters per second. This relationship can also be represented as simply date vs. event time (in seconds) as shown in Figure 2.

One caveat to any mathematical analysis of swim performance (and subsequent predictions of performance) based upon prior performances, is that undefined and confounding variables may introduce biases into the analysis and potentially perturbs the ability of any subsequent model to be accurate. For example, documented use of performance enhancing pharmacological compounds during the early to mid 1970’s causes an overestimation of the rate of potential improvements in subsequent years. In other words, performances subsequent to this era will appear as if something has caused a slowing of the progression rather than the return to a normal ‘unbiased’ progression after drug usage was curbed by advanced testing or the ability to secure the most effective drugs. As time goes by, however, additional performances will ‘correct’ the model allowing for earlier truly biased performances to be seen. The cause of the temporary perturbations will be speculative, at best, unless reinforced by historical confirmations.

In this regard, modeling performances on past competition might allow insight into one current controversy in competitive swimming. The newly introduced “body suits” pit swimming purists directly against commercial financial interests. The debate centers on the introduction of high technology swim apparel into swim competition. Until recently, the regulatory concern within the competitive swimming community was to enforce the rules that insured enough coverage in a swim suit worn during competition as to be socially acceptable. The newest generation suits eliminate this problem by covering the majority of the skin surface with reputedly ‘low resistance’ fabrics and materials. Due to the nature of commerce and claims of “proprietary” knowledge, very little specific data exists identifying the magnitude (if any) of the effect of these new suits on swim performance. Because of the existent rules in swimming limiting the use of technology to improve performance or alter buoyancy, commercial marketing of these suits is limited to inferences about the improvements in performance rather than any specifics. It is reasoned that the influence of the new high-tech suits can be measured if mathematical models based upon swim performances prior to their introduction are sensitive enough to do so. Interestingly, because none of these new suits existed prior to 2000 and it is possible to document when newer versions have been introduced, the athletes and their performances can be used to test if these suits have introduced unnatural rates of improvement into the sport.
An additional hypothesis might be that the recent attention and financial rewards generated by the Olympic Games might be a catalyst for setting world records in swimming such that not only are more records set during the year prior to the Olympic year but more records are set specifically during the month the Olympic Games (and Olympic Trials) are held. While there are other important competitions in swimming (World Championships, Pan Pacifics, Commonwealth Games, etc), the Olympic Games still represent the pinnacle of public awareness and the greatest opportunity for financial support for the athletes. The bottom line is this: sitting in the stands in the “Water Cube” over the last three days… I can’t remember the number of world records that have been set. Let’s just say a lot. Coach Steen adds ”a whole lot.”

The problem is, we don’t know at this point, who (or what) should be getting credit for these records. Many people are giving Speedo and TYR credit. Others would like to give the athletes and coaches at least some credit. But nobody really knows for sure. It isn’t as if the swimming community sat down and discussed all of this beforehand. There wasn’t any initiative by the swim community to “stimulate excitement by shortening the pool or changing the rules to elevate competition.” Major league baseball did do this a few years ago when they lowered the pitchers mound to help improve batting averages. The result was better hitting and more offense. Fundamentally, that is different from what is taking place in swimming here today. A corporate entity (or two or three) decided it could cash in by circumventing the rules governing the sport. Sure Michael Phelps deserves credit for all of his success. But to what extend are his records aided by Speedo? Is this ’technological doping’ as one Italian coach suggested... or not? The problem is…. We simply don’t know!

More to come later…. as it is time now to attend another Olympic swim extravaganza.! Results will follow. As will more of this story…. A long, long, long story!!

Ok. Back to business. The US women are struggling. Hopefully we will update you on that tomorrow or later today. Soni has done a terrific job so far and looks good going into the last couple days. Beard isn’t going to make it in the 200. Hoff and Zeigler are done in the 800 I think. They did not look good tonight. In this case, it might also be due to the suit. Only it might be a negative rather than a positive one. It could be affecting their body position in the water altering their feel. The Chinese women looked terrific and they swam in simple, traditional swim suits tonight! Ha! The 100 fly was very, very fast and we will be lucky to get two medals here if any at all. The fifty free was even faster. I just don’t see the USA getting anything there. You had to be faster than the standing Olympic record to make into the finals. Yow min. There was no holding back and no coasting in this one. The big conundrum for the USA comes to Phelps or Crocker in the 4 x 100 medley relay. If Crocker sets a record in the 100 fly and wins… how do you choose Phelps for the relay? He did not impress tonight. If Crocker wins but does not set the record….does he still go in the relay? If he does…. it doesn’t matter anyway because Phelps no longer has a shot at eight. But Phelps is swimming well and Crocker…. We’ll see!

Do you know why 8 is such a big deal? It is the best number in China…. Lucky lucky lucky. Hence 8/8/08!

Tomorrow. Downtown Beijing. The markets, the neighborhoods. The Temple of Heaven. The Summer Palace and a two hour interview with the ‘Newsweek’ of China.

And of course, more swimming and the rest of the story!