In Game of Beat the Clock, Swimmers Set the Pace

As the swimming competition winds down and track and field begins in earnest today at Olympic Stadium, the two glamour events of the Summer Games make for a study in contrasts.

Swimmers keep going faster and faster, setting world records in virtually every meet, including five so far at these Games. But in track and field, most of the women’s world records were set in the 1980s, and half the men’s marks before 1997.

Doping is a cloud that has enveloped the entire question of records in Olympic sports, and the extent to which it has allowed athletes to make history in the last three decades may never fully be known.

But there is no disputing that as stricter testing regimens have been imposed and public pressure has increased, track records remain mostly frozen in time, while the swimmers continue to beat the clock. Experts aren’t entirely sure why, but cite several factors apart from banned substances, such as technology, training and even the differing nature of the competitions.

They suggest that while humans have been running, jumping and throwing for thousands of years, and may now be pushing the boundaries of what is possible, competitive swimming is a comparatively recent endeavor -- one not maxed out physiologically.

Scott Davis, co-author of a USA Track & Field statistical manual, pointed out that American Jimmy Hines ran the 100 meters in a world-record 9.95 seconds in 1968 -- a mark eventually lowered by Tim Montgomery to 9.78 in 2002.

“We’re 17-hundredths of a second faster [nearing] 40 years later,” he said. “That’s not a whole lot. You get close to the point of human peak performance in these events.”

In the water, by contrast, the men’s 100-meter freestyle mark has dropped by more than four seconds since 1968, and by more than three since 1972, when Mark Spitz swam a then-world record 51.22 seconds at the Munich Olympics. The mark is now 47.84, set at the Sydney Games in 2000 by Pieter van den Hoogenband of Holland.

On Wednesday, the U.S. women’s 800-meter relay team erased swimming’s oldest world record, set in 1987 by an East German team. The U.S. team finished in 7 minutes 53.42 seconds, wiping out the old mark by more than two seconds.

Perhaps nothing, however, underscores the vulnerability of swimming records more than Michael Phelps’ dominance in the 400-meter individual medley. On Saturday, Phelps swam in 4:08.26 to set a world record in the event -- the fifth time in two years he had done so.

Experts cite, among other factors, breakthroughs in suits, gear and even the pool itself; a more sophisticated biomechanical understanding of the way humans move through water; better training; and the opening up of the sport to athletes from nations that traditionally have not been swimming powers.

Some in swimming credit old-fashioned grit and dedication. “The way we get people to go faster the next year is we bring them in and make them work harder,” said Eddie Reese, the 2004 U.S. men’s Olympic coach, who since 1979 has been the swim coach at the University of Texas.

Others point to technology.

“The suits help a lot. I mean, a lot,” said Oussama Mellouli, 20, a Tunisian who finished fifth here in the 400 individual medley. Mellouli, a junior at USC, was one of two Africans to win a medal at last year’s swimming world championships in Barcelona, Spain -- evidence of swimming’s increasingly worldwide reach.

“In the end, it’s understanding more about a medium that human beings are not supposed to go through,” said Canadian swimmer Brian Johns, 22, world-record holder in the 400-meter individual medley short course.

But technological advances have contributed to track too. Australia’s Cathy Freeman won the 400 meters at the Sydney Olympics in a special suit; her gold-medal run, 49.11 seconds, was nonetheless a whopping 1.51 seconds slower than the world record set in 1985, by an East German, Marita Koch.

In any case, athletes, coaches and others say that doping is so widespread in all sports that it must be included in any thoughtful consideration of the matter.

“There’s a sadness that every time people see a great performance, they assume doping,” said Mark Schubert, coach of the U.S. women’s swim team here and since 1993 the men’s and women’s swim coach at USC. “It’s just not true.”

Track and field is engulfed with doping issues. The sport’s worldwide governing body, the International Assn. of Athletics Federations, held a 45-minute news conference here Sunday and every question related to doping.

“It’s a bit depressing, to say the least,” IAAF spokesman Nick Davies said. “We’re a news sport now. Not a sport sport.”

A look at recent Olympic history provides some clues about the role that doping has played in track and field records.

At Barcelona in 1992, each of the men’s shotput medalists had served prior drug suspensions. Two of the top three at Atlanta in 1996 ultimately received doping-related life bans, including the gold medalist, American Randy Barnes, who still holds the world record in the shot, 75 feet, 10 1/4 inches -- set in 1990.

Ten years later, after the adoption of stricter doping controls, the winning throw at the Sydney Games was 69-10 1/4 by Finland’s Arsi Harju, which is not among the top 25 throws of all time. The winning throw on Wednesday, by Yuriy Bilonog of the Ukraine, fell even shorter, 69-5 1/4 .

No world records in track and field were set at the Sydney Games, or at the world championships of 2001 or 2003. Atlanta produced only one mark: Michael Johnson’s 19.32-second sprint in the 200. He tested clean throughout his career.

Three of the 23 women’s all-time track and field marks were set in the 1980s by athletes from the former East Germany, notorious now for having systematically doped its athletes.

John Godina, an American shotputter who won silver in Atlanta, bronze in Sydney and took a disappointing ninth at Athens, has long been an ardent anti-doping advocate. He said of the doping issues now afflicting the U.S. track and field program: “You can look at it as you’ve got a lot of people got caught and it’s hot because it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Or you can look at it logically: We have a small bunch of cheaters, and the rest of the people are clean.”

The current doping scandal was sparked in large measure by the investigation of BALCO, a nutritional supplements company in Burlingame, Calif. Four men, including track coach Remi Korchemny and BALCO founder Victor Conte, have been charged with multiple felony counts. Authorities allege steroids and other substances were distributed to Olympic and other athletes. Each of the four has pleaded not guilty.

Swimming has also endured its share of doping issues -- in particular, the East Germans in the 1970s and 1980s and, later, the Chinese.

During the 1990s, 32 Chinese swimmers were caught for drug offenses. In 1998, Australian customs inspectors found 13 vials of human growth hormone hidden in the luggage of one Chinese swimmer.

And while Marion Jones, Montgomery and a number of other prominent track and field athletes testified last year before a grand jury in San Francisco investigating the BALCO matter, so did swimmer Amy Van Dyken, who won four gold medals at the Atlanta Games in 1996. She has not commented on her testimony and has not been charged with wrongdoing.

It seems implausible, officials and experts said, to think that swimmers somehow have access to better drugs or more sophisticated doping-evasion techniques than track and field coaches -- particularly because the financial incentive to cheat in track is readily apparent to a world-class athlete, with a summer European circuit offering appearance fees and prize money. There is no such lucrative parallel in swimming.

But at the pool, the marks keep going down, down, down. At the U.S. Olympic trials only weeks ago, swimmers set six world marks. At the Sydney Olympics, there were 14 world records and 38 Olympic marks.

Many swimmers and swim officials like to say that the culture of the sport discourages doping.

U.S. backstroker Aaron Peirsol, winner of the 100- and 200-meter backstroke races here in Athens, said this year that it wasn’t in the nature of a swimmer to cheat. “I think there’s too much respect for the guy next to you,” he said.

But others say it’s foolhardy to contend there’s no cheating in the water.

“To say that swimming is clean is an exaggeration. There are people who are using things that we can’t catch yet,” said John Leonard, executive director of the American Swim Coaches Assn. “We’re cleaner than most, I think.”