What Changes Will Reshape the Sport Before Rio 2016

There is always a post-Olympic lull in the sport of swimming. After 48 months of buildup and excitement, swim fans spiral into a bout of depression that they have to wait four more years before the volumes of knowledge they’ve built-up from hours spent on SwimSwam are once again respected by their friends and co-workers.

But this period should not be mourned as a time of loss; rather they should be celebrated as opportunity. This seeming vacuum in the post-Olympic months should be seen as an opportunity. This is the period that needs to be captured and reassigned a new excitement. Think about the most successful sports league in the world – the NFL. Within a week of the Super Bowl wrapping up, the fervor of the fanbase has turned to the draft. This is where our weakness is as a sport.

The Olympics at this point can sell themselves. But the changes that come to the sport, the revolutions, the real magic happens right after the Olympics. In the post-Olympic year, people are less fearful to “try”. People look around at what has been successful the previous four years, and try to copycat it and then innovate and expound on it.

In that spirit, let’s look at what the major changes are that could come to the sport before the Rio de Janeiro Olympics that will change what we see in 2015 from what we saw in 2011. Not the names, but the revolutions of the sport.

1. Americans focus on sprint freestyles – No matter how much American coaches try and get away from it, sprint freestyler remain the kings of the sport. There seems to be a fear in this country to have athletes who are specifically tuned for a 50 free, but the nothing-but-sprinters were none-the-less the athletes who made huge gains after the Olympics. Nathan Adrian probably upped his “famous” meter more than anyone else at these Games, and Anthony Ervin and 50 free silver-medalist Cullen Jones were among the favorite stories of the American fanbase at the Olympics. Based on responses to the IOC’s consideration of adding 50m strokes to the Olympics, there seems to be an American divide on this: there is a younger generation who is all-for focusing on nothing but 50’s, while as the older traditionalists are of the opinion that 50’s aren’t real swimming.

2. Full-Time Altitude Training – We’ve already seen a huge shift toward altitude training in the last few years; there isn’t any swimmer of much note anywhere in the world who didn’t spend a significant amount of time in altitude in the leadup to London. But Michael Phelps’ coach Bob Bowman, always a trend-setter given his success, is on the leading edge of this trend after he tapered his swimmers in altitude for at least 6 weeks in the run-up to the Olympic Trials. Many have theorized that one of Missy Franklin‘s biggest training advantages isn’t just a few weeks here-and-there at atltitude, rather that she lives every minute of every day at altitude. If a major post-grad coach were willing to move to Denver (as the country’s highest major metro, and a very fitness-friendly city at that), it could become an experimental hotbed for pro swimmers. There is still so much unknown about the affects of altitude training, but the University of Limerick has already set out to try and learn more – they’ve set up a high-altitude-simulating living quarters where they can really study what happens to athletes.

3. Underwater Cameras – This one is inevitable after consecutive years where the world’s major meet was marred by obvious stroke violations seen only in after-the-fact post-race footage. What exactly these cameras will look like, and how they will be implemented is where the mystery is. How far will FINA reach in implementation of this rule? Is there a way to install them without pricing smaller nations out of meet hosting? Can you require them at the Olympics but not also require them at FINA-approved Olympic qualification meets? They will likely be imperfect the first few tries, but they need to exist. Nearly every other sport in the world has implemented them at some level, even with the recognition that the systems still are less-than-perfect. The next challenge would be going back to trying to determining the difference between natural body undulations from dolphin kicks in breaststroke, but at least the information will be there.

4. New Events – Swimming is a sport that doesn’t like to stay the same. Unlike track & field, where the only major event change in the last 90 years have been the change of the men’s 10km walk to a 25km walk and the expansion of events for women with the global suffrage movement, swimming is constantly tinkering. In 1988, the 50 free was added to the Olympic schedule. In 1996, the women got an 800 free relay. In 2001, the World Championships added 50’s in the formstrokes. In 2008, we got open water. Now that it’s been 5-years since the last major change, the fans are getting wrestless. Sources have given better than 50/50 chances at those same 50 formstrokes being added to the Olympic schedule, of the women’s 800 free being converted to a 1500 in Rio, and that the open water event list will be extended beyond just the 10km. The European Championships have already announced that they’re adding co-ed relays in 2014. The tides of change are coming again.

5. More Participation in Global “Series” Meets – As the ranks of post-grad swimmers have increased worldwide, so have the need for opportunities for those athletes to make a living in the sport. But one of the most obvious and blunt ways has been much overlooked – global series put on by organization like FINA. At each stop of the FINA World Cup Series (this year’s schedule here) there is $102,000 in prize money available. There’s another $360,000 available in overall series prize money. At each event in the Open Water 10km World Cup, there’s $20,000 available, plus another $100,000 toward the top 6 men and women overall. And these huge prizes aren’t because there’s so many high-profile athletes; in most cases there is easy money to pick-off. This is especially true for those on USA Swimming National teams, where they can receive travel reimbursement in many cases.

6. More OW Specific Swimmers – In the open water 10km swim at the Olympics, both gold medalists (Eva Risztov of Hungary and Ous Mellouli from Tunisia) were extremely accomplished pool swimmers before making the transition to open water. Mellouli was the 2008 Olympic champion in the 1500, and Risztov was a three-time World Championship silver medalist in 2003 in the pool before coming out of retirement in 2009 in the open water. But with open water swimming gaining in visibility every year, more young swimmers will see focusing on ocean swims even in high school as a viable option. This process began this past weekend in Canada with the first ever FINA World Junior Open Water Championships.

7. More Event Specificity – Michael Phelps’ bredth of performance abilities in 2008 were once-in-a-lifetime. Both in his talent, the circumstances (event schedule, tech suits), and level of competition. For a time, everyone hoped to be Michael Phelps, but nobody (including Ryan Lochte) could be. I think what we’re going to see headed toward Rio is more event specificity. Sure, a Jack Conger of the next generation could be one of the best in the world in 8 or 9 events. But as the sport’s level rises world-wide, it is going to become more-and-more challenging to reach for so many events. Look, for example, at someone like Missy Franklin. As great as she was this year in the backstrokes, her freestyles weren’t as good even as last year. Ryan Lochte is another example. I think that future superstars are going to go for three relays and a maximum of three individual events. Some, out of pure hubris or desire to clear Phelps’ hurdle of being “the best,” will still shoot for the monster schedules. But it probably won’t pay off.

8. More Experimentation With Meet Formats – SwimSwam was on deck at the Austin audience turnout (it was a fairly low-key meet, even with Phelps there), but because of the limited number of participants. There were no warmup pools choked-to-death; no hours of high school swimmers just there to get experience to wade through. Swimmers did what they needed to do, did their interviews, and got out of the pool until finals. I think that we’re going to see a shift, especially for post-grad groups, toward those more elite, invite-only style meets in the next four years. By limiting the number of participants, it will make the meets more entertaining and accessible to the every-day fan, and it will (hopefully) encourage more consistent participation by elite swimmers as this format of meet would prove less disruptive to training cycles. Other things that I think will become more popular are sprint-specific meets. There is always a need for meets that have 50’s through 1500’s in them, but even further in the interest of the above-mentioned goals, holding maybe a one-day meet with only 50’s and 100’s would be much more appealing to fans and a good portion of the athletes. Expanding on formats like the upcoming Tiburon Sprint Classic, with head-to-head bracket-style racing that has become so popular in Europe would be amazing as well.

9. Turnover in National Team Staffs – There are a lot of coaches on the National Team staff who have been there for a long time. Deservedly so, as they’ve made huge contributions to the sport of swimming. Many of these coaches, though, are getting very old, and rumors of retirement from full-time coaching abound (though many will continue to contribute in some capacity). Eddie Reese and Jon Urbanchek are both in their 70’s, for example. But there is a new, younger generation of coaches who are having wild success with the new, younger generation of athletes. Teri Mckeever made some inroads into this as the women’s Olympic coach, but the national team staffs are still dominated by coaches over the age of 60 (and even McKeever is 50 already). The younger coaches have different ideas about the sport; different perspectives about how a National Team should be run. They will be chomping-at-the-bit to get their hands on the steering wheel and see what they can do, and as they continue to have success, it will be harder-and-harder to keep them away from it. There are lots of complaints about top American coaches like Dave Durden, Brett Hawke, and Dave Salo training foreign athletes to beat American Olympians. But only one of those coaches was put on the U.S. staff for London (Salo). Imagine sending the United States’ National Team sprinters for a three-week camp every year with Hawke, or Durden for that matter – especially when sprinting continues to be the weakest part of the program. These changes could push even beyond the national team staff – Executive Chuck Wielgus is getting up in years as well, and we could see a new director before Rio, with a whole new set of ideas for promoting the sport.

10. Athletes Taking On Individual Branding – Ricky Berens started this trend last year, but expect more athletes outside of the mega-stars to take branding into the hands of themselves (or their agents, as the case may be) rather than their training groups. Social media makes this easier, but there are certain loopholes in the suffocating USOC advertising guidelines that have not yet been fully exploited. We examined this idea before the Olympic Trials with the case of Tucson Ford, and now that more people have figured out the game expect them to take advantage. Expect that by 2016, you will see athletes competing for Team Arena, or Team Gatorade, or even self-branded Team Jeah or Team Vollmer. The advertising possibilities are huge, as are the merchandising opportunities.

Bonus: What Will Michael Phelps Do to Grow the Sport? – Since he was a swimmer much-too-young to be concerned about such things, Michael Phelps has said that his ultimate goal is to grow the sport. He’s done so much of that as an athlete, and now we’ll have to see if he’ll have more time to stump for swimming. This is a “change” only in the sense that he’ll have to use a different medium by which to promote: before it was gold medals, now it will be on dry land.