The not so bad OL' DAYS

The instruction from the editor was as straightforward as it gets: "Make 'em appreciate what they have."

"You mean a lecture about the bad ol' days when we cracked ice before entering the pool?"

"Yeah, something like that."

Easy enough. Swimmers make a fuss nowadays over a ripple in the water, unable to recall a time not so very long ago when anti-turbulent lane lines were no more than a foggy notion and races were held at national championships with no lane lines at all. Parents grumble when race results take more than 15 minutes to post, forgetting a time when electronic judging and timing systems ubiquitous today were struggling to find a niche because of objections from the coaching community, of all places.

Pools were oversized bathtubs, starting blocks were strictly optional and there were no goggles, or at least not any stable enough to withstand the force of dives and push-offs. You swam with your eyes opened and paid a painful price for hours afterward.

"We used to flip a coin in the locker room, and the loser would have to drive," says George Breen, a two-time Olympian and former world record holder in the 1500m free. "I can remember my last year of swimming when I was doing a distance set, and I had to get out. My eyes couldn't take in anymore."

Breen also recalls using the second hand of an ordinary wall clock to keep track of intervals. Hic coach, Indiana's James "Doc" Councilman, used flash cards to pass on splits during longer sets.

RUNNING ON AUTO PILOT
It's hard to comprehend just how backward things were. As late as 1961, the 1500 m free final at the indoor nationals at Yale University was contested without any lane lines. Part of the race strategy was avoiding head-on collisions.

The first step out of the technological backwater came with timing systems. In the mid-1950's, Councilman attached a timing motor to a 15-inch clock face and gave competitive swimming its own version of an electronic babysitter- the pace clock.

About the same time, Bill Parkinson, a physics professor at the University of Michigan, responded to a challenge from a fellow swimming official. Both knew they were wrong as many times as they were right when judging close finishes. With the splashing and underwater touches, they could only guess at what they saw. The timing was hardly better. Mechanical stopwatches (I think 60 Minutes) allowed for accuracy no better than one-tenth of a second. Timers often varied on the same race by as much as 4/10 of a second.

"Build something to take the guesswork out of it," Parkinson recalls his friend saying. "others have tried, but I know you can do it." The subtle dare hooked Parkinson, part-time, for the next eight years.

He started by having his wife, Martha, sew copper wire in a zigzag pattern into a rubber mat, which he mounted on an aluminum plate. His thinking was that when a swimmer pressed the mat, the wires would touch the aluminum plate, thereby completing a circuit and triggering a electrical timepiece and placing system. Parkinson attached a second sheet of rubber over the first to ensure insulation.

How to deal with the water pressure was a more vexing problem. The pad had to distinguish between the relatively soft touch of a swimmer and the considerable pressure of water, which can be enormous even at a depth of only a few inches. Parkinson's solution was to fill the pad with non-conductive, silicone oil. The oil neutralized the water pressure, keeping it from closing the circuit, but offered no resistance to a hand touch.

"It was ingenuous what he came up with," says Bob Clauson of Colorado Time Systems, the Denver-based company that would corner the market in the United States.

By the late 1950's, Parkinson had a six pad system up and running, complete with vacuum tubes that filled a cabinet-size console. Coaches, however, were cool to Parkinson's invention. They worried the touch pad would shorten the course of the race and their swimmers would slip on the pads during turns, two groundless concerns that Parkinson worked around by devising a hinge that dropped the pads into place just prior to the finish.

Still, the coaching community harbored doubts until the 1960 Olympics, when American Lance Larson apparently beat Australian John Devitt in the 100m freestyle, only to lose out on the gold medal when a judge who should not have had a say in the matter asserted himself as the arbitrator. What was arguably the most egregious officiating faux pas in competitive history gave Parkinson standing. A commercial company began to manufacture this system in 1962. The NCAA weighed in with its approval. Parkinson's system and close knockoffs began to appear at more and more meets.

However, these early systems weren't quite ready for prime time. Such status wouldn't come until the 1970's, when Colorado Time Systems put a print head in the console, thereby fully automating the process- from judging, to timing, to recording results. Like air conditioning in a car, electronic timing offered such ease and comfort that it morphed from optional into a standard piece of equipment.

Parkinson, who still keeps office hours at the University of Michigan, could have made a handsome sum of money from his part0time work. Instead, he assigned the patent to the university's athletic department and stayed with his first love of teaching and research. He left it to others to develop the beep start, the affordable wall displays and the slick software that keeps meets running almost as if on autopilot.

CALL TO DUTY
While electronic timing gave swimming a high-tech cover, the sport continued to suffer from a very low0tech shortcoming. Competitive swimming endured "wave pools" long before the commercial sector even thought of the idea. Few pools had the gutters to mitigate turbulence. Those that did very often lacked the drainage systems to keep the water level high enough for the gutters to do any good.

Pools in America in the years following World War II had more problems than waves. Lighting was bad, chemical balance in the water was iffy, and the four-lane, 20 yard course was considered adequate. But the ocean effect was the main irritant for coaches and swimmers. New pools with better designs were many years and dollars away, but a partial solution grew out of a chance meeting in 1945 of two of swimming's more forward thinkers.

Adolph Kiefer was the first swimmer to break a minute in the 100y backstroke. He won the gold medal in the 100m backstroke at the 1936 Olympics. His world record endured for 12 years.

The American men's coach at the 1936 Olympics was Bob Kiphuth, a coaching icon that Time magazine dubbed, "Master of the Pool." Kiefer was on a train from Boston when he ran into Kiphuth, who was returning to New Haven and his job as the Yale varsity coach.

Kiefer was open to ideas. He was thinking of starting a company that would develop the latest in swimming equipment. Kiphuth mentioned the problem with water turbulence. Kiphuth didn't need to worry about new pool designs. At Yale he had a pool that was the envy of nearly every coach in America, affording him the luxury of worrying about seemingly minor matters, such as the wake created by swimmers as they raced.

"Adolph, you're an idea guy," Kiphuth said in a conversation recalled by Kiefer last year in Aquatics International magazine. "You're always noticing little things - problems with anything. Your mind is always analyzing and working out solutions. Swimming needs your help. I'd like to see you come up with an idea to take the swimmer's wake out of out competition pool."

Kiefer immediately accepted Kiphuth's call to duty. He started by squeezing more and more floats on a rope. This helped some, but he knew he hadn't really attacked the problem. That wouldn't come for another couple of years, when he took notice of the woven plastic that covered a hurricane light at the center of a table in a Baltimore restaurant. Kiefer envisioned reshaping the plastic into a cylinder and placing the cylinders end to end.

"That was the Eureka moment," says Mark Blank, director of marketing communications at Adolph Kiefer & Associates. "it was basically a series of baskets on a rope, where the water would go in, slosh around, and not come out as a wave."

This was a step up, certainly, but there were some problems, chief among them was that these lane lines were very hard to store. They couldn't be rolled onto a spool or packed easily into a storage closet. It wouldn't be until the mid-1970's that Kiefer came out with what has become today's standard - a series of paddle-wheel floats that rotate independently of each other. Waves hit the wheels, which absorb the energy by rotating, producing smooth water on the other side. Better yet, they can be easily stored, a major consideration in multi-use facilities.

THE GREATEST ADDITION EVER
From all outside appearances, competitive swimming in America was in great shape in the late 1960's.

Electronic timing systems had given the sport the precision it deserved. Anti-turbulent lane lines and new, smartly designed pools had reduced waves to a non0issue, and least at national and major regional meets. American swimmers, men and women, dominated the world scene. This bright assessment was universal except for one glaring exception.

Pools must use chemicals to stem the spread of germs. No matter the mix, these chemicals irritate exposed eyes. Breen wasn't engaging in hyperbole when he said the loser of a coin toss after practice had to drive the other swimmers home. A two-hour practice without eye protection induced tears at even the slightest glare. Rainbows surrounded all lights. Reading or studying was impossible. Breen endured six moths of double vision in one of his eyes.

Nevertheless, coaches were pushing for more daily mileage. By the mid 1960's, the standard at most competitive clubs and colleges in the country was one practice a day consisting of 5,000 yards or so.

By the end of the decade, two practices a day were commonplace, with the daily yardage creeping up to 15,000. Swimming was on a collision course. Coaches wanted more yardage, and swimmers knew their eyes couldn't take any more.

Then along came the small goggle.

"It has to be the greatest addition to swimming ever," says Rick Essick, the long-time coach and former executive director of USA Swimming. "It made swimming more palatable. We really will never know how many kids quite because they grew tired of their eyes hurting. And the small goggle allowed swimmers to train harder, which was what has brought about the huge drop in times."

Andrew Strenk remembers seeing small goggles for the first time when he was training with the Olympic team in Colorado prior to the 1968 Olympics. They were crude and homemade - basically two small plastic cups connected by elastic. Afer about an hour or so, the pain of the plastic digging into the skin around the eyes became too much.

"But there were a godsend," Strenk recalls. "One or two hours of relief out of five hours a day in a chlorinated pool was a big improvement. You saw two rings around every light after practice instead of five."

Over the next four years, commercial companies jumped into the market. Durability, design and comfort improved markedly. Fit was enhanced to such an degree that the goggles stayed on during dives. By 1972, the transition was complete. Goggles had become a staple within the competitive swimming community, which begs the question: Why wasn't' such a simple, low-tech device created earlier?

No one seems to know for sure. Ed Gulbekain, of Gulbekain Swim, Inc., which entered the goggle market early, offers perhaps the best explanation when he says, "Nobody ever thought of it before."

Swimmers kept trying what the market offered, which were diving masks and oversized rubber goggles. Until the late 1960's, no one started from scratch to develop what competitive swimmers needed - a small goggle that fit snugly into the eye socket.

NOT SO BAD
Many old timers look at all the developments in swimming today and can't resist the temptation to say, "If only the swimmers today knew how easy they have it." Breen, however, is not one of them.

"People are faster today because they are bigger, stronger and they train harder," he says. "Fast pools and other equipment doesn't make fast swimmers. Fast people make fast swimming."

What's more, it wasn't so hard back then. Breen set the world record in the 1500m at the 1956 Olympics with a time of 17:52.9. The current world record is 14:34.56. If Breen and his peers were swimming today, they would be fodder at just about any competitive club in the country. Swimmers in the current era might have it easier in many ways, but they also have to swim so much faster just to keep up.

Maybe those bad ol' days of wall clocks, stinginng eyes and choppy water weren't so bad after all.

This article was reprinted with permission from SPLASH Magazine. It was written by Tom Slear, Special Correspondent, and first appeared in the January/February 2005 issue.