Swimming: Gloom for heir apparent

By PETER JESSUP

Keiren Perkins will win his third consecutive gold medal in the 1500m freestyle on Saturday because he is a better swimmer than Grant Hackett and has bigger gains available to him via improvement in his turns.

That is the verdict of the data supplied by underwater monitoring of the Australian pair at this meet.

The turn is where swimmers achieve their highest velocity, and this, it turns out, is an area where Perkins has a weakness.

Hackett's turn is very good. He knows he does not have much improvement left and is watching Perkins' times improve.

That goes a long way to explaining the way the 20-year-old heir-apparent to Perkins' crown has been looking so despondent and performing well below his best.

The leader of the research team, Professor Bruce Elliot, says Hackett feels "like he's carrying the weight of Australia at the moment because he's not keeping to his race plan and he's not maintaining his stroke." "I think his coach will have it worked out by Saturday."

Data from Saturday's record-breaking 100m freestyle race last Saturday showed it was Russian Alexander Popov who had the most room for improvement. Pieter van den Hoogenband swam fastest, but his stroke took him the shortest distance at 2.3m from left-hand entry to right-hand entry; Michael Klim covered 2.4m, Popov 2.6m.

Popov has denounced the fastskin suits, saying "my suit is my skin," but the figures suggest he will be in one soon if he wants to keep ahead.

Lactic acid was more than likely the reason Ian Thorpe came second in the 200m freestyle, Elliot said.

It results from muscles breaking down glucose to produce energy, and causes them to ache and lose power as it builds up. So Thorpe, with his slower and more powerful stroke, should have allowed the faster van den Hoogenband a lead, kept his lactic acid level low, then come hard at him at the end.



Tom Malchow, who won the 200m butterfly in what was close to his world record, had a higher stroke velocity and longer stroke length than anyone else in the field but his performance on the turns was the same.

The information thus shows his rivals how they can compete by working on their turns.