KATE ZIEGLER AND LAURE MANAUDOU UNDERWATER SEQUENCES DURING THE 800 m FREESTYLE RACE AT THE 2007 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS IN MELBOURNE
The Women's 800 m Freestyle Race at the 2007 World Swimming Championships was won by Kate Ziegler in a time of 8:18.52. Laure Manaudou was close second in 8:18.80.
The video that is activated by clicking the link below serves two major purposes. It shows the women's strokes and skills underwater and illustrates the dominance of two-beat kicking in both swimmers for most of the race.
There are several out-of-the-water sequences that illustrate other aspects of the performance characteristics of both swimmers. Of particular importance is the swimmers' kicking. Kicking has re-emerged as a popular topic in swimming coaching. The beliefs (not founded in facts) that have been offered to justify emphasizing kicking of a six-beat nature have been heard before in the sport and contain the usual level of nonsensical premises in their arguments. An in-depth treatment of kicking is contained in the Carlile Coaches' Forum (Volume 5, Number 3).
In this race, both swimmers use a two-beat kick for all laps except the last length. Often there is a brief flurry of more-than-two-beat kicking coming out of turns (which actually should be double leg kicks). The overhead sequences clearly show two-beat kicking that affords the swimmers the luxury of using a high rate of opposing-arms ("balanced") stroking. In the last length, Kate Ziegler converts to a six-beat kick while Laure Manaudou maintains a two-beat kick but does increase the amplitude of each of her kicks. Kate Ziegler swims over-the-top of Laure Manaudou to win the race.
The dominant female distance swimmers continue to exhibit high-rating, two-beat kicking strokes. Many instances of past champions are included in this section (How champions Do It) of the
This compilation of video clips was compiled from part of a posting on YouTube. The file is in .wmv format.
Click on the link below to download the file (~4.5 megs in size). Windows Media Player is required to view the video.
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