Liu Zige swims gold for China Olympics 2008

Liu Zige (picture above) just won the women's 200 meters butterfly final at the Beijing Olympics 2008 today. She beat her teammate Jiao Liuyang (picture below).

But more important is that both Chinese swimmers beat the former world record: Liu Zige swam a 2:04.18, 1.22 faster than the old world record, and Jiao Liuyang swam a 2:04.72.

Why is everybody so fast?

We can see on the picture that Liu Zige is wearing a Speedo swimsuit, but the main reason for all the records in the water is the pool.

Imagine you jump into a bath: how much waves do you make? A lot!

Now imagine you jump in a pool: how much waves do you make? Much less!

The Chinese Olympic Pool in the WaterCube is even bigger than the pool you just imagined.

The Chinese Olympic Pool is deeper than any Olympic pool before and it has 10 lanes in stead of the usual 8.

This means that there is less water turbulence as usual, hence you can swim faster as there are lesser waves to bother you.

Add to that great swimwear and years of training and you could be the next word record holder ;-)

Congrats Liu Zige and Jiao Liuyang!

Category › 200 meters butterfly , beijing , butterfly , gold , Jiao Liuyang , Liu Zige , olympics

Woman's Swimwear from space

I mean: when Nasa helps in making Speedo's high-tech LZR Racer swimsuit, they become kind of swimsuits from space...

When you follow the Beijing swimwear competition, oops, Olympics, you must have heard that Japan wanted to ban their swimming athletes to wear Speedo's.

They even went the extra mile to let their swimmers like Aya Terakawa (see picture on the left) from the Mizumo swim team to wear exclusively Japanese sportswear.

Meanwhile the Japanese came back on their decision on June 12th.

But what worries me the most is: are the Olympics still about sports, about swimming or about swimwear? And if even the Japanese swimmers want to wear Speedo, what about other swimmers that don't have agreements with Speedo?

Wouldn't it be the most fare that from now on everybody agrees on the same swimsuit and therefore concentrate back to swimming in stead of concentrating on woman's swimwear?

Category › aya terakawa , beijing , Japan , olympics , speedo , Swimsuits , womans swimwear