"Makeshifts" at the Pyeongchang Olympics

I have an idea for an Olympics-themed post but this is not it.  While my big idea percolates a little more, let me discuss 'makeshifts' a little.  From the Herald:

The Ice Hockey I arena for the men’s competition will be constructed at the Gangneung Athletic Complex as planned but in the form of movable makeshift so that the facilities will be relocated to Wonju, Gangwon Province, after the Games for use as a gym for ice hockey and other sports....“In a bid to provide the maximum benefit at the minimum cost, we are trying to build makeshifts as much as possible, for example, media centers. By doing so, we will be able to minimize problems in redeveloping Olympic sites after the Games,” Kim said.

In the context, I understand what a 'makeshift' is, but I have never seen the word as a noun before.


Provisionally, I like the idea.  In Canada, we may still be paying for the Olympic stadiums used in the '76 Montreal Olympics.  Olympic stadia are often underused after the games finish, so making the facilities transportable or temporary might be a good idea.  Indeed, if done well, my fading love for the games (and this is the concept for my 'big think' post on the Olympics) may well brighten again.

Give the kid a break

I'm not really in a blogging mood these days but will return to regular posting....sometime.

For now, I'm really feeling sympathy for Pak Tae-hwan, who is being questioned everywhere (see reports in the Herald, the Times, the Joongang and the Donga).

I need to read more before commenting knowledgeably, but, at his level of competition, you cannot swim fast at every meet. In preparing for a best time, you need to take one to two months to reduce your workload and recover from training. That's one to two months you are not increasing your fitness level, one to two months that competitors might be increasing theirs.

I've questioned his coach-hopping, and I see that now in the news reports but need to sit down to them before commenting further today.

Best of luck to him in the 1500!

Self Image

When I was working part time as a swim coach while at university, I trained many novice swimmers. They came in all sizes and shapes and at that age, fitness and skill typically meant less than body position in the water. It's a technical point but basically if the swimmers could keep their hips and legs on or near surface, they would be faster than those who did not.

Skills and concepts such as moving your hand sideways through the water as you pull to increase power in accordance with Bernoulli's principle came much later. Even swimmers who were physically fit and strong could not overcome the slowing effects of drag if they had bad body position in the water.

Again, novice swimming is very egalitarian or democratic. Actual physical prowess helps but is not decisive with the younger swimmers.

One day, a few weeks into the season, a twelve year old girl who was nearly as tall as I was joined my group. She swam well enough, nothing special, but I could see remarkable potential in her size and shape.*

I became interested in where this girl could end up and I would be her first coach! I described her to other coaches and made special note that she was only twelve and already five- eight. Remember, her height meant very little in how she would do for the first few months or more.

I am sure she heard me making this point. Whatever, she swam for a week and never returned.

I was reminded of this by the title of an article in Wednesday's Korea Times. The article is about a high school basketball sensation and the title is "Monster Teenager".

This boy is 191cm, which I think puts him around 6 foot 4 inches. This is tall, but not overwhelmingly so and hardly monstrous.

Commenter Jejujames, at the bottom of the article, agrees, calling the title "a little offencive"

Focusing on a single attribute of anyone, even if the attribute relates to the sport, is a way of devaluing any other attribute the person has. I hope this kid gets to be respected as more than a monster.

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* Size seems to be more and more important in competitive swimming, at least at the highest levels. Most Olympian freestylists are well over six feet tall. At five foot ten inches I still had potential that was never realized but even if I had, my height imposed a real limit.

Bak Tae-hwan goes coach shopping

In this post, I engage in a bit of name-dropping. I name several Olympians whom I have met but only one would recognize my name. To the others, I was only one of a multitude. I offer their names only to describe what was public knowledge and claim no special insight into their choices or behavior.

.

In my youth, I was a competitive swimmer of barely national caliber. I managed to scrape past the standards and qualify for a few national championship swim-meets.

To be quite honest, Bak Tae-hwan is as far beyond me in swimming ability as I am to the average Korean.

Which suggests that I cannot comment on the most recent Bak Tae-hwan news from personal experience. Ah, that news being he has fired his coach and is in the market for a new one. The new coach would be his third.

It is the second time for Park to change his coach this year. In January, when Park decided to train with coach Park outside the Korea Sports Center in Taeneung, he split with former coach Roh Min-sang, who had taught him for 10 years.

Still, even without experience at his level of swimming, I have seen world champions up close and I can certainly compare their coach/swimmer relationships with his.

I met and spoke briefly with Alex Baumann, at one time the world's best swimmer, a few times at swim meets and worshipped his ability. I also spoke to his coach, Dr. Tihanyi, as I was considering going to that university.

I raced him in the 200 Individual Medley at a meet in Laurentian University. I presume he raced the clock for no one came near him at that little meet. In fact, I paced him for the first fifty metres, mostly as a protest to my own coach for entering me in a race I disliked so much.*

And that is the key to my confusion over Mr. Bak’s revolving door regarding coaches. A coach is someone you need to have faith in. You can argue at times, but the coach is the expert. The Olympian I knew best (not all that well, but best), Dave Schemilt, once ranked fourth in the world for 1500 metres freestyle, followed his coach when the coach changed jobs and locations. Baumann’s loyalty to his coach, Dr Tihanyi was well known. I think Victor Davis followed his coach, Cliff Barry, when he changed jobs as well.

Perhaps there is a cultural element. I am not exactly comparing this situation to Korea’s dumping of Cha Bum-gun after a bad showing by the national soccer team but Koreans do seem comfortable changing course frequently.

I am thinking more of the famous stereotype of focus and concentration and fanaticism in Koreans. I think Mr. Bak thinks he can provide the motivation and focus internally and only needs an assistant for some technique tweaking.

Finally, there seems to be a strange dynamic regarding the sponsor, Speedo.

``Speedo and Park's parents have meddled in training Park along with the low salary,'' said the coach.

The meddling parents part is nothing new. All swim coaches (and I was one) need to be prepared for second-guessing parents. Again, I don't have international experience, but I have never heard of a sponsor being all that 'hands-on' in the actual training.

While I hope he does well, I fear that changing coaches so often will hurt him at the Olympics.

Oh, one Canadian example of a swimmer choosing coaches would be Mark Tewksberry. From Wikipedia: For some years he ranked as one of the top backstrokers in the world; never a strong below-the-water swimmer, he was unmatched on the surface, but, as the importance of below-the-water swimming increased, Tewksbury's ranking began to fall.

He eventually hired a synchronized swimming coach to train him in breath-holding techniques. That seems like a minor adjustment compared to Mr. Bak's though.

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*My coach had a coherent plan and looking back I can see that if I had followed it more closely, I would have done better over all in my swimming career. I still have my problems with his choice of events for me but I respect and admire him for his efforts all the same.

News on swimmer Park Tae-hwan

The Chosun describes Korean swimmer Park Tae-hwan, who picked Korea's first swimming golds at the Pan-Pac games and at the DOHA games as "one of the year's top newsmakers in the sport according to Swim News dot com. "

Swim News does indeed praise him.

The sight of so many nations making international podiums and helping to elevate swimming to a truly global sport, that trend epitomised by 17-year-old Korean Tae Hwan Park's distance freestyle victories at the Pan Pacs and Asian Games.

It also describes a challenge China's swimmers had at DOHA (my highlighting):

China's top swimmers have a tight turnaround in terms of acclimatising in time for the start of racing at the Asian Games in Doha on Friday: they landed in Qatar at 3am on Wednesday and at Thursday training Zhou Yafei, there to defend the 100m butterfly drown, said: "I am still tired from the jet lag, so I don't think my form is very good right now - but for me, it maybe good news because the best form should be reserved for competition."

I competed in the 100m butterfly but I don't know about the 'drown' part!