One note in favor of Biondi, he was only 17.5 years old when he graduated HS. Culleton is 17.5 right now. They were born two weeks and several years apart. Connor turns 19 next week. So, Ellis is a more direct age-specific comparison.
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Good point. At the age of 19, in August 1985, Matt Biondi broke the world record in 100 LCM
freestyle, 48.95, the first man to break the 49-second mark.
To put this in context, the world record in 100 free SCY is 39.83 seconds.
Connor and Ellisās times ranked them 29th and 59th, respectively, in the HS season this year.
I am curious about the questions: what is the distance that is most relevant to water polo (50,100,200,400) ? What is fast enough to be an elite water polo player ?
Good question about the distance. I have been told that it is the 50 since polo is more about explosiveness and they are not really ever sprinting more than 15 or so, typically even less, and its more about how quick you can get over the hips and explode a short distance. My assumption is sub 22 is good, 21 is great, 20 is rare air.
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Iād say the 200. With good defense, speed over 15 or 20 meters can be easily negated. There are very few breakaways in the menās game (pro / collegiate) where one player simply swims by another. Intuition (or a timely steal are much more important.
During tryouts for the junior national team (albeit 25 years ago or so) Ricardo Azevedo had us swim the 200 for time at the beginning of every session. We never swam the 50 or the 100. Itās possible that this has changed over the years.
10x25s on the 12. Polo is a series of many sprints. So, maybe the 200 is a proxy.
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Thereās no way anyone is doing 10x25 on the interval of 12. Interval of 30 holding 12 yes.
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Rico now believes 12.5M is whatās important so his philosophY has changed to be about explosive bursts and not swimming. He even says water polo is not about swimming. I believe the thinking has changed.
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I grew up with 6 and 8 lane pools. We used to swim our sprint sets widthwise to get us closer to those 12.5M sprints.
Also, start hips up at the two and sprint to the wall. Required!
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I firmly believe that the 200 Free is the most relevant event to polo. Itās the ultimate combination of speed and endurance. 50 speed is greatā¦in the first quarter!
Donāt sleep on Tim Shaw when you talk about great swimmers/polo players. He once had the world record in the 200, 400 and 1500 meter freestyles and was an '84 Olympian in polo.
Also Brad Schumacher was a polo and swimming (200 Free on the 4x200 FR) Olympian.
I wish that more polo coaches would allow/emphasize competitive swimming.
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Also, Ryder couldāve been a world class swimmer if heād chosen that path.
I openly admit that I could be 100% wrong, but I was under the impression that Ricardo Azevedo had always made both 12.5m and 200m key to his coaching. For in-game play, 12.5m speed is the most important, but the amount of drop off between 12.5m rate to 200m rate was what he used to determine how long a player could play before needing to be subbed out.
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Connor Ohl won CIF-SS again this year with a 19.96. It was the the third time that he was under 20.00.
At the risk of creating a tangent thread.. All this said, does speed really matter in International Polo as much we (US) think? Especially now with the smaller pool I would say no. I am guessing the US consistently is the fastest team out there. Has that made that much of a difference in reality in International games at the top level? Seems like skills, shooting, size, and smarts trump speed.
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Iām with you. I would say 25s are the right answer. I can see folks swimming 100s and 200s in preseason to build endurance.
The 200 is an interesting event where sprinters might try it and distance swimmers might come down for it. You hear people anecdotally call it a sprint but it is not the all-out ferocity that sprinting for a water polo ball is. I think hard and fast 25ās both head up and head down are the most meaningful for water polo.
Itās a good topic for a tangent thread because a wide open WP counter attack is fun to watch. I think it would make WP better overall if we had as many wide open counter attacks as basketball. Maybe 8-10 per game.
If we are comparing sports - watching upper level WP right now is a lot like watching Virginia menās basketball or the 90s NBA Knicks.
12u counter attacks in the 4th quarter of a tight game are wildly entertaining.
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The elite college teams donāt allow many counters. Itās not for lack of effort.
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Fastest swim times donāt necessarily mean fastest in a water polo game. I donāt know what Hoopers swim times were but Iāve never seen anyone faster in a water polo game. I reckon he would win more sprints than not against these āfastest 50 timesā
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Yes there is all out speed jumping off a block and pushing off a wall on a flip turn. Then you have quickness, how fast can you change direction, go over you hips and how fast can you get up to full speed from a dead stop. A counter attack can be won with positioning vs all out speed. If a slower swimmer cuts Ryan off, he will have to make adjustments or get kicked out, he cant use pure speed to swim over the offensive player who has the advantage. sure he can try to swim around them but a decent college level player would be trying to work him for a kick out or maintain their position while the counter attack develops.
Johnny went 21.3 in the 50 his junior year to qualify for the CIF consi heat and didnāt come back to swim at Finals. I donāt know if he ever focused on swim season, but he was pretty good at presenting like it wasnāt a high priority for him. 21.3 is still pretty fast, especially if he wasnāt as technically sound/wasnāt training to a solid taper (I have no idea his training regimen or what his breakouts looked like!). But anyone who watched him play polo from 12U to Cal knows he was as explosive as anyone has seen and his breast kick with the ball in his hand was ridiculous.
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Never seen a sprinter like Hooper. Instead of flipping the ball back to the trailer, he would pick the ball up and glide right past the other sprinter into open space.
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