A new Olympic event

With the 2012 Summer Olympics in full swing, it's an appropriate time to mention an idea my son, Evan, came up with. It's also appropriate as the swimming events come to an end and the track events ramp up.

We were talking about why there are so many swimming and running events. In swimming, there are 100 meter and 200 meter events for each style of swimming (freestyle, breast stroke, butterfly and backstroke). Then they also have 200 and 400 meter medleys (where the swimmer does all four strokes). Running is similar with variations of distance and styles (straight running, hurdling and walking - although I've always thought it would be interesting to add backwards running as an equivalent to swimming the backstroke). But the running styles seem much different than the swimming styles. You often see swimmers competing in more than one style of swimming but runners rarely compete in multiple running styles (except for the decathlon athletes). But it seems like swimming could use a really different event to liven it up.

So, Evan came up with a new swimming event - Swimming Hurdles. Instead of diving over the hurdles, though, you would swim under the hurdle! I think this is a great idea. The swimmers already swim underwater for short periods at the start and at turns but this would be a real test for them. Like the running hurdlers, they'd have to be especially good at breaking their stroke to dive down and then pick up their stroke again when they came up to the surface. I don't know how many hurdles there should be in the 50 meter pool length but they could start with a hurdle at the midway point. Also, I don't know how deep the hurdle should go. That would take some testing but I think just a foot or two would be enough. But think how exciting it would be if the hurdle was deeper. The swimmers would dive in one order as they came to the hurdle but no one would know who would be in front until they surfaced again. Imagine the excitement when someone who was behind but was especially good at swimming under water would burst into the lead!

I'm not sure who we would submit this idea to and we certainly wouldn't be the ones to test it. No one in our family can swim.