NEW SWIMMING STROKE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23148, 21 September 1938, Page 27

NEW SWIMMING STROKE

USE OF THE BUTTERFLY DIFFICULT LEG ACTION [from OUll OWN correspondent] LONDON, Ausrust 11 The Times special swimming correspondent writes at length about the new butterfly stroke. New Zealand swimmers will doubtless be interested in his remarks, which are as follows: —"The Amateur Swimming Association is nearly 70 years old and its rules wcro taken over almost bodily by the international federation, which was formed in 1903 with Mr. G. W. Hearn as one of the founders and its secretary for 20 years. One tendency that has held back British swimming is the official suspicion of any new stroke. It was so with tho crawl, now universally used in all free-style races, although some of us may shed a tear for tho trudgeon, a grand old stroke, and it is the samo now with the new 'butterfly' breast stroke.

"Wo liavo tho illogical pos.ition of tho butterfly stroke being legal at Wembley under international rules, but forbidden at meetings >inder British rules. Although it has been shown that this strenuous stroke is definitely faster than tho other, few swimmers at present would uso it over tho whole of 200 metres. "Tho butterfly, it may be explained, is made by recovering both arms at once out of the water —in other words, it resembles a double-arm trudgeon, with a breast-stroke leg action. It is a killing stroke with tremendous arm leverage; but not so very long ago the crawl was considered impracticable for all but sprint races until Miss Ederle came along and "crawled" across the Channel. At present the difficulty in using tho butterfly is with the legs, for an" increased tendency to roll leads to a temptation to introduce a leg beat, for which a swimmer may be disqualified."