The late Doc Counsilman was a World War II pilot before he revolutionized swimming. He applied physics to the sport, but in addition to lift and drag and force vectors, Counsilman instructed his fellow coaches to consider dog breeding.
Recruit Labrador retrievers, not dachshunds. The big dog is a natural swimmer, quickly learning to pick up his hind feet and swim with the front. The little one is just as likely to drown.
Is that ability innate? Is it a product of body type?
Michael Phelps has been working his mom for a pet since last summer. He wants to bring home an English bulldog. That breed needs less exercise, but is it a coincidence that the most versatile swimmer in history's first wish was for a Labrador retriever?
Is Phelps more hydrodynamic than his competitors? Is he a stranger to oxygen debt because his training has stressed aerobic conditioning or because he has found a more efficient way to swim? What's more important, his body or the way he uses it?
Sport is as much art as it is science. Distinguishing Phelps' acquired skills from his physical tools opens an endless debate about nature vs. nurture and underscores the folly of attempting to wrap his gifts in separate boxes.
Phelps has become so efficient, his visits to a physical therapist have gone from twice a week to twice a year, but the more forceful he becomes in the water, the wobblier he gets on land. A multi-sport athlete as a boy, he can still knock a baseball over a fence, but Phelps wouldn't want to be timed going around the bases.
Phelps took a physics course at Towson High, but for all he knows, Bernoulli was a champion backstroker from Belgium and Newton makes a mean fig cookie. The physiologists can measure his wingspan, quantify his ability to process energy and provide 15 statistical parameters per lap per race, but the only observation that matters is this: Phelps can manipulate water like no human since Moses.
"We will never be able to design more efficient swimmers."
-- Cecil Colwin
A venerable coach and great thinker about swimming, Colwin takes an annual spring break from his home in Ottawa to watch Phelps train with the North Baltimore Aquatic Club. He notes Phelps is a blend of body types, a mix of ectomorph and mesomorph, the former long and lean, the latter thicker and more muscular.
Phelps stands 6 feet 4 and weighs 195 pounds, with the broad shoulders and narrow waist that are fairly common around a pool.
