INTRODUCTION: Swimmers with visual impairment complete in 3 classes. In the 100-m free these swimmers followed a similar race pattern of stroke rate and length to Olympic swimmers. Class S11 with greatest impairment swam slowest and were least competitive, classes S12 and S13 did not differ. It was suggested that fewer classes are needed. Breaststroke races are also organised under the same system but little study has been made of visually impaired swimmers in this stroke. METHODS: The only large scale race analysis data of Paralympic swimmers available dates from the Sydney 2000 Games. Participants were 32 male 100-m breast finalists in classes SB11 to SB13 for visually impaired and class S14 for intellectually disabled (ID). Able-bodied reference data were obtained for an identical analysis (n=8) at the Olympic Games. Start, turn, finish and mid-pool speeds were measured on video tape along with stroke rate(SR) and length(SL). RESULTS: There was no significant difference in end race result between swimmers with limited vision (SB12 & SB13) (M=75.5s) and with ID (SB14) (M=76.14s). Speed decreased as the race progressed with loses of 7% to 8% in segment 2-3 (turning) in Paralympians compared to 4% for Olympic swimmers. ID swimmers lost the most speed over the race (15.2%). There were no differences among Paralympic swimmers in start speed but class SB13 finished significantly faster and SB11 was slower in this race segment. There was no difference among groups in SR and only Olympic swimmers showed significantly longer SL (+0.4m/stroke). Olympic swimmers used a different race pattern for SR and SL. Together with the smallest speed decreases they also showed the largest SR decrease at the beginning of the race (-5.5%) followed by very large rate increases (>7.0%). This was combined with the largest SL increases (+3.3%) followed immediately by the largest SL decreases (<-10%). The SR of visually impaired swimmers decreased significantly following turn and was very low SL following start. Only ID swimmers could not increase SR at the end of the race. DISCUSSION: Visually impaired use poor race speed patterns in breaststroke perhaps due to insufficient conditioning. They are slow in start and turn due to the poor underwater pulling action, start swimming too early and show large speed drops after turning losing both SR and SL. The degree of visual impairment does not seem to be the main distinguishing factor of race performance in breaststroke.
© Copyright 2010 Biomechanics and Medicine in Swimming XI - Abstracts. Julkaistu Tekijä Norwegian School of Sport Sciences. Kaikki oikeudet pidätetään. / Kääntänyt https://www.DeepL.com/Translator