More Fly Kicking in Breaststroke

I never swam anything but freestyle crawl in high school, but as an adult I’ve developed a decent breaststroke. Of course, nearly everyone swims it wrong. Most people swim it as a resting stroke, holding their face out of the water and breathing throughout. At the other extreme, elite racers now stay very streamlined underwater, breathe very little and often get away with extra dolphin kicks that are against the rules but hard to detect.

Above water arm movements crept into Breaststroke events in the 1930s – the result was sometimes called the butterfly-breastroke – and the hybrid stroke was so much faster that butterfly became a separate stroke in 1952.

Now, FINA proposes to legalize more dolphin kicking, but breaststroke purists are afraid that those kicks may once again cause breaststroke to evolve into a fundamentally different stroke.

FINA TO DISCUSS RULE ALLOWING MULTIPLE DOLPHIN KICKS ON BREASTSTROKE START

… the Technical Swimming Congress will officially discuss allowing multiple dolphin kicks on the start of any breaststroke race for up to a distance of 15 meters. … Russian swimming federation President Vladimir Salnikov suggested it in a letter. …

Following is the official wording of the proposed rule change:

After the start, the swimmer may take one arm stroke completely back to the legs during which the swimmer may be completely submerged for a distance of not more than 15 metres. Multiple Butterfly kicks are permitted while completely submerged.
Once the swimmer’s head breaks the surface of the water, the stroke cycle must be one arm stroke and one leg kick in that order. All movements of the arms shall be simultaneous and on the same horizontal plane without alternating movement. At the last stroke before the turn and at the finish an arm stroke not followed by a leg kick is permitted.

As reported in the Australian, Changing rules would make breaststroke a joke, says leading coach

Simon Cusack, who coached Christian Sprenger to the Olympic silver medal in the 100m breaststroke last year, warned that such a radical rule change would devastate the discipline.

“It would be a joke,” he said.

“All short-course breaststroke events and 50m events would be won by people who are the best at kicking underwater, not the best at breaststroke.”

Cusack argues that because the underwater butterfly kicking moves a competitor so much faster than breaststroke (the slowest swimming stroke), it would transform the event. Those with a strong butterfly kick would have a distinct advantage over those with the best breaststroke technique.

In my breaststroke, I glide between the kick and pull, and ending *every* whip kick with a small dolphin flick of the lower legs feels very natural – though I know it would get me DQ’d in any serious meet. If allowed to dolphin kick during the glide, I’d probably find it hard to remember to stop during the rest of the length.

Update20130725, from SwimSwam:

FINA CONGRESS REJECTS CHANGES TO BREASTSTROKE RULES ON UNDERWATER DOLPHIN KICKS

… FINA announced that “The rules on breaststroke concerning the start and the turn remain as in the present rulebook.” This rejects several proposals to try to clean up the underwater dolphin kicks, including the implementation of underwater cameras (still under deliberation) and a proposal (that seemed to have a lot of backing within the highest levels of FINA) to allow unlimited dolphin kicks off of the start, and then revert to current rules off of other walls.