April 2, 2022
April 2, 2022
Warning: Retired swim meet stroke & turn official rant ahead!
When I first trained to be a S&T official the requirements of Freestyle were pretty straightforward. No propelling forward off the bottom of the pool, no pulling on the lanelines, and head must break the surface before the 15-meter mark. As long as those minimal requirements were met, no DQ.
A few years back, Ryan Lochte was DQed in the freestyle leg of an IM race for violating a technical rule that somehow classified what he did on the Freestyle leg as Backstroke, and since it’s supposed to be a 4-part medley, part 4 has to be different than parts 1-3.