Interesting times. I think from memory Gomez did a pretty quick 1500m in a pool meet, 16.x?

Your post makes perfect sense and something as well as many/most here already knew, but aside from the (obvious) hard work required to reach the top, it screams TALENT, TALENT, TALENT to make the cut to the top groups in swimming. If you're even just moderately-above-avg talent, its just not worth it (higher drop out rate as you yourself said.)

Yes, the hard work is real, but if you're working your tail off and your peers are continuing to outpace you despite doing similar or less hard work, that's a talent issue. Its real in all sports, and the higher you get in performance, the more it matters/dominates

I'm not saying LS can't improve at all - everyone CAN improve, even the best, but at what cost, and for what diminishing returns at this point?

Yeah those times are way off where he would need to be. We have 11/12 year old girls swimming some of those times in our swim club. It must be frustrating for him, but if he's swimming 30s for a 50 in a short course pool, there's no way he can hang with a lead pack. He would be instantly dropped. All that training and work he's done to improve his swimming - I feel bad for the guy, but there's clearly some fundamental issue with his stroke. Or more like feel for the water. I watch people swim and they can have a pretty good looking stroke, better than mine, but are just slow as sh*t. Which is why I could never be a swim coach because I wouldn't have a clue on how to fix them. I think it's a combination of a bunch of little nuances with your stroke that help you swim well. e.g I feel that I get decent power from rotating and torqueing the body as your hand enters and you begin your catch, without that torque, I'd lose power, but I don't even know if you could teach that.

Are there any pro male triathletes who swam D1 in college?

Seems if they are the front pack would be even faster

swim coaching is not like the garage - you don't just take your car in on monday and pick it up tuesday fixed. :)

something missing from some of these threads is the difference between talent and being 'fast' in swimming and triathlon swimming standards. basically any of the kids who stay with squads 5-9 times a week till they hit college may have middle level talent, but they get relatively 'fast' by just doing it long enough. kids who are swimming a lot (7-9 sessions per week) and also have freak level talents do the special things.

swimming is full of kids who just swim their guts out every day for years and become fast, just by sticking with it long enough. is that a physical talent or mental talent to enjoy the different qualities of the smell of chlorine i do not know

I'm curious about this.

What happens in say.. Kona... if you drop in a AAAA swimmer with some solid open water skills? How fast would he go? Would anyone hang on to those feet?

Now I really want to see that.

I coached a former D1 distance swimmer to Kona. Her shoulders were fairly shot so we could only swim 3x a week, but she was first female out of the water. The year she did it, she got beat by Lucy Charles and Lauren Brandon. But she had to swim through the entire male age group field and the back of the female pro field by herself. She went I think 51:24 or around there.

I hope this helps,

Tim

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http://www.magnoliamasters.com
http://www.snappingtortuga.com
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Would Lucy be considered a AAAA swimmer?

The key thing here is that kids and their parents don't just gut it out for years if they're mediocre or worse at it. Heck, even if they're good but clearly not super-good, what kid is going to want to keep waking up super early, doing doubles, just to get blown out at the next step up?

And what makes us think LS has intrinsic swim talent better than that of good club-level kid swimmers? Sure, he runs/bikes super fast, but we all know there's a poor correlation at the adult level with awesome running being predictive of strong swimming. (There's more correlation of the reverse for sure, but even that's sketchy and requires tons of luck.)

I hate that I'm the debbie downer of this thread, and it sounds like I just like bashing LS, but honestly, I love the guy and am rooting for him every step of the way, even if he doesn't get any better from here on out. I really hope some coach (Snappingt?) can help him find the gains he wants, but you'd get why I'm not optimistic given he's already tried several really good ones who also know their stuff AND successfully coach both elite swimmers (and triathletes).

I know she almost made the British Olympic team in the 10k open water. When she was competing Keri-Anne Payne, another Brit, was one of the dominate swimmers at the 10km at that time.

Lucy went 16:46 at British trials in the 1500. A cut was 16:32. A quad A time in the 1500 for 17-18 girls is 17:07, if that puts things into perspective.

Tim

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http://www.magnoliamasters.com
http://www.snappingtortuga.com
http://www.swimeasyspeed.com

All I’m getting from this is that there are really fast teens out there, swimming times I can’t even fathom.

I love it.

There's a lot of fast kids out there who are very talented, but then have also put in a lot of hard, consistent work with experienced coaches. But there are also some very fast kids who don't have a lot of talent, but have just put in even more hard, consistent work than anyone else. They wanted it more.

Tim

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http://www.magnoliamasters.com
http://www.snappingtortuga.com
http://www.swimeasyspeed.com

Everyone seems to think that talent does not matter and work alone will get people there. The reality is that if you have talent for something the work feels fun. When I was a kid, I was always one of the fastest on the soccer/baseball/cricket blah blah blah teams. My body was built for running. I could be at any playground with kids anywhere in the world and sprint to the other side of the field and be the top kid or close to the top. Once I got to the high school track team as it happens, you're no longer the kid of the playground, everyone can run fast, but I held my own, with lots of kids who are talented. I showed up in the military and ran my 1.5 miles fitness test in 7:08 in canvas shoes and sweat pants (ave 4:4x mile pace). That's with no specific distance running training. Just team sports and sprinting in high school. No track spikes, no fast track. I am pointing this out, because I was the kid in running who is the equivalent of the kid that survives the age group swimming meat grinder.

Really, only the good ones make it through.

And so you end up with these statements that Lionel can't beat 13 year old boys but 13 year olds who are good are actually really good. And 60 year olds who grew up swimming are still really good swimmers.

The bottom line is that swimming is a front of pack and front of pack only sport. There is no place for slow people in swimming except for those who are OK with finishing last all the time with an entire deck/stadium of people (other swimmers, coaches etc) watching them thrash to last place. Most kids don't want to do that, most adults don't want to do that.

When you go to a 2000 person triathlon, or a 10,000 person running race, there is comfort being around peers who are "equally slow". When I was at 70.3 Worlds, I finished in the middle of my age group, in the masses with a bunch of peers. No one is watching us and how slow we are other than each other cheering each other on. That's the awesome thing about tris and running that swimming really does not have.

Lionel could have gone to the local pool and 'raced' all these times solo, but he put himself out for everyone to see. During the pandemic, he could have just been a wattage dick swinging king and posted a fast bike workout on Strava. Instead, the guy set up a UCI sanctioned hour record attempt, that no other cyclist in all of Canada did that year or since, and no professional triathlete was willing to try (ex Cam Wurf, Jan etc etc etc). He came out riding 51.304 km in an hour (also beat Italian Legend Francesco Mosers 51.151 km at altitude albeit no aero bars, but with Doc Conconi assistance) .

People come on here and say he has no talent. OK fine, but at least he put himself out. How many triathletes around here go to swim meets or have hit the cycling track?

Oh, Lionel has tons of talent. World-class cycling talent, and world-class tri-running talent for sure. Pretty good to have 2 out of the 3 covered in spades.

This is a thread about his swim meet. So when he gets beaten by some (really good) 13 year olds, it's fair to ask whether this reflects on his ability to make the front-pack in elite professional triathlon, which has been his goal for quite awhile now. I'm still amazed that I'm like the only one on these threads to ever suggest a talent limiter could be a possibility. Doesn't mean you give up and quit - you keep trying and struggling and getting whatever small gains you can get, but you might not also want to consider yourself a failure if you can't swim against the likes of Frodeno, Dubrick, etc.

Here's LS at Superleague (below). You can see his form side-by-side with the ITU guys (start at 2:45)....and he's a clear outlier.


https://www.youtube.com/...SuperLeagueTriathlon

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17-18 year old girls/women may as well be pros. Penny Oleksiuk won 4 Olympic swim medals at age 16 (including 100 free gold with Simone Manuel in a tie) and by the time she was 21 was already slower ("only three medals").

All this talking down of how bad triathletes are is just unproductive, because the pro triathlete will smoke the pro marathoner in swimming or on the bike and will smoke the pro cyclist in running and the pool and smoke the pro swimmer on the run and the bike. It literally comes from a place of envy where single sport people have to point out how bad triathletes are constantly...rather than encouraging athletes of all types to become become better in their non native sports.

All you swimmers have a captive audience of 2000 triathletes at every 70.3 to pull over into master swim racing but almost no one comes across. I have explained why above.

After seeing that I think he actually swims quite fast for his technique

I see his butt is low in the water, and head position higher than others and rotation at hips not as "nice" as the others (I can't pinpoint what it is, it just seems more laboured, kind of like hitch on run with his entire feet coming out of water for two kicks just before each breath, but his quads seem to drag in water (vs staying up higher as hips are already low) so bigger knee bend to get feet out of the way. When he breaths, both eyes are out of the water. It seems like he needs more "chest down, butt up, head down, legs up"

For what it's worth - even if I can't pick apart his form for fatal errors, it seems he has the slowest stroke rate of the entire group. So that is something he could improve on by training more to get that SPM count up (swim fitness).

I think it would be more concerning if he was already leading the pack in SPM but falling behind.

I know you do it all the time, because that’s the excuse you’ve settled on for yourself. But it’s not the limiter for Lionel and it definitely isn’t the limiter for you.

Tim

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http://www.magnoliamasters.com
http://www.snappingtortuga.com
http://www.swimeasyspeed.com

I think triathletes need to put swimming into context which they usually try to avoid. They are happy to do it in cycling and running since they are usually closer to an elite level in those disciplines, but not swimming. It’s one of the bigger reasons, in my experience, that the goals for swim improvement don’t materialize a lot of times for triathletes.

Tim

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http://www.magnoliamasters.com
http://www.snappingtortuga.com
http://www.swimeasyspeed.com

Ha - you couldn't be more wrong about that!

I swim more than the large majority of triathletes - specifically because I KNOW I still have room to improve - but it's tempered with the knowledge that I'm probably at the point of really diminshing returns, and swimming 30, even 40k, probably will yield poor time dividends compared to bike-run.

The talent limiter is real for me though - it's very clear from my prior results and subsequent race results over 10 years that I'm not a natural swimmer. In fact, I'm almost certainly a below-average swim talent guy. DOesn't mean I'm going to quit trying, and I've managed to swim my way to almost the FOP in the triathlons I do. But I'm crystal clear in that I'm NEVER going to catch those few front guys, the ones who are beating me by like 4+ minutes in an Oly swim (and can still beat me or keep up on bike-run). That's a talent limiter, and any coach, including you, who tells me I can 'win the swim' in competitive AG triathlons had I just trained better/harder on the swim, is totally full of it. (I've been AG 1st in the swim in a few Olys I've done, but that's still eons away from the top 1-4 overall swim guys, its not even close!)

And just to be fair - I'm also not catching any of the guys who are running or biking 4+ minutes faster than me, ever. There just happen to be fewer of them compared to swimming. In running, nobody here tries to tell a 40-minute Oly-runner that 'just trainer more and better - you'll catch the guy who's running 34-35.' They'll tell you the reality - that 34-35 guys is just TOO FAST for you, you'll never catch him. And they are right.

Lionel still needs to bike-run at top-elite level. Of course, he can swim faster if he became a pure swimmer for awhile, but that's not really relevant - he needs to be able to swim top-elite-tri level while realistically maintaining bike-run at the level he needs. This is at leaset potentially a major talent issue - improving on limited time and training energy due to competing demands of bike-run. If you are so convinced you know better than his other swim coaches, you really have to at least message him and tell him (and share with us!), what he needs to do to swim meaninfully faster while not losing his run-bike ability.

. Just telling you what I remember from growing up. Kids who were pretty crappy got real good as they just swam for years longer. They made friends with the lane mates. Flirted. Bought new swimmers and matched them with friends. Swim kid stuff.

Yep Lionel for sure has no intrinsic athletic potential. Explains why he has never won Kona

What is it that they wanted? Is it Olympics or bust or is there a path to a comfortable living as a pro swimmer? How many D1 scholarships are even available to swimmers?

Why not a Cyclocross race? LOL!!