I suppose a short torso means you can't articulate and whip this long core like the body of a dolpin would flex ....long legs don't have as good articulation points as long spinal bones spread further apart than short spinal bone (meaning less of a lever per spinal bone). On the other hand, long wingpan and big hands and feet should be an advantage so I'll roll with what I have!

I now only realize why I had the sit ups record at Royal Military College of Canada back when I was studying there. I had no torso to lift off the ground my skinny arms weighed nothing!!!!

She looks "normal" b/c she has a good bit of "bio-prene" to enable her to endure swimming the English Channel all butterfly without a wetsuit. (No wetsuits allowed in "real" OW swimming.) That's 14 hrs and 18 min in 55-ish degree water!!! A 14 hr swim is more in the "ultra marathon" category. If you look at the top 10K swimmers, which is a 1:50-2:00 event, they are mostly pool swimmers and look like the other pool swimmers. It is only when you get to the ultra-long distance, cold water swimmers that you see chunky-ish swimmers. Lynne Cox was one of the top female OW swimmers in the world from 1971-2002 (age 14-45!!!) and, among other stupendous swims, she swam the Bering strait (32 degree water with ice chunks!!!) with no wetsuit!!! She was 5'6" and around 180 lbs.

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I would agree with the article. Which is different than agreeing with the NYT.

It been my experience that athletes with the same MASS can compete rather evenly. Though we are visually tempted to give an edge to a 6'+ person because of REACH. Reach isn't everything. If you can't coordinate that reach, you are very limited.

Sports where you would think height would help: basketball or wrestling. Yet in both sports, the shorter person can get the better of the taller person.

Especially wrestling where they base the competition on weight/mass. They didn't base wrestling on height. As my general rule, I don't think I could out swim someone I couldn't out wrestle, even if I was much taller. The wrestler can probably put it all together better than I can.

In running, the tallest runner doesn't always win though his reach is greater stride for stride.

The tallest swimmers usually do have the largest mass (or is right up there) so often we appear to be right. Then we incorrectly extrapolate that height/reach is the deciding factor. Wrong.

Swimming is like many sports, height is an advantage except when it isn't.

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I have no idea about running, but you're way off base when it comes to swimming.

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In running sprinting, BMI, at least visually has an impact. You have to accelerate all that mass and then you have to use your mass to sustain your top speed while fighting gravity. Too high BMI and you just won't be able to sprint. Too low BMI (as in marathoner) and you won't be able to accelerate. Once we get into longer distance running absolute body weight is key. Two runners who both have identical mile times, one 125lbs and the other 150 lbs running the marathon and both equally trained with identical BMI and I am putting every penny I own on a bet on the 125 lb athlete. Absolute weight is key and the hotter the day, the more this kicks in. The heavier athlete just produces too much absolute heat for the same pace (for example see Rod DeCastella's Olympic Marathon in 1984 vs Carlos Lopez....in 1983, De Castella beat Lopez by 2 seconds at the Rotterdam marathon, then in the LA heat, DeCastella wiltered, with his extra 20 lbs and fell off the back...Lopez only won in 2:09 an Olympic record time that stood till Beijing 2008 when Winjiru went 2:06). Paula Radcliffe is a great example of a heavy runner who under performs in the heat. Everyone says she chokes at the Olympics, but she just has the wrong physics for a mid summer marathon.

The article also fails to mention that, in pool swimming, taller swimmers are actually swimming a significantly shorter distance than shorter swimmers.

This provides a very big advantage to a taller swimmer and the taller the swimmer the less distance they need to swim (in a pool).

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Define "significantly" and "very big advantage". For example, take 2 swimmers, a 6 footer and a 6'6" guy, put them in a 400 free LCM. quantify how much less the taller swimmer has to swim.

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Anthony Ervin was a "short" sprinter, and he is 6'-3". In men's swimming you don't see many swimmers under 6', and even the rare sub-6'-er is in breaststroke or distance freestyle. In swimming, height matters.

Your examples are basketball and wrestling. Basketball? In major college ball or pros, 6'-3" might sniff a guard spot. Sure, every year there's a 5'-10" guard somewhere who's incredible, but that's only because there are 350 D1 basketball programs. Of the 70 (or so) that would be considered major basketball, the majority of the PG/SG are 6'+. And in the pros, forget about it, because for every sub-6'-er guard there is another guy just as good with +6" of height. So can a short guy play in the NBA? Sure - Spud Webb and Muggsy Bogues are the guys everyone thinks of. But it's so uncommon it's a statistical outlier.

Wrestling comes down to center of gravity and has zero correlation to swimming.

In that example, the advantage is (roughly) 6" per length.

For LCM, in events longer than the 50, that's a 0.15m advantage per 50m length swum. At the elite level, there is little doubt that that's a quite significant advantage, l sure as heck wouldn't leave it on the table ...

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 In Billings here we have Mike Burton. 3xGold. Repeat 1500 Gold in 68 and 72. He told me a story at a banquet at the swimmers hall of fame. They said he was asked the biggest difference between swimmers in his day and know. He sad he simply stood up, did not say a word...………….everyone understood. He is 5'5" or 6"

Blake Pieroni is shorter, at about 6'0", and the fast Japanese middle distance / all rounder guys are about 5'10 (Hagino and Seto) But in general, yeah, if you wanna be a sprint freestyler then you have to be big.

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I agree 100% and was going to point that out. There was consideration a few years ago to have adjustable blocks for the 50m free based on height (which of course is stupid).

No women under 5-6 or man under 6-1 will win the 50 at the Olympics.

here's some interesting measurements. Alan Couzens also had a write-up (not sure if he chimed in on here or not.

https://www.topendsports.com/events/summer/science/anthropometry.htm


https://alancouzens.com/blog/tall_swimmers.html


granted, I think they are of the Olympic Winners, but still. I haven't seen one for distance swimmers, however.

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No, it isn't. It's closer to 1.5" per length. You still need to turn, and a tall guy doesn't turn 6" further from the wall than a short guy. Think of the pushoff position, which is knees bent at about 90 degrees. The tall guy gets to turn approximately the difference in their tibia lengths further away from the wall, call it half of their difference in inseam length. Couple that with a short guy being able to get round the turn a little quicker than the tall guy, and the advantage becomes even less.

So it's an advantage, sure, but it's not nearly as big as most people seem to think it is. The big advantage is that a tall guy carries more muscle mass for a given frontal area.

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Yeah there's always an outlier, so I guess if he question is can a short person be world class swimmer? Sure, if everything falls into place. Largely, especially in the shorter events, size is going to matter. It's hilarious, to me at least, that we're considering Pieroni short.

There's plenty of literature that discusses this phenomena exactly. Whatever the advantage is (per given inch or centimeter of additional height), remember that you have to double it, as it happens at every wall touch/push off, so twice every 50m for LCM or twice every 25yd for SCY.

Any way you cut it, it is a very significant advantage for elite pool swimming, where wins and losses are often measured by 100ths of a second.

( the good news is, the "shorter distance pool advantage" for taller swimmers essentially disappears in open water swimming ... but of course the taller swimmers will still have a slight drag advantage ... )

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I'm not arguing that it's not an advantage (the big advantage comes on the final length). But it's an advantage that can be overcome through execution. At 2m/s, it takes about 0.04s to travel 3". Can a 6 footer get around a turn 0.04s faster than a 6'6" guy? Probably. He can get into a tighter tuck and rotate a little bit quicker.

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I really don't think there's any reasoned or scientific basis to this argument. The comparisons to basketball or wrestling are utterly inappropriate and just serve to confuse the issue since the mechanics of the sports are totally unrelated. Different body shapes have different advantages in different contexts. That's pretty much beyond argument. For swimming there are multiple advantages to being taller and larger within reason. I won't claim to be an expert on the subject, but there are a several that pop to mind straight away, including reduced distance to traverse in a pool as already mentioned, reduced wetted area relative to muscle mass, larger Reynolds no, and potentially reduced wave drag due to a more favourable Froude no (if I remember correctly how that works, which I won't guarantee!).

Perhaps there are compensating advantages to being smaller that I'm not thinking of, but I reckon for the most part, smaller swimmers who are on a par with larger swimmers are doing so despite a net disadvantage due to stature and because they are superior in technique, fitness, etc...