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A groundbreaking history of how women found synchronicity—and power—in water. “If you’re not strong enough to swim fast, you’re probably not strong enough to swim ‘pretty,’?” said a young Esther Williams to theater impresario Billy Rose. Since the nineteenth century, tensions between beauty and strength, aesthetics and athleticism have both impeded and propelled the careers of female swimmers—none more so than synchronized swimmers, for whom Williams is often considered godmother. In this revelatory history, Vicki Valosik traces a century of aquatic performance, from vaudeville to the Olympic arena, and brings to life the colorful cast of characters whose “pretty swimming” not only laid the groundwork for an altogether new sport but forever changed women’s relationships with water. Williams, who became a Hollywood sensation for her splashy “aquamusicals,” was just one in a long, bedazzled line of swimmers who began their careers as athletes but found greater opportunity, and often social acceptance, in the world of show business. Early starlets like Lurline the Water Queen performed “scientific” swimming, a set of moves previously only practiced by men—including Benjamin Franklin—that focused on form and exhibited mastery in the water. Demonstrating their fancy feats in aquariums and water tanks rolled onto music hall stages, these women stunned Victorian audiences with their physical dexterity and defied society’s rigid expectations of what was proper and possible for their sex. Far more than bathing beauties, they ushered in sensible swimwear and influenced lifesaving and physical education programs, helping to drop national drowning rates and paving the way for new generations of female athletes. When a Chicago physical educator matched their aquatic movements to music in the 1920s, young girls flocked to take part in “synchronized swimming.” But despite overwhelming love from audiences and the Olympic ambitions of its practitioners, “synchro” was long perceived as little more than entertaining pageantry, and its athletes would face a battle against the current to earn a spot at the highest echelons of sport. Now, on the fortieth anniversary of synchronized swimming’s elevation to Olympic status, Swimming Pretty honors its incredible history of grit, glamor, and sheer athleticism.
Never before has one book taken such a comprehensive look at the evolution, science, and coaching application of competitive swimming. In Breakthrough Swimming, legendary swimming coach and researcher Cecil Colwin provides a rich perspective on the development of the sport and explains major advances in stroke mechanics, training methods, and racing techniques. Accompanied by richly detailed illustrations, this engaging text is one of the most insightful written works on the sport. It makes clear sense out of the scientific principles and puts into context the historical changes in the sport. Not only will you gain a greater understanding of competitive swimming through its origins and evolution, but you’ll also gain these valuable skills: • Improve your stroke technique, starts, and turns. • Improve your feel of the water by learning to anticipate and effectively manipulate the reacting flow of the water. • Understand the hydrodynamics of swimming and learn how water reacts to the forces you apply with each swimming stroke. • Improve your conditioning and develop a better training program by understanding the principles of training. • Learn how to design different types of workouts to produce specific physiological effects. • Learn how to plan a seasonal program and how to relate your training to the pace of the race you intend to swim. The book includes a chapter contributed by Dr. David Pyne, sport physiologist to the 2000 Australian Olympic swimming team. Pyne covers the physiology of modern swimming training and the preparation of swimming teams for top-flight international competition. Breakthrough Swimming covers every aspect of competitive swimming from its spawning ground in early 19th-century England to the present day, including the profound changes that occurred in the last decade of the 20th century. The book also explains the societal changes of recent years, such as the advent of professional swimming and the specter of performance-enhancing drugs. Combining history with the latest innovations, Breakthrough Swimming is the definitive work on the past, present, and future of competitive swimming.