[Prof.Schwimm]

RolandG hat recht. Sun Gleitet nur 0.2s

Absence of Gliding

Sun has an amazingly long stroke, perhaps the longest we've ever seen in the elite swimming world. It looks like he's *gliding* down the pool but be very careful - it's almost entirely an illusion due to the sheer length of his stroke. Here's some consecutive frames from his video, 0.04 seconds apart:


The gap between one stroke finishing at the rear and the next starting at the front is less than 0.2 of a second - less than a blink of an eye! The truth is he's hardly gliding at all - to Sun as he swims his strokes will feel very continuous from one side to the other. The same is true for Grant Hackett (the previous world record holder) - we measured the gap between his strokes as 0.15 seconds.

Although these tall smooth swimmers look like they pause in their stroke and glide down the pool, we can see from the frames above that they don't. What we perceive when we see this footage at full speed is quite different from the reality. Sun has an extremely long stroke by virtue of his huge wingspan and efficient propulsive technique, this long style creates the perception that he is gliding when in fact there's only a tiny fraction of a second between strokes.