You might have thought that Olympic swimming was over after Michael Phelps collected his 8th gold on Aug 16, but it’s not. Today and tomorrow (Aug 20 and 21) the first Olympic open water events are being swum on the artificial lake where the rowing and canoeing events are being held. The 10k event, nearly the same duration as the 26.1 mile running marathon, is swum in four loops of a rectangular 2.5k course, during which the swimmers navigate round a turn buoy a total of 16 times. The water was shallow and warm, and the only waves were those created by the swimmers. There were two feeding stations (foto above shows Cassandra Patten and another swimmer hydrating sea-otter style just as I did in my Manhattan Island Marathon Swim) where coaches supply athletes with water or energy drinks. The race starts with a dive from a floating dock and finishes at a timing touchpad just above the surface.

The women’s event unfolded in relatively predictable fashion with the world’s most dominant woman OW swimmer, Larisa Ilchenko of Russia, taking the gold in 1 hour, 59 minutes, 27.7 seconds, just 1.5 seconds ahead of Kerri-Ann Payne and 3.3 seconds in front of Cassandra Patten, both of Britain. Natalie du Toit of South Africa the first amputee to qualify for an Olympics (her left leg was amputated below the knee in 2001 after a car accident) finished 16th and Chloe Sutton of the US, the youngest competitor at 16, placed 22nd.

What was predictable was not only that Ilchenko, 19, took the gold, but how. Ilchenko swims all her races with a a proven OW strategy. She hangs just behind the leaders, drafting off them and saving energy for 90% or more of the distance, then uses her freshness to unleash a killer sprint in the final 200 to 400 meters. That strategy has brought her five consecutive 5K world championships and titles in the three major pre-Olympic 10K race races. It’s also very typical of the world’s best OW racers, which is why these races, which can take two hours or more, are typically decided by tenths or even hundredths of seconds!

What was surprising was the absence of strategy by the two British swimmers. Though strong enough swimmers to race the best OW swimmer in the world, both seem to have started the race without any plan for winning it.

Patten, 21, sprinted to the front at the start and and stayed there for the next hour and 55 minutes. Payne, 20, caught Patten at around 2000 meters and the two swam stroke-for-stroke for approximately 90 minutes…playing right into the hands of the cagy Ilchenko.

Interviewed afterward, Patten admitted she’d swum without a plan in mind. Payne added: “We didn’t have a tactic. We just went out and swam.” This is a truly astounding admission from two of the best OW swimmers in the world.

As most swimmers learn from a young age because they train in circles, with three or more swimmers sharing a lane, the first swimmer in the lane has to do a lot more work than those who swim second, third or fourth in the circle. If you can draft within a reasonable distance of the swimmer ahead, you can swim some pretty fast times with far less work than if you were leading the lane.

Masters and triathletes who train with Masters groups really take this to heart. While etiquette and orderliness dictate giving the swimmer ahead of you five seconds (every swimmer leaves on a "red mark" on the pace clock, red marks occurring at :05, :10, :15, etc.) it’s common to see swimmers jump on the feet of the swimmer ahead of them only two to three seconds back. When you’re in your 40s or beyond, you take advantage of every opportunity to save a bit of precious energy.

The USA came rather late to open water swimming, compared to swimmers from Argentina, Egypt and Europe, particularly Russia and Germany, and it took several years for US swimmers to abandon their front-running, pool-racing ways. In the USA World Championship Trials in 2007 both Mark Warkentin and Micha Burden employed Ilchenko’s strategy for the first time. Both drafted off the race leaders for 9000m and went into high gear only in the final 1000. Burden won the women’s race and Warkentin the men’s, though neither was a pre-race favorite.

The obvious advantage is that a swimmer who does strategic drafting for most of the race will be far fresher as they enter the final sprint – when the medals are virtually always decided. Describing the Olympic 10k in the New York Times, Karen Crouse wrote: "While Patten and Payne churned through the water, Ilchenko swam on their heels, her stroke reminiscent of someone in the middle of a warm-up swim [my italics]. Ilchenko’s coach, Vladimir Zakharov said, ‘The idea was to let the good swimmers go ahead until the last 300 meters and then sprint ahead.’ With less than 1,000 meters remaining, Ilchenko broke into a sprint and swam around a fading Patten and a flailing Payne."

Again I can’t emphasize enough how surprising it is to read of two Olympic medalists making such a "rookie" mistake. I’ve never been remotely good enough to swim in an "elite" race, but I seek every drafting opportunity possible. I described how I learned (and trained) to change the way I started OW races to improve my drafting opportunities in this article.

Since Patten and Payner were strong enough to set the pace for 9700 of 10,000 meters is it possible they could have finished 1 and 2 had they let someone else set the pace? It will be interesting to see if the men learn anything from this. Their race is this evening (Thursday morning Beijing time)

Something else that Crouse wrote in her article is worthy of comment: "Except for the final few hundred meters, most open-water swimmers do not have much of a kick. They are content to drag their legs behind them, using a two-beat kick mostly to balance their stroke."

For swimmers at that level and speed, "dragging their legs behind them" is not at all an accurate way to describe the 2-Beat Kick. It may be true of lesser and slower swimmers, but – done properly – a 2BK uses an emphatic leg drive to add significant power to the stroke. Its great advantage for longer races is, though it’s quite a powerful movement, when tied in closely to body roll and hip drive, it gets most of its power from gravity and body mass and relatively little from muscular exertion. Thus it’s highly advantageous for distances over 400m. Chapter Four "Perpetual Motion Swimming" in our Easy Freestyle DVD shows how to "tune" the 2BK to the body roll and armstroke.080