19/04/2020
ISOLATION TBT(S)
Sorry it’s a few days late but this week we’re taking a look at the Sprint King Alexander POPOV 🇷🇺
🥇4x Olympic Champion
🌍 World Record Holder
🥇6x World Champion
🥇 21x European Champion
He is the Greatest sprinter of all time and the ONLY person to complete the sprint double-double; that’s Gold medals in the 50 & 100m Freestyle in both the 92 & 96 Olympic Games, holding the world records for both events for 6 years.
POPOV 🇷🇺 is considered to be one of best technical swimmers of all time. Many of the swimmers I coach will know him for the Rock and Roll drill we use regularly. This is one of the most important drills to do for Freestyle as it works all aspects of the stroke; hand entry, catch, reach, rotation, propulsion, recovery, high elbow and head position. It’s a drill that has to be swam in slow motion and repeated many, many times in order to perfect the technique.
This is the whole 24 minute ‘What’s The Limit’ film made when Alexander was training. If you don’t want to watch the whole thing his coach talks about the Kayak Principle (basis of Freestyle) and Alexander demonstrates the Rock n’ Roll Drill at 18min https://youtu.be/8BrRIZFk7O4
In fact he was so grateful to his coach Gennadi TOURETSKI 🇷🇺 he gave him his 100m 1996 Gold medal. POPOV said he always had his victory and would be remembered on paper (pre-internet days) so it would be nice for his coach to have something too.
There are a number of ways POPOV 🇷🇺 is impressive. The majority of his training was in 20m pools as that was all that was available to him in Russia at the time. He was stabbed on the street shortly after the 1996 Olympic Games and yet still managed a year later to defend both his European titles.
In the 2000 Olympic trials, when a lot of people thought he should have retired he broke his own world record in 31 strokes and it stood for 8 years. Ironically at the Sydney Olympics of the same year he could only manage 🥈 in the 100m and he did not medal in 50m coming 6th by 0.26 when he was 0.34 faster than Gold just 2 months before. Every little detail counts in sprinting.
POPOV 🇷🇺 swam on. At 34 everyone was still telling him to retire having not recorded any wins in 2001 and only 🥉 at world level in 2002 but he still had something to prove and at the 2003 world championships in Barcelona he won both his titles back!
*Discussion - 50m FLY/BK/BR*
Alexander’s dominance in both events 1991 - 2000 was such that you were near certain of the result of the race before it had been swum - similar to how we feel of Adam PEATY 🇬🇧 in Breaststroke currently. In fact Adam could well have achieved his own double-double in Tokyo but for the fact that Freestyle is the only stroke with a 50m Olympic event. I’ve never agreed with that and can only think that as usual it’s to do with money (more athletes cost more $) and politics (how can the host nation justify the $). This was a major disaster for another of our World Champion swimmers Liam TANCOCK 🇬🇧 who was a 50m Backstroke specialist, double world champion and world record holder but at the Olympic Games could only swim the 100m and although he made 4 finals was never able to bring home a medal that would have been nailed on in a 50m race.
He did eventually retire after an unsuccessful Athens Olympics of 2004. At the time he was the European Champion of that year but I think it was being made the flagbearer for his country that persuaded him to go and after not qualifying for both finals he bowed out.
Here is POPEV’s 🇷🇺 incredible last world victory in 2003 at Barcelona where he won his first Olympic title 11 years previous. The quality is low but the swim is majestic ☮️
https://youtu.be/UjWZzWExGmU
Barcelona, FINA World Championships 2003, 50m freestyle. Popov 21.92s Foster 22.20 van den Hoogenband 22.29 (www.swimvideo.ru, no longer on the web)
