Grazing Perfection: The Ed Moses Breaststroke

In the modern sports world, we are quick with hyperbole in every situation. Michael Phelps is the greatest EVER. Tiger Woods is either the best golfer in history or a miserable sex addict. Kobe is BETTER than MJ. I recognize that you could dismiss this blog instantly for its pompously hyperbolic title. Don't. Ed Moses truly had the closest thing to a perfect breaststroke that we've ever seen.

I first wrote about Ed and his stroke a little over a year ago, when the first of his seemingly unbreakable SCM world records was broken. I featured the video of his remaining record, which was broken late in 2009. Here is what I wrote in that gushing blog:

"Watching what youtube video I could find, it was pretty remarkable how Moses' stroke was even better than I remembered it...Moses makes the other swimmers look like they are doing pullouts in quicksand. His technical precision on top of the water makes it look like he's almost swimming a different stroke"

Now watch the video for yourself:

I've shown this video to my own breaststrokers repeatedly over the last two years for two reasons. First, I can't resist how goofy he is here. Its pretty entertaining to hear someone boldly predict that they will beat the best breaststroker of his generation. More importantly, I show the video because I believe this is the closest thing to a perfect breaststroke that we have ever seen. Here's what I want them to see:

1. Pullouts: Because of the distance of the camera, it can be hard to see the fine detail of Ed's pullouts, but some points are obvious. He creates a ton of acceleration with his pulldown, and does not lose speed at any point. If you pause the around the 1:35 mark you will see that both him and Kitajima are the first swimmers in the field to break out of the water and they have traveled the most distance. Coincidence? I think not.

2. Body Line: Some of these shots show a glaring difference between the body line of Moses and the other world class breaststrokers in the field. Pausing at 1:47, for instance, you can see a nearly perfect straight line from Ed's knees up to the tip of his head. The guy directly below him is breaking his body line in the middle of his stomach in order to get a breath. If you pause at 1:48 you can also see that Kitajima is not able to maintain a straight body line and actually breaks that line right at his hips. Underwater footage would do his line justice at the completion of the stroke, but you get a pretty good closeup of how long and straight he is on the close up from 2:33-2:37.

3. Timing: Great timing is very easy to see in breaststroke. If there is one piece of the stroke out of timing, you will see a hitch. Watching this video, I find it very hard to detect a part of the stroke where it looks like Ed's speed falters at all. In addition, sometimes swimmers start with better timing, but as they tire their timing really comes off the rails. Watch the stroke as he comes down the last 25 from 3:45 on. The timing is almost exactly the same as it was at the beginning of the race.

If Ed could have replicated this stroke over and over again, he would have been very well off. Unfortunately, like many other swimmers and breaststrokers in particular, a stroke this close to perfect is very hard to maintain. Kitajima had more flaws but has been absolutely remarkable in his ability to swim with an only slightly more flawed stroke time after time over a long period.

I hope to make this a project here at athlete village: to use the power of youtube to show and detail some of the finest strokes our sport has ever seen. Check back for more than just breaststroke in future installments.