butterfly is interesting because it's faster than breaststroke (mentioned) but slower than freestyle. it also consumes far more energy than any other stroke.
to that end, i'm not sure why it exists, except that it's truly a unique style.
* i also still hold my high school's butterfly record, 20 years on.
AtlasBarfed 39 minutes ago [-]
Butterfly is the "three point shot" of swimming. If you can do a pool length of butterfly you are a "real" swimmer, kind of like a non-prayer three point shot implies you actually played basketball.
Bratmon 26 minutes ago [-]
I never quite understood why there are Olympic medals for Butterfly swimming, but not things like "100m hop-on-one-foot sprint"
Like, why is being good at a deliberately-inefficent form of movement worth a medal in only this one case?
ggreer 2 minutes ago [-]
This quirk of competition is why swimmers can win a ridiculous number of medals. If swimming only had freestyle, Michael Phelps would have 7 gold medals instead of 23.
skinfaxi 22 minutes ago [-]
Deliberately-inefficient compared to what? TFA leads with:
> Swimmers and coaches began to realise that breaststroke was quicker when a swimmer recovered their arms forward above the water and the arm technique – as well as the swimming term ‘butterfly’ – was born.
Bratmon 17 minutes ago [-]
I noticed the article pointedly didn't compare the stroke to the forward crawl, which is clearly both faster and more efficient.
There's no real way to compare the butterfly and the forward crawl that doesn't make the butterfly look like a ridiculous farce.
john_strinlai 20 minutes ago [-]
the butterfly stroke is the most energy-inefficient stroke, i believe, despite being quicker.
tokai 21 minutes ago [-]
>deliberately-inefficent
If that's how we judge things, there should only be races on bicycles.
ggreer 14 minutes ago [-]
Allowing a bicycle would be like if swimming competitions allowed fins. A more accurate mapping to the swimming strokes would be race walking, which is widely ridiculed.
tokai 8 minutes ago [-]
No, if efficiency can be used to evaluate if a sport is legit, only cycling should be allowed. No running or swimming. The point is that efficiency is an asinine ground to judge a sport on.
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to that end, i'm not sure why it exists, except that it's truly a unique style.
* i also still hold my high school's butterfly record, 20 years on.
Like, why is being good at a deliberately-inefficent form of movement worth a medal in only this one case?
> Swimmers and coaches began to realise that breaststroke was quicker when a swimmer recovered their arms forward above the water and the arm technique – as well as the swimming term ‘butterfly’ – was born.
There's no real way to compare the butterfly and the forward crawl that doesn't make the butterfly look like a ridiculous farce.
If that's how we judge things, there should only be races on bicycles.