New backstroke starts get foothold in Charlotte

Finally, backstrokers can get a grip – with their feet, anyway.

After decades of watching swimmers in other strokes benefit from starting block improvements that help them launch more swiftly from the air into the water, backstroke specialists are getting their day.

A new device at Charlotte’s Arena Pro Swim Series provides an underwater ledge for the one race that begins in the water. It gives backstrokers a firm place to plant their feet on often slick starting pads as they push up and out with their legs to shoot horizontally across the surface of the water.

The contraption is meant to alleviate the shared fear of every summer league kid and world-class competitor alike: a bad start.

“It’s a huge difference,” says Kathleen Baker, 18, one of the nation’s most promising young swimmers who trains with SwimMAC Carolin’s Team Elite.

FINA, the international governing body of swimming, approved the ledges two years ago, but they have only recently been used frequently at top events.

They require some training by swimmers. The device at the Pro Series has a lever that swimmers must pull before adjusting the ledge. After the start, it immediately retracts like a window blind.

Athlete unfamiliarity has made for some clumsy starts.

But even if ledge mechanics aren’t completely perfected, current and former top swimmers and coaches support the move, calling it overdue.

Athletes in freestyle, butterfly and breaststroke events have seen a series of improvements to the top of starting blocks, from the addition of rough surfaces, to an inclined platform and even a raised portion at the back, among others.

Additionally, said Team Elite Coach David Marsh, it levels the playing field for all swimmers who can be confident that a whole season’s worth of training doesn’t literally slip away on a bad start.

The most notable example of that came last summer when U.S. Olympian Elizabeth Beisel suffered one of the sport’s most dramatic slips at the national championships. She was a favorite to win the 200 meter backstroke and fell to sixth place.

“But honestly,” Marsh said, “what I’m most excited about is to see a day when young kids don’t experience that really bad moment of the fleet sipping and them being disappointed in themselves for something that is really a problem with the rules or the technology.”

This story was originally published May 16, 2015 at 3:46 PM with the headline "New backstroke starts get foothold in Charlotte."