Popov

The Giants of freestyle

Posted: Friday 19th March 2010

Take a look at two of the great freestyle swimmers and compare their techniques

The great Alexander Popov

Popov won the men's 50 m and 100 m freestyle in the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, and repeated his victories in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics,held the world record for the 100m of 48.21 in 1994 for over 6 years, and the 50m freestyle world record for over 8 years with 21.64.Many purist think that Popov was technically the greatest of all times.

Ian Thorpe - Thorpedo

He has won five Olympic gold medals, the most won by any Australian,he became the first person to win six gold medals in one World Championship. Thorpe set his 400m freestyle in 1999 3.43.80 and lowered the record and astonishing 5 times to 3.40.08 he remained the world record holder for 10 years until German Paul Biedermann set 3.40.07 in July 2009 with the aid of the shiny go faster suits. He also set world records on the 200 freestyle of 1.45.51 (current record Paul Biedermann 1.42.00)and 800m free 7.39.16 (current record Zhang Lin of China 7.32.12)

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