BoringSupreez wrote:I think Americans in general know how to swim better than most Western nations, simply because we have a warmer climate than most of Europe. What's an Irish or Canadian guy who doesn't live in a large city going to do with the ability to swim?
To learn how to save themselves from drowning if they ever get into an accident? Swim for fun/sport? There are plenty of cold northern states in America and countries like Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece in Europe.
Where I live swimming is taught at schools at the age of 8, but most kids learned to swim at the age of 4-6. Quite many people here are actually into ice swimming
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... cehole.jpg
Basically you just saw a hole into ice and jump in, while its -10 to -30C outside (14 to -22 F)
Its good for blood circulation and health
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_swi ... traditions
BoneSnapDeez wrote:
Swimming is a "first world sport". Look at the people who dominate at the Olympics: Caucasians from developed nations (America, Australia, etc). Formal lessons and swimming pools/facilities are simply not available for low-income Americans and a large percentage of foreigners.
How is swimming any different from running? Its free. All you need is water. A lake, an ocean, a river. Majority of worlds major cities, espescially pretty much all cities built before industrialisation, are built next to oceans or rivers.
American football, Icehockey, motor sports etc... those are first world sports. The reason why white people do so well in swimming and black people dont is because of this
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/ar ... Ll8iSIwcJw
Scientists have found the reason why blacks dominate on the running track and whites in the swimming pool: it's in their belly-buttons, a study published Monday shows.
What's important is not whether an athlete has an innie or an outie but where his or her navel is in relation to the rest of the body, says the study published in the International Journal of Design and Nature and Ecodynamics.
The navel is the center of gravity of the body, and given two runners or swimmers of the same height, one black and one white, "what matters is not total height but the position of the belly-button, or center of gravity," Duke University professor Andre Bejan, the lead author of the study, told AFP.
"It so happens that in the architecture of the human body of West African-origin runners, the center of gravity is significantly higher than in runners of European origin," which puts them at an advantage in sprints on the track, he said.
Individuals of West African-origin have longer legs than European-origin athletes, which means their belly-buttons are three centimeters (1.18 inches) higher than whites', said Bejan.
That means the black athletes have a "hidden height" that is three percent greater than whites', which gives them a significant speed advantage on the track.
"Locomotion is essentially a continual process of falling forward, and mass that falls from a higher altitude, falls faster," Bejan explained.
In the pool, meanwhile, whites have the advantage because they have longer torsos, making their belly-buttons lower in the general scheme of body architecture.
"Swimming is the art of surfing the wave created by the swimmer," said Bejan.
"The swimmer who makes the bigger wave is the faster swimmer, and a longer torso makes a bigger wave. Europeans have a three-percent longer torso than West Africans, which gives them a 1.5-percent speed advantage in the pool," he said.
Asians have the same long torsos as Europeans, giving them the same potential to be record-breakers in the pool.
But they often lose out to whites because whites are taller, said Bejan.
Many scientists have avoided studying why blacks make better sprinters and whites better swimmers because of what the study calls the "obvious" race angle.
