文/五花肉

以规矩铸就巅峰

Achieve the Summit with Rules

文/五花肉

游泳对人类而言，历史久远。远古人类为了生存捕猎，学会了游泳。从最初模仿水栖动物姿势，到现代游泳竞技，是人类征服自然的体现。纵观游泳竞技发展，标准推动贯穿始终。

Swimming has a long history for humans. Primitive humans learned how to swim in order to hunt for survival. The evolution from the initial imitation of aquatic animals' postures to modern competitive swimming is a manifestation of human conquest of nature. Throughout the history of competitive swimming, standards always play an important role in development.

快速发展的标准支撑

Rapid Development of the Standards

游泳竞技在1896年第一届奥运会上就被列入正式比赛项目。彼时，游泳比赛规则尚未健全，对泳姿也没有统一要求，决定胜负的唯一标准就是速度。运动员千奇百怪的泳姿，严重影响了竞技比赛的公平性。Competitive swimming was included as one of the formal events in the first modern Olympics in 1896. At that time, the rules of swimming were not yet perfect and there were no uniform requirements for the swimming strokes. The sole criteria to judge the result was speed. Various swimming strokes, especially some exceedingly strange ones, seriously affected thefairness of this competitive game.

此后，游泳运动开始针对不同泳姿出台相应的约束标准，并逐步细化。从第16届奥运会开始，自由泳、蛙泳、蝶泳、仰泳4种泳姿成为游泳比赛的正式项目，游泳竞技自此迈入“标准化”的发展快车道，成为奥运会上设置奖牌数量仅次于田径的项目。

From then on, standards for different swimming strokes were developed and gradually refined. Since the 16th Olympics, freestyle, breaststroke, butterfly, and backstroke became the formal events of competitive swimming. Since then, competitive swimming entered a stage of fast standardization development, and became the event whose number of medals was second only to track and field in the Olympic Games.

技术与标准互相促进

Mutual Promotion of Technique and Standards

游泳运动员成绩的提高，往往源于个人技术的突破。而游泳运动整体水平的提升，则始于标准对新技术的规范。

In most cases, the improvement of the swimmer's performance results from the breakthroughs of personal technique. However, the overall enhancement of this sport’s level results from standards-based specification for new techniques.

以蛙泳为例，历史上先后经历了3次重要的泳姿标准变革。50年代初，运动员为了提高泳速，曾采用潜水蛙泳，以减少水对人体的阻力。1956年第16届奥运会，日本运动员古川胜就采用这一技术获得200米冠军。当时的国际泳联认为，过度潜水会危害运动员安全并影响比赛观赏性，宣布此后禁止“潜水蛙泳”。

Take breaststroke as an example, its stroke standards changed three times in the history. In the early 1950s, in order to improve swimming speed, athletes adopted "underwater breaststroke" to reduce the water resistance. In 16th Olympics in 1956, Masaru Furukawa, a Japanese athlete received a gold medal in the 200-metre breaststroke by adopting this technique. But, at that time, FINA believed that swimming underwater in excess would jeopardize the athletes’safety and influence competition's ornamental value, therefore they announced the prohibition of "underwater breaststroke".

1957—1960年间，我国运动员戚烈云、穆祥雄及莫国雄利用自己腿部有利条件，创造了“高航”“半高航”和“平航”式技术，先后五次打破世界纪录。

From 1957 to 1960, Chinese athletes Qi Lieyun, Mu Xiangxiong and Mo Guoxiong made use of their favorable conditions in their legs, invented "high sail", "half high sail" and "flat sail" techniques, and broke the world record for five times.

1987年2月，国际游联再次修订规则：“允许头部有下潜动作，但每次配合后必须露出水面”。……