A Revolution That Began With a Kick

Michael Phelps, center, here at the start of the 200-meter butterfly semifinal at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, has mastered the dolphin kick. (By Donald Miralle -- Getty Images)

And because the kick was executed underwater, coaches added, it was a difficult skill to teach and evaluate. No one really knew the perfect way to do it. No one really knew whether it would be a big plus or not. So for years, many coaches and athletes worked on it only perfunctorily.

"Nobody figures out what's faster until somebody goes faster using it, then all of the coaches sit in the video room saying, 'How are we going to beat this guy?' " Schubert said.

Among the first swimmers to perfect the maneuver within the 15-meter limit, Schubert said, was American Neil Walker, who used to frustrate four-time Olympic gold medal winner Lenny Krayzelburg in backstroke races in 25-meter pools (as opposed to the Olympic 50-meter distance) in the late 1990s and early 2000s. With the extra turns, Walker could routinely defeat the more acclaimed Krayzelburg, surging ahead in the underwater portion of races.

"We all studied him," Schubert said. "He was the first great dolphin kicker. We all studied his underwater technique and copied it."

Then there was Phelps.

In August 2002, Phelps broke the 400 individual medley record in a close race against teammate Erik Vendt at the U.S. championships in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. In that race, Schubert recalled, Phelps -- then a rising teenage star -- passed Vendt in the last 50 meters by catapulting ahead with his dolphin kick. Back then, however, Phelps was just learning to use the kick to his advantage. He has mastered it only recently, coaches say, putting him in an elite group along with Americans Natalie Coughlin, Ryan Lochte and Aaron Peirsol.

A year before the 2004 Olympics in Athens, U.S. swimming coaches got together and agreed they needed to better understand this dolphin kick. Clearly it was important. But there was virtually no body of research on the topic. How much of a difference did it make? How should they teach it? Which was the best approach?

They got in touch with group of scientists at George Washington University who had been studying how fish swim in an effort to aid in the design of small submarines for the Navy. USA Swimming's biomechanics coordinator, Russell Mark, immediately set the GW team -- which included professors Rajat Mittal and James Hahn and student Alfred von Loebbecke -- to the task of studying the underwater dolphin kick. The USA Swimming-sponsored research, which began in 2003, continues to this day.

"The advantages of doing it," Mittal said, "are very apparent to everybody."

The race has since been on to implement the kick.

"I've talked to people about the fly kick being a weapon for your swimming that you must have," said Eddie Reese, a two-time Olympic team coach at the University of Texas. But in years past, "I was always disappointed I wouldn't see [school-age swimmers] doing the fly kick underwater. . . . In the last five years, I've been seeing it more and more.

"Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte and Aaron Peirsol -- you can't compete with them unless you can fly kick."