By Braden Keith on SwimSwam
2021 INTERNATIONAL SWIMMING LEAGUE – SEASON 3, MATCH 18 – LEAGUE FINAL
- Friday, December 3rd – Saturday, December 4th
- 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm local time; 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm EST
- Pieter van den Hoogenband Zwemstadion, Eindhoven, Netherlands
- Short Course Meters (25m – SCM) Format
- ISL Season 3 Schedules, Start Times, & More
- ISL Live Stream ($)
- Live Results
- Teams Competing: Energy Standard, Cali Condors, London Roar, LA Current
- Day 1 Start Lists
- Day 1 Finals Live Recap
Yesterday, we posted a clip from above the water of Lilly King‘s 75 meter turn on the breaststroke leg of the Cali Condors’ 400 medley relay at the ISL finale.
On Saturday morning, the league posted the underwater footage of the touch to Instagram. We’ve uploaded the most relevant section to YouTube, since you can’t easily pause an Instagram video or go frame by frame.
There are three different angles in the video: one from above the water, one from a side view (that shows one swimmer very clearly, but that swimmer isn’t Lilly King), and one from the bottom of the pool.
The last one is the most relevant as it shows the best angle of the touch.
Pro tip: on YouTube, you can use the comma and period keys on your keyboard to go frame-by-frame.
From this angle, we can see what appears to be a non-simultaneous touch, with her left hand hitting first, and then her right hand. This is the opposite of what we thought the official might have seen based on the high angle above-the-water view.
This is the second time that King has been disqualified for this infraction at a major meet, after prelims of the 200 breaststroke at the 2019 World Championships. Just like that call, when slowed down, we can see that the call was correct, but it sure looks okay in real-time.
As King said at the 2019 World Championships: “I think it would have been very difficult to see with the human eye personally, but I think the official was standing at just the right angle and she got me… The officials are there to do their job and that’s what they did.”
But it seems that maybe this is (yet another) breaststroke rule that needs some review. The exact language of the rule is as follows:
At each turn and at the finish of the race, the touch shall be made with both hands separated and simultaneously at, above, or below the water level.
A most literal interpretation of the word “simultaneously” is, effectively, impossible to adjudicate. With some electronic means of measuring, either via pressure sensors or high-speed cameras, we could set a certain threshold of the gap that could be considered “simultaneous.” But until then (and there are a lot of other things in swimming that could be fixed with technology sooner), the actual ruling falls on some subjective point in between those two things.
This time, the result was a 50 point swing between the Condors and their chief rivals Energy Standard. That’s the number to look for in a final score to see if this call was the difference between the two teams.
Standings after Day 1 of the Final:
- Energy Standard – 271
- Cali Condors – 250
- London Roar – 206
- LA Current – 171
The final day of competition to crown the ISL champion begins at 7PM Dutch time, 1PM US Eastern Time, on Saturday.
Read the full story on SwimSwam: ISL Releases Underwater Footage of Lilly King’s Disqualified Breaststroke Turn
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