The Dunford Swimming Fraternity plus Swimming In Generally.

Sports
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If you are one of the many idiots getting out of the Kenyan education system without ever becoming educated, and too silly to even recognize that fact, and come to parade your stupidity in my wall, I don’t entertain you at all, and you will get cursed out offensively right back to your stupid wall, and I never mince words. Nobody cares whether you read it or not because nobody told you to read a damn thing.
If someone asks a typical teenager whether or not they like going to the swimming pool,3 out of 4 times they will say yes. If that’s the case then why are countries like Kenya far behind viz a viz say elite American and Australian swimming beasts?
The most succinct explanation is that swimming is one of the most technical sports in the world of sporting competitions.
I loved swimming from childhood, and I joined the swim team in Form 1, captained the team in Form 4, and thereafter some club we formed. Few schools can tolerate the budget for proper training save for those private schools populated by Sonko kids.
Swimming is perhaps 80% technique and 20% all others, including the aerobic engines for distance swimmers, and the anaerobic engines for sprinters.
In high school, our swim team we got pitted against the “Dunford Family Relay Team”; Martin Dunford the Dad at about age 46, Richard Dunford at about 12, Jason Dunford at about 11, and Baby David Dunford at 9. Our swim team was of average 17.5 years in approximation, and they out touched our high school swim team!!! Those young fellaz were not big at all in stature, save for their tall gigantic Dad, but they were extremely lethal swimmers for their age, thanks to pure finesse in technique. There is no better comparison to re-iterate the importance of technique. Upon exiting the water it was not the walk of shame, but rather one of “You just got punk’d by a bunch of kids” moment, and people were falling off their chairs in laughter because it was quite a spectacle, with the announcer struggling to maintain a semblance of composure as he read out the results. It was not by mistake that ultimately Jason and David ended up as world class swimmers. They had gone to UK, and upon advice, Jason and David were taken to US to polish those aquatic bullets, and the strategy was extremely successful. Richard Dunford remained in London and moved on to the world of muscle and power on the Rugby pitch.
In the world of swimming, it is funny just how different the views are of what is really happening in the water as people race. If you watch a FreeStyle Sprint, you would be willing to bet they are creating such havoc that they are effectively kicking up in the air down into the water. That couldn’t be further from the truth, for what is happening is that they are riding very high on the surface and the forces applied by the legs are from the surface downwards! In Butterfly stroke, people think that the swimmers are literally swimming up and down out and back into the water, and you will see many casual swimmers doing precisely that up and down routine, but in actuality they are leaping forwards with their chins very close to the surface. Butterfly is much faster than Freestyle as far as the “peak speed” in the stroke cycle, as anyone who has swam the stroke will recognize, but the recovery process creates a significant slowdown that results in quicker times by Front Crawl instead.
I do chat with Jason from time to time and I once did ask him, how the hell they return those stratospheric speeds while maintaining perfect technique. His response is one which, I am confident 99% of the people wouldn’t get it correct at first guess. He said that Butterfly is all Abs! There I was thinking that I knew one or two things about swimming hahahaha.
For Michael Phelps he has got the perfect swimmer physique, with an upper torso more consistent with a 6’8" mine while being 6’4", and a lower torso more consistent with a 6’0" man, both of which play to his advantage from the extra momentum from the torso and and long reach as well as shorter feet with explosive power off the walls during turns, along with “gymnast” like flexibility. However, the number 1 factor responsible is none other than Bob Bowman the coach, and in fact Phelps never let any other coach train him. He had spotted Phelps at 10 or 11 before he started coaching him as a very highly charged kid with endless energy and natural tenacity in the realm of competition, and he had indicated to Phelps mom early on that, if he completed the training regimen he had planned for Phelps, he would become a great swimmer, which was an understatement to state the least!
If you have watched Michael Phelps or Katie Ledecky participation in events, there is never a shortage of seemingly superfluous adjectives that describe the feats by those two, only to be properly appreciated if you ever tried to compete in swimming, but of course by now Michael Phelps is retired. You might be a little bit surprised by the fact that on an athlete to athlete basis Katie Ledecky is very emphatically ahead of Michael Phelps. After doing some extrapolation for easy to understand perspective, a Katie Ledecky performance in a swimming event is comparable to field of women lined up for a 400M track running event, only for her to beat the second runner by over 100m! A pure aquatic beast. For her aerobic engine, I have no idea what’s stored inside there, or she maybe with a non-detectable biological supercharger, and her technique is described as “swimming the way men swim”. The connoisseur analysis though is that “she swims like Katie Ledecky! I will post a 1500m race down here where she is so far ahead that you have no idea who is racing who from all the overlapping et cetera! She has a lopping stroke, and for the quickest analogy that most of you have likely watched at some point, let us go back to 2008 Beijing 4 by 100M Men’s Free Relay.
The main competition was between US and France, and all the pundits had their bets transfixed on the French team because it was simply too good, as potent the US team indeed was, it was not in theory a winnable race absent of voodoo. Phelps started off and and Lezak anchored, whereas for France, the 6’5” 220 pounds worth of pure muscle and power inhered in one Alain Bernard on the anchor leg, presumably to become a spoiler to Michael Phelps’ medal orgy. He was talking sh1t about crushing those American guys like guitar strings, and that statement was placed on Phelp’s Locker, as a reminder and motivator in light of the arduous challenge that lay ahead.
Alaine Bernard dove in about a body length ahead of Jason Lesak in the anchor leg, and it was taken for granted France was picking up the Gold Medal, but nobody knew the lethal arsenal Jason wielded and held in store, only to be explosively unleashed in the finishing stages of the anchor leg. At 6’5" and weighing in at 220 pounds(100Kg) of pure muscle and power, Alaine led to the turn and back, and right in the last 10 to 15 Metres, Lezak’s bi-turbo’s both spooled up to the sweet spot of torque in the power band(HP that people obsess about is not anywhere nearly as relevant as torque, but rather its simply the torque or twisting force at 5252RPM, and if you are an acceleration junkie, those vehicles with torque output that is much higher than HP levels, those are the toys you want, for they reach peak torque output at very low RPMs in the power band, while the rest have to wait until way after the 5252 rev range to max out, as that high torque monster leaves you in the dust!), and he crashed and out touched Alaine. President Bush was a live spectator, so his tickets were definitely worth their while, and it was the perfect time for the American commentators to talk the sh1t France deserved for their overconfidence…

=>Beijing 2008 Olympics Mens 4 by 100M FreeStyle Relay: This one was arguably the greatest swimming event ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxy920Nd7yY

=>Katie Ledecky 1500 Freestyle Event. Here she simply lapped every other swimmer, where I had indicated that at some point you lose perspective of who is racing who with all the lapping activity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjG-w2ckvqE

=>My personal favorite clip that highlights the wonders of “underwaterers” and commentary itself. Start paying attention at 6:25 to the end, focusing on Lane 6, and to be specific the turn and the corresponding commentary.
Look out for Stravius. This was in 2013 World Swimming Championships in Barcelona Spain in the 4 by 100M Men’s FreeStyle Relay Race. That Relay event is the most entertaining spectacle in any swimming competition!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb8PwDP_HJc

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TL;DR

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Dunford could swim man, I saw him do it back in high school , our school used to hold the swimming gigs.
It was just different from what other swimmers did. Perfection perhaps .
The kid had talent , it was just on another level . I wasn’t surprised to see them go international ,surprised he took on rugby .

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SUMMARY;

Privileged biatch rant about why you should eat caviar instead of sukuma. Also, buy a pair of Louboutin loafers instead of Bata sandals.

RESULT;

Many good points lost during humble brag.

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Ok

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@Dimz Fala living up to his name…who else read this sh*t?

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Good piece mkubwa, I have Learnt something today about swimming. How were the Donde girls? Did you ever encounter them? Was it just hype?

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Wait till you read his “how to become IT engineer” posts

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You know it is very interesting that you mentioned the Dondes. There was something about a lady who had passed a short while and the face reminded me of Eva Donde but it was just a co-incidence.
To very specifically address your question, Eva Donde was about a ten year old or so swimmer, and very deadly for that matter, at the time when her Dad was big in the opposition or something, I don’t remember the Dad’s post but it was a key one in Kenyan politics.
The girl Eva used to do home runs on fellow swimmers, and in many cases was approaching national records at that tender age! If you had heard of finesse in swimming in the Donde family, at least in the case of Eva, the only one I knew, it is 100% accurate. As a matter of fact, I believe there was a KSF event in Kasarani, where the Dad was specifically in attendance, and I don’t think anyone could make their father more proud, for she literally obliterated all the competition in her events with very huge margins of victory, you even wonder if she received the same training as her school mates in the pool!
The wonders these kids, the likes of the Dunfords and Dondes did in the water, could really flabbergast anyone who was a keen enthusiast in swimming!
The set of swimmers that established the precedent for these young ones to get Kenya on the swimming map were the likes of Anthony Lihalakha(who used to swim faster than most adult competitors at about 10 years old, and whose records were ONLY much later succcessfully challenged by Jason Dunford and very few others), Nicholas Diaper, Kamal Shah, Alex Sio Onyango, Muchai Gachago, Joseph Kimani, Awori Jeremy, Ramadhan Vyombo, Nassir Hamid, Maria Awori, Nacolo Mariam, Kim Jin Woo, Christopher Ragoi, Fahad Bayusuf, Nelson Chek, Amar Shah, Kabir Walia, Fakhry Mansoor, and several others.
In 98’ there was an African Swimming Championship event held in Kasarani, out of which emerged two swimmers who tied in the 50m Freestyle event at 23.03S; Roland Schoeman of South Africa and Salim Iles of Algeria. For anyone who watched international swimming events from the 2000s onwards, Roland Schoeman became a household name at the very pinnacle of world sprint swimming, with multiple world records under his name, and especially known for his rapid reflexes, reflected in lightning quick starts that quite simply put, nobody could override.
The information I provided is for the better part very accurate, for I used to mentally track event times to the hundredth second resolution for multiple top swimmers, out of sheer fascination with feats I was never able to realize personally, try as I may have. I developed that behavior at a swimming gala in form 1 or 2, where I wondered why the name of this guy Nicholas Diaper was everywhere on the roster, only for my question to be decisively answered in the first event I saw him participate in, where he proceeded to crush the 50M Fly at about 28.75S, and subsequently the 50M Free at 25.27S; but which at the time was still shy of Anthony Lihalakha’s 24.27S(a feat only Jason and David Dunford, to the extent I am aware of, have ever breached, of any Kenya swimmers ever, granted though, I am not up to speed on current Kenyan swimming statistics); and I am telling you this swimmer was no joke, and he won in every single event I saw him participate in through the years, except in the African championships.
Kim Jin Woo(a Kenyan of South Korea extraction I believe, who spoke FLAWLESS coasterian swahili!) generated a buzz when he got a scholarship to South Africa for swimming, and in one long course swimming competition in the 50M Fly event, that I still remember to this day, the neck to neck race he had with Rama Vyombo at Kasarani, donning one of those black full body acquatic suits, with Rama donning only the lower half of the same, (26.79S Kim and 26.94S Rama ), and so breathtakingly swift was the duel, I believe that was the very best swimming race I ever saw in person to this day. Notably, Kim Jim Woo was the only Kenyan swimmer to date I observed using the lopping stroke–the dominant hand taking a very long and powerful stroke, and the non-dominant one a much less stronger one, as though relaxing, a long with a 1 2 3 4 5 6 kicking cadence followed by a brief pause-- and the technique baffled me until I saw its widespread use among male US Swimmers!
FYI, the defining difference between elite and novice swimmers is usually not as much the “stroke rate”, as the “stroke length”. In other words, one wouldn’t discern very much variation in stroke rates for either group, but the story is VERY different when it comes to the distance covered per stroke–efficiency!

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You might want to keep on the sidelines of a discipline you do comprehend…opposed to joining the stupidity wagon shockingly many in Kenyatalk are firmly implanted in…washenzi mbwa kokoz of your ilk are simply to pervasive herein…suruali ya ndani wewe…

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You deranged MORON, DID ANYONE ASK YOU TO READ ANYTHING? take your verbal diarrhea to your wall for retraining by …your mum unless she shitted you into existence at the tail end of an anal sex session perpetuate kiherehere…

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True that. From people who participated in the sport you clearly understand the impressiveness of these very fast kids in the pool. And the likes of Jason Dunford now serve as an inspiration for even greater things to come from the young swimmers that enter the swimming fraternity today…
A lot of the respondents here, and on almost any posting are the typical idiots who want to stick their nose in on anything they are clueless about like a bunch of hookers “to sound funny”, while in effect simply demonstrating their stupidity without realizing the fact at all. There seems to be an industrious “Club Wajinga” that never seems to rest.