Google image results led me to stumble onto the website for Gasoline Alley Antiques. I was fascinated by the listing for water sports collectibles, specifically the swimming and diving trading cards. I’ve included pictures of a couple of the cards in this post, along with the latest swimming trading card to get any attention.

When I think of swimming collectibles, trading cards are definitely not on my list – but it looks like aquatic stars were much more prominent in trading cards in the earlier half of the 20th Century.

The earliest card listed from Gasoline Alley is of C. M. Daniels circa 1910. His card was included in the first series of Tobacco Cards from Hassan Cigarettes. According to Wikipedia, Charles Meldrum Daniels won 5 gold medals for swimming between 1904 and 1908. Born in Dayton, Ohio in 1885, Daniels was also a national junior rifle champion and the squash champion of the New York Athletic Club, and later a top-ranked amateur golfer. Daniels was also featured in the Mecca Cigarettes “Champion Athlete and Prize Fighters Series” of trading cards.

Next, professional diving star Charlie Diehl appeared as a trading card cut-out on a 1952 Wheaties Cereal box. Diehl worked as a show diver for Billy Rose’s Aquacade at the New York World’s Fair circa 1940 along with headlining star Johnny Weissmuller.

The last card I investigated was the most recent swimming trading card to get media attention: The 2004 Michael Phelps

(L) At 6’10″ 247lbs, Rolandas Gimbutis (Lithuania/University of California) was the tallest swimmer at the Beijing Olympics; (R) From the gallery on SwimNetwork.com, Matt Grevers and Ryan Lochte tower over Carolyn Dirks at the Rededication Ceremony of the Carolyn Dirks Building.

This ScienceDaily article, found via aquadonis on Twitter, talks about a study conducted by an engineering student in which the heights and weights of world record-holding athletes were correlated to their winning times. Both 100m Dash runners and 100m swimming sprints were analyzed. The results added support to an overall trend in athletics — that elite athletes are getting bigger, and at a quicker rate than the population average.

The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, and a full version can be found here provided by Constructal.org.

Methods for analyzing the swimming statistics, found in the scientific publication, first show a strong positive correlation between world record speed (m s^-1) vs. time. Next, a slightly scattered correlation of mass (kg) vs. time was identified. When time was factored out, a statistically significant positive correlation between speed and mass was discovered. Similar procedures were followed for the analysis of speed vs. height (below).

Charles, D. J., & Bejan, A. (2009). The evolution of speed, size and shape in modern athletics. J. Exp. Biol. 212, 2419-2425.

According to the original publication:

“The mean height of humans has increased by roughly 5cm from 1900 to 2002 … During the same century, the mean height of champion swimmers and runners has increased by 11.4 cm and 16.2 cm, respectively” (source).

To answer the WHY in the swimmers’ size trend, author Jordan Charles looked to a broader base of research known as the constructal theory. This organizing theory of design in nature describes animal locomotion as “a rhythm of body motion constructed such that the animal achieves a balance between two expenditures of useful energy: lifting weight on the vertical, and overcoming drag while progressing on the horizontal.” Which means that the constructal theory of design actually predicts the body-mass scaling relations in swimmers. It looks like the mechanism causing the trend is a capacity for faster movement if your body scaling closely resembles the most mathematically efficient proportions for balancing vertical and horizontal movement in the medium (land, air, water).

Could the results of this study suggest the future implication of swimmer weight classes? I’m not so sure. Although it’s fun to postulate, the world record to height correlation doesn’t seem so impressive in absolute terms. For example, the study considered the world record of 57.4 set by Johnny Weissmuller in 1924. Weissmuller was actually a fraction of an inch taller than Eamon Sullivan, 2008 record holder at 47.05, and weighed almost 20 pounds more than Sullivan.