Ulen for New Breaststroke Kick Only as Special Event

With the argument over the use of the butterfly arm movement scarcely having sunk into obscurity, another controversy concerning the ancient breast stroke has been started by the proposal of Matt Mann, coach of the famous University of Michigan swimming teams, to allow the fishtail log drive in breast-stroke competition.

His proposal has met with suggestions for amendment or complete opposition among many swimmers and coaches all over the country. Crimson swimming mentor Hal Ulen thinks "the fishtail is all right as a special event but it's ridiculous to call a butterfly-fishtail stroke the breast-stroke."

If accepted by the Olympics rule committee, the fishtail kick, in which the feet are kept close together in a rhythimical up and down movement, would revolutionize the leg movements in the breast-stroke just as the butterfly did the arms.

"I saw it demonstrated in '35 at the Intercollegiates by a swimmer from Iowa who swam much faster than an ordinary breast-stroker,' said Ulen. "You can get in more leg movements than with the frog kick, so it's bound to be faster. One of my breast-strokers, "Sandy" Huston, can swim faster now with the fishtail kick." Mann's proposal has so far been regarded as illegal. The rule calls for the legs to separate and describe the same movement, but although the legs move in the same manner, they are kept together in the new kick.

Many object to the fishtail on other grounds than legal ones. The breast-stroke was probably the first stroke over used, and it has been retained as a racing event largely because of sentiment over its historical background. Since Mann's proposal would make the classic breast-stroke unrecognizable and more and more like the crawl, these dissenters fool that the breast-stroke should be retained as it is or else completely abandoned in favor of the crawl.

Coach Ulen is a little suspicious of the intentions of his good friend Matt Mann. "Matt's liable to have a boy out there in Ann Arbor who's a world-beater with the fishtall kick."

This is not the first time that Mann has started a controversy over some phase of swimming. At the '32 Olympics in Los Angeles, he put up a big objection to the Japanese swimmers' practice of using oxygen tanks to rejuvenate themselves after an event.

Ulen thinks that most people will oppose the innovation just as they did the butterfly arm movement. "I'd like the fishtail, though, because it would be easier to teach," he asserted. "It doesn't require the timing that the frog kick does.'