Ignored kick rule becomes ‘big joke’
“He did it to call out FINA to say, ‘I’m getting away with this, and you guys aren’t doing anything about it,’ ” Hansen said. “Amongst the breaststrokers, it was a big joke. Everybody was just like, how much can I get away with? The rules need to be changed, and FINA needs to realize they need to step it up and bring in video surveillance.”
With the dolphin kick, swimmers whip their legs in tandem underwater much like how an aquatic animal might use a tail. It has proved to be a very effective method of propulsion. In the butterfly and backstroke, swimmers are allowed to dolphin kick away as long as they rise to the pool’s surface within 15 meters.
Until 2005, breaststrokers were not allowed to take any dolphin kicks. At the 2004 Athens Olympics, however, Hansen’s Japanese rival, Kosuke Kitajima, took one. He powered to a gold medal in the 100 breaststroke while Hansen, the prerace favorite, settled for the silver.
Not long after the race, backstroker Aaron Peirsol, a teammate of Hansen’s at the University of Texas, fanned a controversy by saying that Hansen had been robbed of the gold.
Breaststrokers can now take one dolphin kick at the start of a race and one at each turn. In an August interview, though, van der Burgh made it sound as if you aren’t trying if you aren’t cheating.
Van der Burgh told the Sydney Morning Herald, “If you’re not doing it, you’re falling behind. … It’s not obviously, shall we say, the moral thing to do, but I’m not willing to sacrifice my personal performance and four years of hard work for someone that is willing to do it and get away with it.”
Said Hansen: “We knew he was doing it before the final. I knew he was doing it. I mean, I don’t get beat that hard on the start.”
Van der Burgh’s kicks were so obvious, Hansen said, that casual swim fans watching the race on television spotted it even though the illegal ploy escaped the notice of the poolside judges.
“They’ve turned their heads the other way,” Hansen said, “and that’s why Cameron was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to call you guys out.’ ”
Hansen, who has swum in three Olympic Games, suspects van der Burgh wasn’t the only one breaking the rules in that race.
“I can’t give you names for sure, but it’s just the younger generation that is coming up,” Hansen said. “This is their second Olympics or their first Olympics, and they were pushing the envelope. And why not? Because they can get away with it.
“I can only speak for myself in saying that I took one. You go into a meet with a race strategy, and my race strategy was the one we’ve worked on forever — and the start was one dolphin kick. That’s just how I did it, and let the cards play out as they may.”
It doesn’t look as if anyone’s hand will change now. In spite of van der Burgh’s comments, it appears he will keep the gold medal. Hansen said the 100 breaststroke bronze from London is his favorite medal, even though he picked up a gold medal there as a member of the United States’ 400-meter medley relay team. He also won relay golds in Athens in 2004 and Beijing in 2008.
After suffering burnout in 2008, Hansen stepped away from competitive swimming, even though he did not officially retire. He mounted a comeback a little less than two years ago.
“The comeback, I think, was solidified when I won the bronze medal in the 100 breast,” Hansen said. “You can say that you’re going to come back, and you can talk the talk, but a lot of people don’t walk it.”
Hansen, who was one of five captains for the U.S. swim team, said he also appreciated being a teammate of Michael Phelps’ on the 400 medley relay.
“We’re all going to look back on this some day and say we got to swim with Michael Phelps, the greatest Olympian of all time,” Hansen said. “To be on the relay and to be right there when his swimming was over is something I’ll always cherish. I’ll always remember that, and it was really fun for the three other guys to be a part of that.
“I look at that gold medal, and that’s the one story that’s behind that gold medal, that it was my last Olympic race and his at the same time.”
Hansen and his wife, Martha, are expecting a girl in January, and he said he might continue to swim for another year, through the world championships in Barcelona, Spain, but that has yet to be decided.
If he does continue to swim, his focus is likely to be the 100 breaststroke. In the past, Hansen has called the 200-meter breaststroke his “baby,” saying it’s been his favorite race since he was a kid. He’s a former world record-holder at the distance but shockingly did not qualify for the event at the 2008 or 2012 Olympics.
“That race, I can’t figure it out now,” he said. “It just takes such a big toll on my body. When I watched that 200 breaststroke race at the Olympics, I was (thinking), ‘I’m glad I’m not in this race.’ Those guys were just at a whole different level. It was awesome to watch and appreciate, but I knew that’s just not in the cards for me anymore.”
As for competing at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Hansen said, “I will not be (there) in a suit. I’ll be in a business suit.”