There are swim nerd and data nerd and sometimes you are fortunate enough to fins a swim data nerd. Nick Starcevich is a junior at St. Olaf College and checks both the boxes (which I highly approve of). You may have seen Nick’s name on this article on SwimSwam:
Changes in Swimming Record History If Super Suits Never Existed: The Past 15 Years. He took a ton of historical data, developed models and trends and then extrapolated out what world records would look like if we the super suit era never happened. Really cool experiment!
Like any good curious swimmy mind, Nick wanted to take a look at the progression of the MSHSL state records for as far back as the data exists until today. He not only put all the data together, but did some really nice visualizations that show where and when big drops occurred or when a record hung around for a long time (looking at you Cam Olk).
You can check out the entire series here and I have a sneaking suspicion that we haven’t heard the last of Nick and his love for swimming and data.
