Abstract
The article deals with the profile of current top swimmers in terms of body height, which has been long perceived as one of the important anthropometric prerequisites affecting top swimming performance. The survey includs swimmers ranking among the best 16 in both men and women category at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics.
Body height of monitored swimmers was monitored from the point of view of general general characteristics, further individual swimming methods, disciplines, length of tracks and in terms of participation in final heats and body height values of medalists. The survey includs a total of 327 male swimmers and 296 female.
The average body height was 188 cm for men and 175 cm for women. The utmost height of tne swimmers is in the range of 200-203 cm for men and 188-189 cm for women.
We find higher average height of the swimmers in more than half of the final swim-offs. Comparing the physical height of the medalists, higher absolute body height prevails among more successful individuals.
In the specification of body height according to the swimming stroke and the length of the line, we find very similar results for men and women. Higher swimmers compete in the 50m and 100m tracks especially in the freestyle and backstroke disciplines.
The shortest average body height is common for male and female swimmers in the 400 m individual medley race. The success of some swimmers in the surveyed body with lower body height pointed to the fact that body height is an important parameter of the swimming performance, however, in any given set of elite swimmers this can be partially compensated by another factor of performance.