I Bet You Haven’t Heard of the Berkoff Blast-off
Once in a while, someone changes the rules of the game. Is this the greatest sports innovation ever?
Not Your Average Backstroke Swimmer
I was today years old when I discovered swimmer Dave Berkoff.
Berkoff was an American Olympic swimmer. He swam 100m backstroke.
He also swam gold in the 1988 and 1992 Olympics as part of the relay team — as well as silver in ‘88 and bronze in the ’92 individual 100m backstroke.
In fact, he was a multiple-time world record holder.
But Berkoff wasn’t your typical 100m backstroke swimmer.
In stature, he was about 5'10, compared to the average world record holder of around 6'3 or 6'4.
He also went to Harvard — which, whilst a prestigious school, isn’t really where you go if you want to be a champion athlete.
Changing The Game
However, whilst at Harvard, Berkoff began to question how people swam the 100m backstroke. More than any other swimmer, he challenged the rules of the game.
Specifically, Berkoff realized that you can swim much faster when you’re underwater.
Most backstroke swimmers at the time would push off and spend the first three or four seconds underwater before surfacing. Oxygen deprivation begins to kick in the second you go under.
Berkoff trained himself to overcome this, and would often spend the first ten seconds at least under the water — swimming underwater for the first 40m of the 100m race.
You can see exactly how crazily different this look in the video below — during which, by the way, Berkoff bangs out a new world record.
Berkoff wasn’t the best swimmer in terms of physique or skill — but he was the best in terms of strategy. For years, he took something that no one had ever questioned and prodded away at it.
Until he became the first person to break the 55-second barrier in the 100m backstroke.
Why Have We Stopped Questioning?
Most people stop questioning when they grow up.
You’ll hear kids asking their parents “But why” — a hundred times.
A chap called Sakichi Toyoda (the founder of Toyota) developed the Five Whys technique in the 1930s. It’s a simple idea — when a problem occurs, you should ask “but why” five times to get to the root of it. Read more about that here.
But the fact is, as adults we rarely question things. For a lot of our lives, we’re on autopilot, doing things the way they’ve always been done.
A fitting way to end this article, I think, will be with a quote from the Apple ‘Think Differently” campaign, often attributed to Steve Jobs.
“Here’s to the crazy ones — the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things.
They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
Final Note
I discovered this story in Diary of a CEO episode 261 with Adam Alter at around 34m 10s. Alter tells it super well, so have a listen. Consider this article a re-telling or summary, rather than original research.
The YouTube video How the “Dolphin Kick” changed swimming forever is worth a watch and explains the competitive advantage that Berkoff found.
Since Berkoff’s record a new rule has been introduced, initially limiting the amount of time that can be spent underwater in the 100m backstroke to 10m. It has since been extended to 15m.
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