BackgroundEdit

• In 2012, a 23 year old swimmer and sprinter from Cuba (also known as CUB) .

• At the Pan Am Games in October, 2012, he broke out onto the international scene by getting silver and bronze in the 100 and 50 with times of 48.34 and 22.15.

InsightsEdit

The buzz around him is that he's very raw - the Swimmers Circle reported that he's a former water polo player.

Garcia is in lane 3, right above Cesar Cielo.

It's immediately clear that Garcia has a terrible start. His reaction time was very slow. His feet were far from being pointed, and he carries little momentum into the water. Consequently, he comes up nearly a body length behind the entire field. He was about 0.8 - 0.9 behind Cielo to the 15 meter mark. His stroke is short and choppy but with a pretty fast turnover.

He's 6-4 tall but he's taking nearly 3 strokes for every 2 of Cielo. His turn is better than his start, but it's still pretty bad.

He doesn't take a very good line into the wall, his legs are pretty straight, he loses a lot of momentum, and he barely goes 5 meters. By my estimate, he loses another 0.3 to Cielo on the turn. All that said, he's faster than anyone else on top of the water, including Cielo, especially over the last 15m. He gained 0.3 on Cielo over the last 15m, and he may have gained more if he didn't short stroke his finish.

I have no idea what kind of coaching this guy is getting, but any international sprint coach worth his salt should help this kid shave 0.5 off his 100 time with *modest* improvements to his starts and turns. If he can develop starts and turns that are comparable other elite sprinters, then he can be scary fast, especially if he learns how to better leverage his height to eat up more water. The question is, are these improvements that he can make at 23, a time when most swimmers have pretty well-established muscle memory?