In his career, racing the backstroke from 50 feet to 1,500 meters, Kiefer lost just two races in 2,000 meets from 1935 to 1944, setting 17 world records.
Swimmers switching from butterfly to backstroke must touch both hands to the wall simultaneously and exactly parallel before turning onto their backs and pushing off with both feet.
Then came Missy Franklin, the 17-year-old gold medalist in the 100-meter backstroke from the United States whose parents — both born and raised in Canada — had once offered to their tall and talented daughter the possibility of representing Canada.
There has been growing concern that health and safety fears have stifled schools, encouraging them to ban traditional playground games such as conkers, snowball fights and cartwheeling, or prohibited pupils from doing the backstroke in swimming lessons.
Starts are all (with the exception of the backstroke) from a standing or forward-leaning position, the object being to get the longest possible glide before the stroke begins.
As Thorpe could not, Krayzelburg controlled the 100-meter backstroke from the beginning, reaching the wall in an Olympic-record time of 53.72 seconds and covering his face with his hands.
When he got back he was seeing the Bad Brains at the Ratcage and kept doing some sort of sprawling backstroke from one side of the room to the next.
After losing her ability to kick, Yip switched from the front crawl to the backstroke and was reclassified from the S5 to the S3 category (lower numbers indicate more severe disabilities).
His father, Laszlo Sr., was a backstroker who competed in the 1968 and 1972 Summer Olympics against Roland Matthes, an East German who did not lose a backstroke race from 1967 to 1974.
