Tiny little Janet breaks the 400m world record at the 1988 Seoul Olympics (she also won the 800m and the 400m IM). Her time of 4.03.85 stood until 2006, when Laure Manaudou managed to shave off just 0.8 seconds at French Nationals.
It’s funny how the doped-up* GDR swimmers have such beautiful stroke entry compared to Janet - Heike Friedrich hardly makes a splash. But pulling at air doesn’t get you anywhere, it’s what goes on underneath the water that counts.
*Poor kids - at the time the young East German girls had no idea that the ‘vitamins’ they were being given were potentially lethal steroids that hadn’t even been tested on lab rats. Though you’d have thought results like this, this and this might have been a clue.
