Strange swimming style I saw at Tri Athy

Nwm2

It was about the 4th wave at (one of the faster ones) Tri Athy Olympic, and I was watching from the bank (it was a few waves before my slow coach wave).

I saw one guy swimming in a pretty unique style, to my uneducated eyes. I'll try to describe it. Basically, he sighted with every left hand entry. There was a long glide as his left arm entered and he popped his head right out of the water and had a good look. Then he put his head down again for the right hand entry. Then pop up-and-glide again for the left stoke. Sighting every couple of seconds, with a gliding languid style, seemingly breaking every rule in the book (although I know SFA about the rule book).

Thing was, within a few strokes he had zoomed off into the lead leaving everyone else trailing in his wake.

Anyone else see this? Or know who the swimmer is? Is it a less unique approach to OW swimming than I thought?

Fazz

Wow, seems to have broken every rule alright.

I was at Athy also in wave 9 but missed that.

As a matter of subject, I have a reasonable speed in the pool but struggle to transfer this to ow swims.
Main reason bein my glide is too long and I lose momentum thus time and when fighting waves/currents it is amplified.
I'm working on removing this and increasing stroke rate but it's not the easiest of processes.

So no, I would not recommend trying this as by the sounds of it it may have just looked faster than others but not been at a high enough level?
Alternatively it's just very unique and worked for that guy.

Fazz

In regards to sighting, there are some good videos on YouTube for this and when practises it works quite well and is relatively easy I find.
Perhaps due to my long glide ha