The history of design, patenting and production of sports fins for swimming (1930-2020)

The authors of this article aim to trace the history of the design, patenting and production of sports fins for swimming. This is primarily due to the fact that a significant contribution to their design was made first by Soviet and then Russian inventors, among whom there were many active athletes, including the highest achievers in this sport. To establish the extent of inventive activity, the authors conducted patent studies, the results of which are presented in several figures within the article. Further, the article describes the history of the formation and development of underwater sports both in the world and in our country. The first major competitions in underwater sports, where among other disciplines were distance swimming and diving in fins, was the first USSR underwater championship, held in 1958 (Karabakh, Crimea). During the competition, it turned out that the greatest speed of movement in fins was developed by men in short-distance diving. A significant event for the development of underwater sports in the world was the creation in 1959 of the World Underwater Federation, CMAS (whose first president was Jacques-Yves Cousteau), which nowadays unites the national underwater federations of about 100 countries. Since the beginning of the 1960s, CMAS began to hold international competitions in various types of underwater sports. At the first competitions, their main goal became clear - the achievement of high speed in distances by athletes. This forced athletes and their coaches to focus their attention on the main “tool” of swimmers in this discipline - fins. The experience gained by this time led to an understanding that the longer (of course, up to certain sizes) the blade, the higher the speed of swimming. In 1968-1969, V. Zhdanov, V. Titov and A. Shumkov (SKAT club, Tomsk) made an ‘epochal discovery’, which is used in the manufacture of sports fins up to this day. To be precise, Soviet athletes and coaches began to produce a solid monofin blade from profiled fiberglass in a manner proposed by Tomsk inhabitants. In 1986, the discipline of underwater sports known as ‘finswimming’ was recognized by the IOC as an Olympic sport, which gave an additional incentive not only to the development of this sport, but also to the production of sports equipment. Each of the design stages of the fins led to a significant increase in the speed of swimming. For 57 years, from 1958 (1st USSR championship) to 2019 (27th European championship), the speed of swimming at the fastest short distance underwater (diving in fins) for men increased two and a half times - from 1.4 m/s to 3.6 m/s. Thus, the study of the history of the creation of ‘fast’ fins showed that the arrival of complex models of fins made from combined and composite materials to replace conventional rubber fins enabled impressive achievements to be made in this sport.

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