I'm not sure what "slower swimmer with better technique" means.I was a slower swimmer than lots of people,. but I had better flip turns, which won me alot of races. I also won and lost some on the touchpads. It's all part of the event.

Neither do I; I'm drawing the analogy from boxing, where you have some guys are knock-out artists, some are point boxers, and some are balanced.

Hitting the pad is part of the race. Would you say that a long jumper who had a better foot-lifting technique instead of just jumping was unfair because he got an extra inch out of it? These aren't high school kids, they're olympic athletes. They ALL know ALL the tricks, and the winner is the best of them.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. The amount of technique varies from sport to sport, so that a sprinter who is fast and only fast is probably fine, yet could be severly limited as a long jumper because he can't learn technique. Which was the nut of my question: how much of swimming is a raw physical test, and how much is technique?