2024 Olympics Race Data Breakdown: Men’s 1500 Free

The French governing body for swimming (Fédération Française de Natation) recently released a data analysis booklet of each event raced at the Paris Olympics. In this data-packed guide, information including swimmers’ 25m splits, time spent underwater, total stroke count, and more are laid out in a table with a breakdown of each finalist’s information. Over the next few days, I’ll be choosing some of my favorite races from the Olympics and analyzing the data behind the world’s fastest swimmers.

This data gold mine, all in French, has four distinct sections: Laps (splits), Parties Nagées (Parts of the race swum), Parties Non Nagées (Parts of the race not swum, including the start, underwaters, and finish), and Mouvements (total strokes and such).

LOOKING BACK

Bobby Finke closed out the meet with a very large bang, breaking Sun Yang’s long-standing world record of 14:31.02 from the 2012 Olympics. Finke touched the wall in 14:30.67, becoming the first man to go under 14:31 and winning the United States men’s only individual gold medal in the midnight hour. Longtime distance mogul Gregorio Paltrinieri earned his fifth Olympic medal, finishing second behind Finke, and Daniel Wiffen took home Ireland’s second-ever male medal in the pool. The swimmers finished as follows:

1. Bobby Finke, United States (WR) – 14:30.67
2. Gregorio Paltrinieri, Italy – 14:34.55
3. Daniel Wiffen, Ireland – 14:39.63
4. David Betlehem, Hungary – 14:40.91
5. Kuzey Tuncelli, Turkey – 14:41.22
6. Ahmed Jaouadi, Tunisia – 14:43.35
7. David Aubry, France – 14:44.66
8. Damien Joly, France – 14:52.61

LAPS (SPLITS)

I won’t bore you with all 240 50-meter splits from the field (30×50 for each of the eight swimmers), so here’s a recap of each swimmer’s fastest splits, slowest splits, and average splits. Due to the long-distance nature of this event, this article will be a little different than the sprint ones I’ve previously recapped.

Fastest 100:

1. Jaouadi: 55.18 (closing 100)
2. Finke: 55.34 (closing 100)
3. Betlehem: 55.51 (closing 100)
4. Paltrinieri: 56.02 (opening 100)
5. Tuncelli: 56.08 (closing 100)
6. Wiffen: 56.36 (opening 100)
7. Aubry: 57.06 (opening 100)
8. Joly: 57.61 (opening 100)

Slowest 100:

1. Finke: 58.76 (500-600)
2. Paltrinieri: 58.93 (100-200)
3. Wiffen: 59.31 (900-1000)
4. Betlehem: 59.34 (1000-1100)
5. Aubry: 59.43 (300-400)
6. Tuncelli: 59.55 (200-300)
7. Joly: 1:00.16 (300-400)
8. Jaouadi: 1:00.42 (1200-1300)

This data is interesting, seeing that Ahmed Jaouadi had both the fastest 100 split and the field as well as the slowest. He had a faster closing 100 than Bobby Finke did, something that we very rarely see, but he was also significantly more inconsistent than Finke was. Both of the Frenchmen had their fastest 100 during the opening of their race, and had their slowest 100 during the fourth 100.

Average 100 split (in seconds):

1. Finke: 58.04
2. Paltrinieri: 58.30
3. Wiffen: 58.64
4. Betlehem: 58.73
5. Tuncelli: 58.75
6. Jaouadi: 58.89
7. Aubry: 58.98
8. Joly: 59.51

Average 100 (neglecting first and last 100):

1. Finke: 58.45
2. Paltrinieri: 58.50
3. Wiffen: 58.83
4. Betlehem: 59.13
5. Tuncelli: 59.15
6. Aubry: 59.25
7. Jaouadi: 59.33
8. Joly: 59.74

Standard Deviation of 100 splits during middle 1300 meters:

Standard Deviation measures, on average, how far a swimmer was from their average 100 split. The lower the number, the more consistent the swimmer’s times were. The higher, the more erratic.

1. Aubry: 0.09
2. Betlehem: 0.18
3. Paltrinieri: 0.20
4. Finke/Tuncelli: 0.24
5. .
6. Joly: 0.29
7. Wiffen: 0.36
8. Jaouadi: 0.57

David Aubry was by far the most consistent in the field, with only 0.29 seconds separating his fastest 100 split and his slowest during the middle 1300 meters. Ahmed Jaouadi, who had a discrepancy of 2.07 seconds between his fastest and slowest, featured the largest standard deviation in his times.

The following graphs show the general trends between each swimmer’s 100 splits, notice how they largely form to an arch shape, with the fastest 100s being at the beginning and end of the races.

The following graph shows the podium swimmers’ splits in comparison with the others. Notice how these graphs never overlap.

The following chart shows the consistency of Aubry next to Kuzey Tuncelli, who was around average with his splits, and Ahmed Jaouadi, who was much more variant.

PARTIES NAGÉES (PARTS OF THE RACE SWUM)

This section provides the swimmers’ times while “swimming,” accounting for everything except the start, turn on every wall, and the finish. The following ranking is their total time spent “swimming.”

1. Finke: 13:09.81
2. Aubry: 13:18.68
3. Betlehem: 13:21.59
4. Wiffen: 13:29.26
5. Tuncelli: 13:30.89
6. Paltrinieri: 13:31.94
7. Joly: 13:36.10
8. Jaouadi: 13:36.28

More on this in the next section.

PARTIES NON NAGÉES (PARTS OF THE RACE NOT SWUM)

This section highlights the start, turn, and finish of the race, including reaction times, time spent underwater, and distance covered underwater, among other things. The following ranking is the total distance spent underwater:

1. Aubry: 204.3 meters
2. Finke: 198.0 meters
3. Betlehem: 191.8 meters
4. Joly: 181.6 meters
5. Wiffen: 176.0 meters
6. Jaouadi: 171.7 meters
7. Tuncelli: 169.8 meters
8. Paltrinieri: 163.3 meters

Time spent underwater:

1. Aubry: 1:25.98
2. Finke: 1:20.86
3. Betlehem: 1:19.32
4. Joly: 1:16.51
5. Wiffen: 1:10.37
6. Tuncelli: 1:10.33
7. Jaouadi: 1:07.07
8. Paltrinieri: 1:02.61

Looking at these rankings, it again becomes exceedingly evident that there’s no one way to win a race. Finke spent almost 35 meters more underwater than Paltrinieri did, and dedicated 18 more seconds to being underwater. David Aubry spent by far the most time and distance underwater, but still finished in seventh place. On the contrary, Paltrinieri spent by far the least time and distance underwater, but finished second.

Each swimmer had their own race strategy and executed it in a way that worked for them. I’m sure that times would be drastically different if we saw Paltrinieri and Aubry switch race plans for their underwaters.

MOUVEMENTS (STROKE)

This final section modeled the total strokes that each swimmer took during the race, and the following ranking shows from most strokes to least.

1. Betlehem: 1236
2. Tuncelli: 1167
3. Paltrinieri: 1136
4. Joly: 1028
5. Finke: 1009
6. Jaouadi: 983
7. Wiffen: 965
8. Aubry: 906

Again, race strategy is key here. David Betlehem took 330 more strokes than David Aubry did, but the pair only finished four seconds apart. Bobby Finke only took 19 strokes less than Damien Joly, but the American beat the Frenchman by 22 seconds. The key here is maximing your stroke efficiency, where Bobby Finke is on another level. He didn’t need to have the fastest turnover rate between strokes or even the best distance per stroke; finding that happy medium worked perfectly for him in the long run and allowed him to break the world record.

For the previous data breakdowns, see the following articles:

• Women’s 50 Free
• Men’s 100 Breast
• Women’s 200 IM
• Men’s 100 Free
• Women’s 100 Back

For the full breakdown: see the booklet here.