Zero World Records have been broken at the 2024 Paris Olympics through two nights of competition in the pool. The last time that no World Record was broken after just one day of competition was 1992, but here we are, entering night three with zero.
The topic of a “slow pool” continues after most of the top times in prelims were slower than they were in Tokyo during day 1 prelims. Then, in day 2 prelims, only two men were under the 1:46 mark after 10 had done so in Tokyo and four were under that mark in Rio.
The men’s 100 breaststroke on night 2 was also much slower than it was in Tokyo. Seven out of the eight finalists were under the 59-second mark in Tokyo while zero swam under that mark last night as a 59.03 by Italy’s Nicolo Martinenghi won gold.
“The time wasn’t fast for anybody; we spoke to each other about it,” Nicolo Martinenghi of Italy said after winning gold in the men’s 100 breaststroke.
Ken Ono, who is a mathematician at the University of Virginia and works with Todd DeSorbo, told Yahoo Sports, “The pool is fast compared to your neighborhood swim club. However, it is not ideal for record setting. The shallow depth is a primary reason. I have heard from a few competitors that they have been forced to (slightly) modify their dives off the blocks.”
The pool in Paris is shallower than the pool was in Tokyo three years ago. The two 50-meter pools in the Paris La Defense Arena are about 2.15 meters or 7 feet. This is over two and a half feet and 31.5 inches, to be exact, less than the pool at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as that pool was about 9 feet, 8 inches deep.
Sophie Hansson of Sweden spoke of her feelings about the pool to Swedish-based Dagens Nyheter saying, “It feels good in the swimming, and I can’t answer what it is that makes it not go faster.” Hansson swam a 1:06.96 for 13th in semifinals of the women’s 100 breast and did not advance to the final. That was over a second off her lifetime best and national record time of a 1:05.66.
Ok guys you were right i guess the pool is a little slow 🙄
uh…yeah…..or shall I say jeah!
It’s the pool’s depth that creates either more turbulence or density of the water by pressuring (calm waters have deep grounds). What strikes me though is that the first 50m they are often below WR pace. It is the back stretch where they first become slower. Some articles on the internet blame the food and overall conditions in the village. It is just physics. It is clamant they moved away from the Aquatics Center to this temporary pool to trade off number of spectators for world records. Records are a big part of the excitement of the sport of swimming and what make media headlines. Who in his right mind approved this pool. All swimmers are now at their best… Read more »
LA2028 just released this statement regarding the next games’ pool depth:
“We have decided collectively as an organization to modify the plans of our 3m depth pool to a new depth of 541.325m (1776ft).
SoFi stadium has agreed to break ground tomorrow”
Rowdy Gaines actually mentioned it seems to be especially affecting breaststroke times during the women’s 400 IM and, sure enough, McIntosh went from being on WR pace after back to quite a bit behind after breast. Just one data point, but I was somewhat amazed Rowdy actually said something in real time that wasn’t immediately refuted in the pool 😉
Can’t they just pour in 2 more feet of water before the next session?
Yes, but they have to pour it into the bottom. Very tricky.
Does anyone know why they built such a shallow pool when they were building it from scratch? Why not make it world class?
They are claiming there were some kind of technical limitations to building it deeper.
AKA – Couldn’t do it without cutting seating 🙂
It’s called an extra three rows of $eat$.
They ‘technically’ wanted to save more money on the pool and make more money on seating.
As always…follow the money
What does the slower times mean for the 2028 qualifying times? Will World Aquatics conjure new ways to game the system to minimize the number of “A” qualifiers to make room for Universality entrants?
Yes. Swimming isn’t going to be getting any more places in LA than in Paris so they will need to use a different metric other than 14th best prelims time to set the times for LA.
I also suspect they will want to do something to try and balance the field sizes a bit more.
My guess is that they actually move towards more of a target field size for each event type approach based on top lists but who knows. If they tweak the current system then they’ll probably make it top 12 times from Paris or use times from Singapore next year
Probably not and this is based on reading the WA July 2022 document ( https://resources.fina.org/fina/document/2022/07/15/e0f75e3c-88d5-4356-9ec6-852c8ce237b7/Paris-2024-SW-Qualification-System_ENG_H.pdf 😉 which only said that the OQT was based on 14th prelim times from Tokyo. This was not true for the Women’s 100m Butterfly which saw 14th place being 58.02, but 14th place in the 2016 Rio Olympics was 57.92 and I looked that up after listening to Lars Frolander (2000 Sydney Olympic Gold in Men’s 100 Fly) during the 2024 Doha WC (he was the one that pointed this out) and he said he had found/read that the 14th place time will be used as long as it is NOT slower than the current standard.
Basically we should expect the 2028 OQT to be… Read more »