Aside from all the slow pool allegations, the Paris Games saw a slate of amazingly close races. On several occasions, the difference between gold and silver, silver and bronze, or being on/off the podium was down to hundredths of a second. Years of hard work culminating in falling short by the smallest fractions imaginable.
In addition, there was a lingering narrative that the United States did not show up and show out in the same way we have grown accustomed to. While they still topped the medal count and the gold total by the end (in part due to some last-night, world-record-setting heroics by Bobby Finke and the Women’s 4×100 medley relay), there were a few misfires as compared to expectations coming into the Games.
If you take all the close swims (within ~0.6) and compare them to the potential medals that were within reach, you see a world in which less than four cumulative seconds (3.12) could have earned the United States nine additional gold medals.
Close Event Table:
| Event | Swimmer | Original Place (Time) | New Place (Time) | Time Difference |
| Men’s 400 IM | Carson Foster | 3rd (4.08.66) | 2nd (4:08.62) | 0.04 |
| Men’s 100 Breast | Nic Fink | T-2nd (59.05) | 1st (59.03) | 0.02 |
| Men’s 200 Free | Luke Hobson | 3rd (1:44.79) | 1st (1:44.72) | 0.07 |
| Men’s 100 Back | Ryan Murphy | 3rd (52.39) | 1st (52.00) | 0.39 |
| Women’s 100 Breast | Lilly King | T-4th (1:05.60) | 1st (1:05.28) | 0.32 |
| Men’s 800 Free | Bobby Finke | 2nd (7:38.75) | 1st (7:38.19) | 0.56 |
| Women’s 100 Free | Tori Huske | 2nd (52.29) | 1st (52.16) | 0.13 |
| Men’s 50 Free | Caeleb Dressel | 6th (21.61) | 3rd (21.56) | 0.05 |
| Women’s 200 Back | Regan Smith | 2nd (2:04.26) | 1st (2:03.73) | 0.53 |
| Phoebe Bacon | 4th (2:05.61) | 3rd (2:05.57) | 0.04 | |
| Men’s 200 IM | Carson Foster | 4th (1:56.10) | 3rd (1:56.00) | 0.10 |
| Women’s 200 IM | Kate Douglass | 2nd (2:06.92) | 1st (2:06.56) | 0.36 |
| Women’s 50 Free | Gretchen Walsh | 4th (24.21) | 3rd (24.20) | 0.01 |
| Men’s 4×100 Medley Relay | USA (Murphy, Fink, Dressel, Armstrong) | 2nd (3.28.01) | 1st (3:27.46) | 0.55 |
| Total: | 3.12 | |||
These results would have resulted in the following change to the US Medal Table:
| Actual | New | |
| Gold | 8 | 17 |
| Silver | 13 | 8 |
| Bronze | 7 | 8 |
| Total | 28 | 33 |
While the overall improvement to total medals is not as striking, the difference in gold medal count is drastic especially considering it would have lowered Australia’s gold count from seven down to only four.
Things do not always go perfectly, and no race will ever be easy, especially at the Olympics. At the end of the day, the ones who show up on one particular race day in the middle of the summer every four years get to be immortalized in Olympic Glory.
However, this does not diminish the immense achievement of all those who compete for their countries at the Olympic Games, a feat that in and of itself can be regarded as the pinnacle: something people work their whole lives to earn.
For those who came home with the hardware, it is with a breath of relief, knowing some small shift in feeling or mood could have caused things to have ended very differently. And for those that did not, it is simply fuel to the fire for the next four years.
*centimeters
0.6 seconds seems like too high of a threshold for this analysis. That’s almost a full body length in some instances. The Men’s 4×100 medley, for example, was not particularly close.
Something closer to 0.1 seconds better reflects “the race could have gone either way” IMO. There were still 7 races that fit that criteria.
Agreed. Or at least it should be something like “0.15 seconds per 50” to normalize. I’d consider Finke’s silver in the 800 much closer than Ryan Murphy’s 100 back, for example.
It was the same story in Fukuoka. Of course, there’s also some races in Paris that the US won by a narrow margin (mixed medley relay, W 200 breast) but not nearly as many races as they lost by a narrow margin.
Also the same as Fukuoka: the selection meet (Trials) too close to the event itself. American trials are incredibly difficult, requiring a full taper from even the most favored swimmers. Until this calendar mistake gets fixed, we will continue to struggle to get the big pop at the event itself.
And of course, being tied to having a selection meet, vice choosing by times/ranks during a performance date range, will continue to mean that the big pop will be harder to get than those countries who select that way. All the arguments about “performing on the day, in the deepest field, is part of the test” fail to consider that the event itself is never as difficult as our field.
Noah Lyles’s 0.005 second margin of victory in the men’s 100 meters run says: “HOLD MY BEER!”
Don’t let swim Twitter see this