Comparing The Fastest Times Ever In Yards With LCM & SCM World Records

As age-group swimmers growing up, we were always told by our coaches to not trust time conversions. For a multitude of reasons, conversions are inaccurate, inconsistent, and fail to weigh in all factors that contribute to a race.

And it’s true: there is so much more to this than a simple mathematical adjustment, making time conversions more of an estimate for end-of-season goal times or even an imaginative tool for most swimmers — especially since a lot of swimmers may be much stronger in short course than long course (or vice versa).

But is there a way to use time conversions to see how the world records in different formats (i.e., SCM v. SCY v. LCM) stack up against each other? Theoretically, if we were to compare the fastest performances in history, we would be able to account for most of the variability that comes with time conversions, since these records reflect the fastest anyone has ever swum in that event in the given yards/meters format.

Using SwimSwam’s Swimulator Real Time Converter, we utilized the SCY records as a benchmark and converted all the current LCM and SCM world records to SCY times.

MEN’S RECORDS

Across the men’s world records, we see:

• The SCY records being quickest for nine events
• The LCM records being quickest for three events
• The SCM records being quickest for two events

WOMEN’S RECORDS

Across the women’s world records, we see:

• The SCY records being quickest for 10 events
• The LCM records being quickest for two events
• The SCM records being quickest for two event

A Quick Analysis

We’ll jump to the first and most obvious observation: why is it the case that so many of the SCY records are faster than the LCM and SCM world record conversions? Well, it’s important to note that some of the most dominant long course swimmers today are also some of the most talented underwater swimmers — and underwaters are a premium in SCY formats. Given the number of top swimmers who come to the U.S. to train and compete at the NCAA level, it likely comes as little surprise that this is the case — even though the U.S. is the only nation in the world that continues to swim primarily in SCY.

Here’s another way to think about why the SCY records might be comparatively quicker. Most SCY records are set at the NCAA Championships, a meet where individual accolades matter far less than the team result. Since every athlete is fighting for points for their team, perhaps this added team element intrinsically leads to faster swimming — especially with double points for relays, we often see individual records set on lead-off legs. With the exception of the ISL, all other high-level meets in SCM and LCM formats arguably place more emphasis on individual medals — though whether this truly leads to faster swimming is up to debate.

This begs the question: if the world’s top swimmers are so strong at underwaters, then why are the SCM world records so much slower? I think this may have to do with the fact that there simply aren’t many high-level meets held in SCM formats. On one hand, the ISL has been postponed indefinitely, and the Short Course Worlds come around just once every two years. While events including the World Cup Circuit have surely increased the amount of SCM racing, the sheer volume of meets is still not comparable to those hosted in SCY and LCM formats.

Let’s think about another question: given all of these results, is it safe to say that the world’s best SCY swimmers are better at SCY than the world’s best LCM/SCM swimmers are at LCM/SCM? Well, since we did use the SCY records as a benchmark for this entire analysis, perhaps that introduces some bias. Perhaps we can extend this analysis to use the SCM or LCM world records as a benchmark for our conversions, but given the way the converter works, I doubt that this would yield a substantial difference.

Well, that was a doozy — but what do you think? Do you think we can enhance this analysis, or what do you pinpoint as the reason for SCY records being a bit faster than records in other formats? Let us know in the comments.