FINA recently changed the rules for World Championship and Olympic type meets to give themselves the authority, though not the mandate, to use all 10 lanes in preliminary rounds.
This year, in Barcelona, they’ve taken full advantage. Preliminary heats, depending on how the number of entrants fall out, will range from 4 to 10 participants per heat in the temporary 10-lane pool at the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona.
The Americans went to this setup for the Olympic Trials last year (like Worlds, with just 8 advancing to finals). There was some resistance to swim in the outside lanes, where swimmers felt they were too close to the wall and to some underwater camera apparatus (and especially too close to the flames during an accidental eruption during the men’s 400 IM) but ultimately it probably cut hours of swimming time out of already marathon sessions.
The World Championships don’t have quite the same issue, but for preliminary rounds that are basically a chance for swimmers to try for best times, and to advance to semi-final and final rounds, it still behooves the governing body to use all 10 available lanes.
The longest preliminary session of the meet is expected to be the first day, on Tuesday, which will run about 3 hours and 45 minutes. After that, things generally come in pretty short, including multiple days with just 4-or-5 preliminary events.
The WC pool, as well as the Omaha, London, Beijing, Sydney, Athens (GRE), Ohio State, and Atlanta pools are 50m x 25m with 10 lanes. Put another way, 25m is 82 feet. The lanes are all 8.2 feet wide (with no lane rope between the outside lanes and the wall). If there are ropes outside the outside lanes, those lanes will be 8 feet wide (I think Stanford’s deep 50m pool is this configuration).
We’re used to the American configuration, with a pool 50m x 25y (75 feet), so we can use them in more configurations (ie, across the pool for training). Those pools with 8 lanes have 8 x 9 foot wide lanes, with that extra area outside… Read more »
sorry to post this twice but where is the other option on the picks?
Having swum (admittedly as a Masters swimmer) in both the Omaha 2012 10 lane configuration and the Omaha 2008 pool now in an 8 lane configuration in Virginia (http://www.greaterrichmondaquaticspartnership.org/), I much, much prefer the 8 lane setup for the width of the lanes. It would seem to me that, if they’re going to build a temporary pool with 10 lanes, they could at least make them 10 wide lanes.
Patrick – having watched (admittedly as a fan) both the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Trials, I thank the lord every day that they chose to go 10 lanes. Those morning sessions were bru-tal as it was…
BUt really, I wonder if these arenas can fit the extra 6 meters it would take to put 10 3-meter lanes on them? I think part of the problem is that they have to make sure it’s still useful for whatever its final resting place will be; namely it needs to be 25 yards (or meters) wide. A 50 meterx30 meter pool is infinitely lest useful afterward than a 50 meterx25 yard/meter pool.
More likely it would be 50mx25m not 50mx25y as it is in europe…?
Correct, but as the example brought up was Omaha, I figured it was relevant to acknowledge both distances…
How wide is the pool? I’m guessing 25 meters…….10 X 2.5 meter lanes. Anyone know?
A 8-lines arrangement should be used in backstroke.