Let The Theories Begin: Is The Paris 2024 Olympic Pool “Slow”?

2024 PARIS SUMMER OLYMPIC GAMES

• Pool Swimming: July 27 – August 4, 2024
  • Open Water Swimming: August 8 – 9, 2024
• La Défense Arena — Paris, France
• LCM (50 meters)
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• Prelims Live Recaps: Day 1
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Let the conspiracy theories begin.

One of the main patterns of the first prelims session at the Paris 2024 Olympics were that the top times in prelims were considerably slower than they were both at the Tokyo Olympics and the 2023 World Championships. Which begs the question: is the La Défense Arena home to a “slow” pool?

First off, there’s important context that needs to be provided. On Friday, it was revealed that the Paris 2024 Olympic pool was considerably more shallow than recommended, as its’ maximum depth was 2.15 meters (7.5 inches). That’s 80 centimeters (31.5 inches) less than the depth of the Tokyo 2021 pool, and less than World Aquatics’ recommended depth of three meters.

Scientifically speaking, the greater the water depth, the faster the pool — shallow pools create more turbulence due to waves reflecting off the bottom of the pool. So it’s possible that the depth could have affected the speed of the swimmers. But by how much?

To answer this question, we compared the times from Saturday to those from 2023 Worlds and the 2021 Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Time Comparisons, Prelims Winning Times:

Time Comparisons, Final/Semi-Finaling Time:

In total, three of the six events (womens’s 400 free,  men’s 100 breast, men’s 400 free) contested on Saturday morning had slower winning times in prelims compared to both Fukuoka 2023 and Tokyo 2021, and all winning times were slower than Tokyo. However, the time it took to final or semi-final in the same races were slower than both Tokyo and Fukuoka in just the men’s 400 free (and by just a small margin). In addition, the semi-finaling time in the women’s 100 fly and the finaling time in the women’s 400 free Saturday were both faster than they were in Tokyo and Fukuoka.

While the first-place margins between Paris and Tokyo are pretty big in individual events, they did get smaller for both the men’s and women’s 4×100 free relays – especially the latter race.

So generally, it seems like only the top-end speed has been slower so far in Paris, but depth remains the same or even better than it was in the past. It’s also worth noting that prelims happened at night in Tokyo compared to during the morning in both Fukuoka and Paris, which could also account for time differences.

Could we end up being overreacting to this whole thing? Possibly. But we’ll have to wait until finals to know for sure.