Researchers say that a current running through the pool may have unfairly helped swimmers in the outside lanes. This is obviously antithetical to the Olympic ideal of a level playing field to determine the best athlete, full stop, but how much of a difference could it make?
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The idea of the race is that each swimmer will have an equal chance at winning, but Joel Stager, director of the Counsilman Center For the Science of Swimming at Indiana University has a different point of view. The research reveal that in both tests, swimmers who took part in the 50-meter freestyle and swam in lanes five through eight received a slight speed boost, while the first four lanes had almost half that advantage.
A pair of independent studies appears to show a noticeable and prevailing current in the pool that favored swimmers in lanes 5 through 8 over lanes 1 through 4.
“We showed that there was an advantage being in lanes four, five, six and eight opposed to one, two, three”, said Stager.
“It’s a big deal”, he said.
They posted times about 0.5 per cent slower in the final, even though swimmers tend to get faster in the later rounds.
Of the three male and three female medalists in the 50 freestyle finals, five swam in lanes 4 through 8. Women’s victor Pernille Blume of Denmark was swimming out of lane 4 and beat American Simone Manuel in lane seven by 0.02 seconds.
The exception was American Anthony Ervin, who won gold from lane three.
This same team made similar claims following the 2013 world swimming championships in Barcelona.
A group of swimming researchers say the structure of the Olympic pool have may given unfair advantages to athletes who swam in higher-numbered lanes, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Chairman for the company’s board, Trevor Tiffany, told The Wall Street Journal they had tested for currents in the pool by floating a large jug in the pool before and during competitions.
“If we saw there was a current, we’d have done something about it”.
Barry Revzin did a detailed analysis of swimming results for Swim Swam, and found considerable differences in splits for swimmers in the 400-meter, 800-meter and 1,500-meter races depending on which direction they were swimming.
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Put more simply, it appears as if the current may have helped to decide the medal stand in the 50m race, which is a deeply disquieting thought which FINA, the worldwide swimming governing body, is investigating.
