I just watched the NYT animation of the men’s 1500m freestyle and realized that, after turns, Bobby Fink largely gets out ahead of other swimmers because of how much speed he gets when he pushes off the wall, and then other swimmers start to catch up. It made me realize that if the competition were 1500m in a straight line, the results would be different.
Are there measures in place around how much time you actually have to “swim,” or is this just how swimming in a pool works?
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There is a rule in freestyle (and butterfly and backstroke) that you must break the water within 15m of the wall. A British athlete, Luke Greenbank, [was disqualified from this year’s backstroke competition](https://www.eurosport.com/swimming/olympic-games-paris-2024/2024/why-did-team-gb-swimmer-luke-greenbank-get-disqualified_sto20023531/story.shtml) for breaking this rule.
This rule was introduced to limit the amount of advantage that you can gain from the turn and from then propelling yourself underwater after it. This means you must ‘swim’ for at least 35 of 50 metres.
A very good ‘turner’ might be able to beat a slightly better pure ‘swimmer’ if they are able to gain enough advantage in the turn to make up for any losses in the swimming, but yes that is just part of the sport.
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