I keep seeing people talking about how swimming records aren’t being broken on these Olympics because of the pools being too deep.
In: Physics
It’s the other way around, the complaint is that the pools in Paris are too *shallow*. First, you have to keep in mind that at the highest levels, sports like swimming are decided by fractions of a second, so even mild effects from the environment matter.
The optimal depth suggested by most international swimming bodies seems to be 3 meters, the ones in Paris are 2.15 meters, that’s the concern. As to why, swimmers produce pressure waves when they move through the water (essentially sound waves in water) and those waves reflect from the bottom of the pool and can very slightly slow them down by increasing turbulence in their strokes. The result is that a ‘shallow’ pool will generally lead to slightly slower speeds on average.
> When the Paris pool design was permitted, the World Aquatics minimum depth requirement for Olympic competition swimming was 2.0 meters. Although the World Aquatics facilities standards recommend a depth of 3.0 meters, this recommendation is often tied to multi-discipline use, such as Artistic Swimming. Since the time that the Paris installation was permitted, World Aquatics has increased the minimum depth requirement for Olympic competition to 2.5 meters.
https://www.aquaticsintl.com/facilities/balancing-speed-and-experience-optimal-pool-depth-for-competitive-swimming_o
Latest Answers