The Paris Olympics aren’t going smoothly for the swimmers. The pollution in the Seine has forced organizers to cancel several training sessions and postpone the triathlon events. At the height of the confusion, organizers even considered reducing the triathlon to a duathlon, with only the running and cycling competitions. All indications are that the Paris 2024 swimmers contend with another unexpected enemy: the La Défense swimming pool.
And not because of the quality of its water or the concentration of E. coli and Enterococcus bacteria, as in the Seine. No. The problem this time is its depth.
An Olympics with few records. The Olympic Games are still ongoing, but for the moment, the Paris Games stand out for their lack of world records in swimming. Yesterday, The New York Times published a chart that, although provisional and not the final picture, is informative. During the 2012 Olympic Games in London, competitors broke nine world records in swimming. They followed up with eight in Rio 2016 and half a dozen in Tokyo 2021. And that's not even mentioning the 23 rubber-suit records set in Beijing in 2008. Until yesterday, the Paris 2024 counter was at zero. China’s Pan Zhanle was the first to break a world record in men’s 100-meter freestyle.
Nearly a week into the Olympic Games, the swimmers in the waters of the La Défense Arena in the French capital have yet to break any world records. Still, the event features top competitors, such as Australia’s Ariarne Titmus, France’s Léon Marchand, and the U.S.’ Katie Ledecky, who are at the prime of their career, as evidenced by the Olympic records set in Paris. On Tuesday, for example, Australia’s Kaylee McKeown set an Olympic record but fell short of the world record set by the American Regan Smith.
And in the men’s 100-meter freestyle, gold in Athens 2004 cost 1:44.71, followed by 1:42.96 at Beijing 2008, 1:43.14 in London 2012, 1:44.65 in Rio 2016, and 1:44.22 in Tokyo 2020. In Paris 2024, the Romanian David Popovici took the gold with a time of 1:44.72, fractions of a second more than at the last Olympics and well above the winners of the 2008 and 2012 events.
“This pool is not that deep.” It’s not all world records and comparisons. The swimmers have hinted that something is creaking at Paris 2024. Some of the most media-savvy names in the discipline have pointed in the same direction: the Olympic pool at La Defénse Arena in Paris, the indoor stadium where the Racing 92 club usually plays. It now houses the prefabricated stainless-steel pool by Myrtha Pools, where swimmers compete against each other and challenge a common enemy, the stopwatch.
“This pool is not deep, not as deep as the others,” admitted France’s Leon Marchand, who, despite his gold medal and Olympic record in the 400-meter freestyle, was left wanting to rewrite the world record. He wasn’t the only one to comment on the characteristics of the Paris pool.
“It doesn’t meet the rules.” Ledecky also said it was “not deep enough.” In this regard, Canada’s Summer McIntosh stated: “I mean, the pool’s 50 metres and it’s 10 lanes. It’s an Olympic pool. I don’t think any Olympic pool should really be called slow. No matter what, everybody’s racing in the same pool. It doesn’t matter if it’s the fastest pool in the world, slowest pool in the world—I have the same goals.”
Her reasoning applies to the battle between athletes swimming in their respective lanes, all in the same pool, but not when it comes to beating the other rival in the fight for records: the stopwatch.
Doesn’t it meet the standards? The company that installed the pool claims it “meets all standards.” Moreover, the Italian company Myrtha Pools has extensive experience in Olympic installations. Marchand himself admitted that the pool, although not very deep, is “top.” So, some questions arise: Is the Paris pool too shallow? Does it not meet minimum standards? If so, how is this possible? And the million-dollar question, how does this affect the athletes?
Change at the wrong time. That’s the key. According to The Washington Post, the depth of the prefabricated stainless-steel pool was a maximum of 2.15 meters (7 feet)—some sources say it was 2.2 meters (7.2 feet)—which was perfectly in line with the minimum required by the federation at the time of certification. The problem is that shortly after, the organization revised its guidelines and required pools 2.5 meters deep (8.2 feet), significantly more profound than La Defénse’s pool.
The Olympic swimmers have clarified that the pool’s depth isn’t a minor issue. This is proof that the problem has crept into the debate at the Paris Olympics. Experts consider the ideal depth for a pool to be 3 meters (9.8 feet). The Associated Press recalls that at the Indianapolis trials, the portable pool setup was 2.8 meters (9.1 feet), and swimmers broke two world records there.
Does the depth have that much of an effect? The key lies in fluid mechanics, specifically in the vortices that, as biomechanist Raúl Arellano explains to Spanish outlet El País, elite swimmers generate during certain phases of underwater swimming. “They are rotational flows, similar to a wave, which push the swimmers and produce their maximum energy when generated in sufficiently large areas.” The expert adds: “But when you get too close to the bottom or the surface, these eddies are less efficient. Swimmers go down more than 1.5 meters. If the pool is 2.5 meters, you’re still a meter down. In Paris, the distance to the bottom has been reduced.”
The key, then, is how the pool depth affects swimmers as they go underwater. It may seem like a minor issue, but its influence isn’t minor when it comes to elite athletes, whose records are measured in hundredths of a second, and longer events like the 400 meters.
“When you swim, you create a wave, and the wave goes behind and goes under,” Amandine Aftalion, a senior scientist at the French National Center of Research, tells The New York Times. “If the pool is too shallow, the wave reflects from the bottom and causes the water to be turbulent, and therefore, it slows down the swimmers. Since 2008, it was advised to have a three-meter deep pool. The minimum (is) two meters. But it’s advised to have three meters because it’s much better for records and because it limits the waves that reflect on the bottom and create resistance,” Aftalion adds.
Are there more explanations? Yes, there are. In an article published in The Conversation, Shane Keating, a professor at UNSW Sydney, looks at how the La Défense pool might affect the athletes and acknowledges the possibility that swimmers, especially those in races such as the 400-meter freestyle, “may unconsciously be adjusting their pace to match the slower hull velocity.”
However, Keating also points to other relevant factors that could explain the record drought: a “perception” of the “slow pool” or simply that athletes are gradually “approaching the limits of human performance–at least until we work out how to break those limits once again.” Until then, he says, “it shouldn’t be surprising that the rate of record-breaking performances will decrease over time.”
Some point to other theories, such as the “pressure” swimmers feel in the pavilion when swimming in front of a crowd. “There’s a lot of pressure and expectation that people put on themselves,” Australian sprinter Kyle Chalmers admitted to the Associated Press. “A lot of people haven’t swum in the Olympics before. I think the nervous energy of having (15,000 fans) in the stadium is crazy. I personally love it, but I think people do definitely crack under that pressure.”
This article was written by Carlos Prego and originally published in Spanish on Xataka.
Images | SpecialOCanada (Flickr) | Leah Hetteberg (Unsplash)
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