Was The Paris Olympic Pool Slow?

This episode explores whether the swimming pool used at the Paris Olympics was slower than expected, impacting athletes' performances and record-breaking attempts.

1. The depth and design of a pool can create conditions that significantly affect swimming speed and athlete performance.
2. New standards require Olympic pools to be deeper, following findings that deeper pools reduce water turbulence, aiding swimmers.
3. The Paris Olympic pool was slightly shallower than the new standard, which may have contributed to its perceived slowness.
4. Despite fewer records being broken, the variability in pool conditions is only one of many factors that could influence performance.
5. Athletes focus more on competition strategy and winning medals than on setting world records, adjusting their performance accordingly.

1: Introduction

Emily Kwong introduces the topic and guests, setting the stage for a discussion on the Paris Olympic pool's performance. Emily Kwong: "We are just over halfway through the 2024 Olympics, and I have personally loved watching the swimmers."

2: The Science of Swimming Pools

Exploration of pool design elements like depth and lane lines that define a "slow" or "fast" pool. Bill Chappell: "Slow pools are shallow, more turbulence, more waves, which makes it harder for swimmers to stay streamlined."

3: Paris Pool Analysis

Discussion on the specifics of the Paris pool and how its features compare to ideal conditions. Kevin Post: "A fast pool is where the water has no impact on the athlete's outcome."

4: Athlete Perspectives

Insights from swimmers and how different pool conditions might affect various swimming strokes. Caleb Dressel: "There's evidence for and against it... It's not the depth that we've been used to."

5: Conclusion

Reflections on the psychological aspects and other external factors affecting athletes' performances. Emily Kwong: "Sports is not a controlled experiment."

1. When designing a pool, consider the depth and turbulence control for optimal athletic performance.
2. For athletes, focusing on what can be controlled during competition can mitigate external factors.
3. Event organizers should prioritize athlete feedback to ensure competitive fairness.
4. Spectators and commentators should consider multiple factors when assessing athlete performances.
5. Future pool designs might need to account for deeper water turbulence as athletes adapt their techniques.

In the last week, we've seen swimmers diving headfirst into the 2024 Paris Olympics pool, limbs gracefully slicing through the water. And yet, world and Olympic records weren't broken at quite the rate some expected, leading many on social media to speculate: Was the pool the culprit? With the help of NPR correspondents Bill Chappell and Brian Mann, we investigate.

People

Emily Kwong, Bill Chappell, Brian Mann, Kevin Post, Caleb Dressel

Companies

Councilman Hunsaker, USA Swimming

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

Kevin Post, Caleb Dressel

Content Warnings:

None

NPR Sponsor
This message comes from NPR sponsor Greenlight. Want to teach your kids financial literacy with Greenlight, kids and teens use a debit card of their own. While parents can keep an eye on kids spending and savings in the app. Get your first month free@greenlight.com. nPR.

Emily Kwong
You're listening to short wave from NPR.

Hey, short waivers. EmilY KWONG, here we are just over halfway through the 2024 Olympics, and I have personally loved watching the swimmers. I mean, Katie Ledecky, Tori Husk, women out there are kicking butt. And today I have two gentlemen on joining me to talk about the sport. One of them is Bill Chappell, a correspondent and editor at NPR. Hey, Bill.

Bill Chappell
Hey, Emily. Glad to be here.

Emily Kwong
We are so happy to have you. And we also have Brian Mann, a correspondent for NPR's national desk. Hi, Brian.

Brian Mann
Hey there, Emily.

Emily Kwong
You are calling us from Paris itself because that is where you are covering the Olympics.

Brian Mann
Yeah, I spent the last week at the swimming pool here kind of living and breathing this. And the pool itself has been kind of the talk of Paris.

Emily Kwong
Right. This pool has been the site of triumphs but also some disappointment for the us team. They're taking home a lot of medals, but not as many gold as they were hoping for.

Brian Mann
Yeah, a lot more silver and bronze for the us team this year than gold. Some athletes, Emily, who seemed like they were set up for gold, they're missing out on medals altogether. The US did bounce back the two final days of competition. There's been a little shift here. They won four gold medals, and also this is big. Two world records broken in the last couple days by the US.

Bill Chappell
Yeah. A total of four world records dropped during these Olympic swimming competitions.

Emily Kwong
Nice.

Bill Chappell
I mean, but, you know, some people are wondering if it's the pool itself that was slowing people down because those records didn't fall as early and as often as people thought they might.

Emily Kwong
Okay. I've seen some of this kicking around the Internet. What is up with this pool?

Bill Chappell
I mean, you would think it's the Olympics. These are Olympic swimmers. They're the best in the world. The pool has to be the best in the world also, right?

Brian Mann
Yeah, right. I mean, this has really been sort of like a big Olympic science experiment. People thought at first this pool might be slow. Some people still think that, but there are a ton of variables. And what's cool here is that these athletes are all talking about things like turbulence and wave action and how that all affects their performances.

Emily Kwong
So today on the show, why some are calling this year's Olympic pool slow, how it might be keeping some world records at bay and whether any of that even matters. I'm Emily Kwong, and you're listening to short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

NPR Sponsor
This message comes from NPR sponsor American Express. Take your business further with the smart and flexible American Express business gold card. It offers flexible spending capacity that adapts to your business. You can also earn up to $395 in annual statement credits on eligible purchases at select business merchants. That's the powerful backing of American Express terms. Apply. Learn more@americanexpress.com businessgoldcard this message comes from NPR sponsor betterhelp.

NPR Sponsor
When your schedule is packed with kids activities or big work projects and you feel like you have no time for yourself, non negotiables like therapy are more important than ever. If youre thinking of starting therapy, give betterhelp a try and get 10% off your first month at betterhelp help.com npr.

NPR Sponsor
Support for NPR and the following message come from indeed, when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isnt to search at all. Dont Search Match with indeed, get a dollar 75 sponsored job credit@indeed.com shortwave terms.

Emily Kwong
And conditions apply okay, Bill and Brian, we're kicking it in our little kiddie pool watching these real athletes swim. And we're just going to talk about some of the conditions of what we're seeing. You've both reported on this year's Olympic swimming events and this idea that we saw spreading around social media early on that there were fewer records being broken this Olympics. Some people think it's because of a slow pool. What does that mean? What's a slow pool?

Bill Chappell
Well, I talked to some of the aquatic designers for USA swimming, and they said when they're designing a pool, they look at things like the pool depth, the lane lines and gutters. And on a really basic level, slow pools are shallow, and that means there's more turbulence, more waves, which makes it harder for swimmers to stay streamlined in the water.

Brian Mann
And this year's pool is a little bit different. It's about 7ft deep. That did meet world aquatic standards when it was designed. But last year, the governing body changed the rules to say pools have to be at least 8.2ft deep. And that's really the new standard.

Emily Kwong
Okay, so you're saying the Paris pool, it is a little more shallow than the governing body would like.

What kind of pool does make for ideal swimming conditions?

Bill Chappell
Well, I'll let Kevin post explain. Part of it just kind of set the scene. He's the CEO at Councilman Hunsaker that's the official aquatic designers for USA Swimming.

Kevin Post
If you walk in, in the morning and you see that it just looks like glass and there looks like the water's not moving at all, that would be considered a fast pool because the water has no impact on the athlete's outcome. Right. It's just there for them to swim in. And then the quicker you can get back to that moment of quiescence where it's all nice and calm and quiet, the faster the pool.

Emily Kwong
Quiescence. That sounds quite nice, actually. I want to swim in a pool of quiescence.

So if a swimmer gets in a pool and competes in their event, they generate these waves.

The measure of how fast the pool is is kind of how quickly all those waves calm down.

Is that right?

Brian Mann
Yeah, that's right. And remember, we're talking here about tiny variations. It's not like, you know, the waves in a jacuzzi.

These are swimming competitions where winning and losing, setting a new world record, that all comes down to hundredths of a second. So just these really small fluctuations in how a pool performs can matter. I spoke about this with one of America's star swimmers, a guy named Caleb Dressel, after he'd spent a bunch of time in this Paris pool. Now that you've had a full week here, what's your take on that? Is it different? Could you feel anything?

Caleb Dressel
Yeah. I mean, there's evidence for. And evidence against it. I don't know. Obviously, it's not the depth that we've been used to for every swim meet ever.

I don't even know if you can pick one stroke that was slower than the others.

Brian Mann
And what's interesting there, and what Caleb says, Emily, is that these variations can be so specific that some swimmers think different pools can impact different swimming strokes. You know, one pool might be faster for the backstroke, one faster for the breaststroke. That's how clinical a different pool can be.

Emily Kwong
Wow.

Bill Chappell
Yeah. And, I mean, when I was talking to Kevin from Councilman Huntzeger, he said, you know, the founders of that company, who are both pretty legendary pool analysts and coaches, they studied the ideal pool depth before the 1996 Atlanta Games and they found that swimmers basically impact the water around them by about 5ft, 5ft.

Emily Kwong
In, like, any direction. It's like an orb of impact.

Bill Chappell
Yeah.

Emily Kwong
Interesting. So I suppose the deeper the pool is, the more space the swimmers have to impact the water around them without it being reflected off the bottom and come up to the top and, like, slow down the swimmers.

Bill Chappell
Yeah. And, I mean, we've seen this year, especially some athletes, just seem to be swimming deeper now than they used to. I mean, you know, we've seen people like the french athlete Leon Marchanda. Even Michael Phelps has commented about his swims and his style. He goes so deep after his initial dive and then after his turn, it's just like a submarine coming off the wall. So, you know, Kevin told me, you know, future pools might just have to account for turbulence deeper in the water. I know from the US, we've been watching these events and you've seen cameras zooming along the bottom of the water, too. So that's another thing people have talked about as a possible source of turbulence.

Emily Kwong
This is what's so cool about the Olympics, is the sport changes. Right? And how we talk about the sport changes. I mean, I remember during the Beijing Olympics, people talked about that as being, by contrast, a fast pool. It was like 10ft deep compared to this seven ish feet we're seeing in Paris right now.

Brian Mann
Yeah, and London in 2012 and Rio in 2016. They had deep pools as well.

But again, there are lots of variables. The Beijing Olympics had high tech full body swimsuits, you know, that helped athletes cut through the water. Those are now banned, but that may be why a lot of those 2008 records still stand. And there are other things at play, too. Kevin says even the gutters on the sides of the pool, they can impact all of this.

Kevin Post
The way to make a fast pool is to make sure that none of that water that was being pushed off by the swimmer and hitting a wall was coming back.

Emily Kwong
I had never thought about a gutter system affecting swimming before. What are some other things? What are some other variables in the pool design that could affect the swimmers?

Bill Chappell
So you've probably seen the touchpads the athletes are hitting when they come back to the wall and this big splash comes.

Emily Kwong
Yeah, they smack em.

Bill Chappell
Yeah. So the end walls have touch pads, and under USA swimming rules, they actually sit at water level.

So, you know, they're coming in, the water goes over in the gutter, there's no problem. But for international standards, the touchpads have to be around twelve inches of touchpad above the wall as well. So they do what they can to mitigate it. But, you know, it's going to block part of that gutter and it prevents some of the gutter from absorbing the waves.

Kevin Post
One of the downsides of international events is they are absolutely slower pools because.

Emily Kwong
Of that touchpad, because the wave splashes back on the athlete a little bit. Little bit. For you and me, it'd be like, no big thing.

Bill Chappell
It would not affect my time.

I would not get a medal either way.

And, I mean, the US rules are very specific. At the NCAA championships, they have double lane lines just to kind of reduce the chop and waves as much as they possibly can.

Brian Mann
One thing, Emily, that I would say is that it's important that the evolution of these pools, they've gotten so much better over the years. People used to say, like, which lane you were in could make all the difference between winning and losing. So the slight variability in Paris compared to how things used to be, it's really a lot less. And another thing that's been interesting here in Paris is that people talk about things like the food being offered to athletes during the games, the weather. A lot of swimmers said they were thrown off more by the bus rides and the tough schedules and the beds in the Olympic village. That that was a bigger factor for them than speed in the pool.

You know, it's just hard to know how each one of these pieces of the puzzle affects what we've seen through these Olympics.

Emily Kwong
It just goes to show you that sports is not a controlled experiment.

Brian Mann
Yeah. Also remember that once athletes get here to Paris or the Olympics, they're not out to set world records or Olympic records.

All they're trying to do is win medals, especially a gold medal, and that affects how they plan their races. The goal is, is to touch that wall, really. It's not to beat the clock.

Emily Kwong
Hmm.

And is any of this psychological, like, once word gets out, true or not, that this pool is slow?

Do athletes feel slower?

Bill Chappell
I mean, it could be. Fast racing definitely inspires other fast racing, but there's also a trade off when you're in a pool, and it's like, in terms of just the depth, you look down at the bottom of the pool and you're swimming. Think about, like, being in an airline or going 500 miles an hour. If you're going 500 miles an hour at the ground level, it would feel amazingly fast. But from your airliner, you're like, okay, we're cruising along and people will say, you know, it's hard for swimmers to know exactly how fast they're going if the pool is a different depth than they're used to. And the psychological aspect of this is huge.

I talked to a former world record holder named Gemma Fleming, who's from the UK. She told me the two times that she spoke to psychologists were once when her mother died and another when she won a world record. So, like, the pressure these athletes face and the psychological part of this is huge.

Brian Mann
I think all that's right. And I think one of the things I heard from the athletes themselves this week, Emily, is they just really wanted to put this whole question of the speed or slowness of this pool out of their heads.

You know, they, they focus on what they can control. That's what athletes do to win. And they didn't want to be thinking about the depth or speed of a pool, and there's nothing at all they can do about it. So a lot of times when we ask this question, they really tried to try to move on to the next.

Emily Kwong
That's what makes them the best of the best. That's what makes them Olympians. Well, thank you both so much for coming on this program. It was so great to talk to you, Brian. Enjoy Paris.

Brian Mann
Thanks. It's fun.

Emily Kwong
And, Bill, I'll see you around the building.

Bill Chappell
Yeah, see you, Emily. Nice to talk to you, too, Brian.

Emily Kwong
This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez. Brian, Bill, Rachel, and Rebecca, check the facts. Beth Donovan is our senior director and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you for listening to short wave from NPR.

NPR Sponsor
This message comes from NPR sponsor Quince. Even on a budget, you still deserve nice things. Scoop up timeless, high quality goods for 50% to 80% less than similar brands with Quince. Go to quinns.com style for free shipping and 365 day returns.

This message comes from NPR sponsor Capella University. Capella's programs teach skills relevant to your career so you can apply what you learn right away. See how Capella can make a difference in your life at capella.edu.