(Nanterre) The atmosphere at the Olympic swimming pool is electrifying. The weather? Not so much.
After the first four days of competition at the temporary pool erected at La Défense Arena, no world records have been broken. It seems increasingly clear that it will take an extraordinary performance to surpass an existing mark.
It seems that this situation is due to the lack of depth of the pool, which is not optimal for the athletes, but which allows for a few more rows of seats for the organizing committee. Concretely, for the swimmers, these parameters in the pool seem to cause more waves, and more turbulence on the surface of the water.
“I’ve heard the criticism, but at the end of the day we’re here to swim,” said U.S. star swimmer Katie Ledecky. “We’re all very fast. The pool is as fast as we want it to be. I don’t pay too much attention to it.”
In future, World Aquatics will require a minimum depth of 2.5 metres for Olympic swimming and water polo events.
The temporary pool that will be built at SoFi Stadium for the 2028 Los Angeles Games will meet these criteria.
However, when the Olympics were awarded to Paris, the temporary pool that had been ordered met the previous standard of 2.2 metres deep.
By comparison, the “optimal” pool for swimmers is supposed to be 10 feet deep. At the U.S. Olympic trials in Indianapolis, the temporary pool installed on the field of Lucas Oil Stadium—home of the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts—was 9 feet deep, and two world records were set there.
The atmosphere is electrifying
Torin Koos, spokesman for World Aquatics, pointed out that five Olympic records were achieved after 15 swimming events at La Défense Arena.
Of course, no one really benefits. All swimmers face the same conditions, so no one has a real advantage. In most events, the favorites come out on top.
“I try not to pay attention to it because we’re all swimming in the same pool,” said American swimmer Katie Grimes, who finished second in the 400-meter individual medley. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a slow pool or not, it’s not going to affect just one athlete. It affects everyone.”
And what about the pressure in all this?
Australian swimmer Kyle Chalmers doesn’t believe the pool is solely to blame for the slow times.
“The expectations and pressure are very high for all of us,” he explained. “Many of us are participating in the Olympic Games for the first time in their lives. I think the stress caused by them [les 15 000 spectateurs] is insane. I love it, but I think some people crack under pressure.”
So many swimmers are slower at the Olympics. And the gaps are staggering. Summer McIntosh made a fool of Grimes and the rest of the field in the 400 IM, but the 17-year-old Canadian still fell nearly three seconds short of her own world record set at the Canadian Olympic trials last May.
PHOTO DAVID J. PHILLIP, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Canadian Summer McIntosh
And it is certainly not because of the “reserve” of the spectators in Paris, who give an electroshock to the athletes by being very demonstrative and noisy in the stands.
However, there is still enough to hope to rewrite the record book, although Chalmers and the others care little about that.
“Times don’t matter,” said the Australian. “You just have to touch the wall first and you win the race. Nobody remembers times.”