HOPES of seeing new swimming world records set at the Paris 2024 Olympics appear to have been dashed, due to a shallow pool.
Swimming events at this summer’s Games have been held at Paris’ La Defense Arena.
No records have yet been set during the first four days of action.
And, as pointed out by The Times, plenty of times have been slower than anticipated.
Sunday’s 100m breaststroke final, which saw Team GB superstar Adam Peaty collect a silver medal, despite testing positive for Covid hours later, was the slowest in Olympics in 20 years.
Leon Marchand, despite achieving gold in the Men’s 400m Individual Medley, also missed his own world record by a whopping 0.45 seconds.
The slower times have gathered attention from stars of yesteryear.
Following the 200m breaststroke final, former world champion Nick Gillingham, 57, took to social media.
He wrote: “Did pool maintenance do a back wash down the pool to speed the water up and slow down the swimmers for this race?”
The peculiar times could be due to a shallower pool than at recent Games.
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La Defense Arena’s pool being used for this summer’s competition is a temporary structure that has been hauled in.
The last four Olympic Games have featured three metre deep pools, with World Championships also tending to be the same depth.
At Paris 2024, however, the pool is 2m 15cm deep – which could be the root cause of slower times.
While the pool complies with the two metre minimum imposed at Games, it is 85cm shallower than at Olympics staged in Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, London and Beijing.
In shallower pools, it is claimed that greater “turbulence” caused by water being more prone to come back off the floor leads to water being choppier for athletes.
Whereas, in a deeper pool, the force of waves is said to have often already dissolved prior to it bouncing up off the surfaces.
Artistic swimming events require a depth of three metres.
But with those events taking place at Paris’ new Aquatics Centre, rather than La Defense Arena, the pool for the regular swimming events is different to at previous Games.
