191–200 of 344 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, the important bit is fairness for all competitors. As the OP said, the same conditions affect everybody. I have little sympathy for the (few) swimmers complaining. They are not owed a world record and if they’re that good, they’re going to get one anyway.
Wouldn't the sides affect swimmers on the edge lanes next to them more? And is this one reason why the strongest swimmers are usually placed in the center lanes?
This is entirely just my own opinion... I completely understand why you might not want a slow pool in a competition like this, but the emphasis on it being "not ideal for record setting" is weird to me. I guess I just don't understand the constant quest to set better and better records. Do we really always need to be hitting new world records? What's the point of that, why does that need to be a thing? If records lik…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, the important bit is fairness for all competitors. As the OP said, the same conditions affect everybody. I have little sympathy for the (few) swimmers complaining. They are not owed a world record and if they’re that good, they’re going to get one anyway.
Wouldn't the sides affect swimmers on the edge lanes next to them more? And is this one reason why the strongest swimmers are usually placed in the center lanes?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure if you are being satirical, but yes that's the point. The entire point of qualifiers in most sports is to reward better participants - otherwise they would have incentive to sandbag their performance or perform other shenanigans for preferential matchups.
You get rewarded by qualifying. If you perform better in the heat that doesn't mean you should get an advantage in the race. Random allocation would be better.
Why do you believe this should be the case? Keep in mind the majority opinion of most forms of racing and other competitions is to reward competitors for their qualifying or heat performances by assigning the most valuable starting positions to the top qualifiers. This is generally considered more fair than randomizing the final’s lane assignment (or grid order, etc) because it reduces the chance of BS in the finals itself and avoids perverse incentives in the qualification rounds.
As a counterpoint to the Parisian pool being slow, China beat the world record in 100m free 10 minutes ago.
That's not a counterpoint, it doesn't imply the pool is fast or even normal. In a faster pool his time could've been even lower.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure if you are being satirical, but yes that's the point. The entire point of qualifiers in most sports is to reward better participants - otherwise they would have incentive to sandbag their performance or perform other shenanigans for preferential matchups.
You get rewarded by qualifying. If you perform better in the heat that doesn't mean you should get an advantage in the race. Random allocation would be better.
This is entirely just my own opinion... I completely understand why you might not want a slow pool in a competition like this, but the emphasis on it being "not ideal for record setting" is weird to me. I guess I just don't understand the constant quest to set better and better records. Do we really always need to be hitting new world records? What's the point of that, why does that need to be a thing? If records lik…
With that in mind though, what is the point of a world event like this if, given the time and resources, we're not going to try and optimize for peak performance for the participants given that for many of them it's the career peak?
I'd argue plenty of blame to go around though: for one, why is there not a standard pool design and dimension?
In addition to physical issues raised (7ft depth, configuration of sides), I wonder if there might be any other reasons that aren't mentioned at all in the article… Something causing these elite athletes to be a bit off their game? Whatever could it possibly be… - https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2024/07/31/us... - https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/team-gb-swimmer-m... - https://www.theguardian…
Let's also not forget doping. Chinese swimmers noticeably slower this year than last olympics in particular. Wonder why that is?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You get rewarded by qualifying. If you perform better in the heat that doesn't mean you should get an advantage in the race. Random allocation would be better.
> should Why do you believe this should be the case? Keep in mind the majority opinion of most forms of racing and other competitions is to reward competitors for their qualifying or heat performances by assigning the most valuable starting positions to the top qualifiers. This is generally considered more fair than randomizing the final’s lane assignment (or grid order, etc) because it reduces the chance of BS in th…
My reservation with swimming is that if you were randomly assigned to a middle or side lane in the qualification stages, your advantage or disadvantage is compounded as the competition proceeds. It's not clear to me how lane assignments are conducted for heats; perhaps they use a seeding system.
https://www.nbcolympics.com/news/swimming-101-olympic-compet...