Is a 'slow' swimming pool impeding world records? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is a 'slow' swimming pool impeding world records?

#281

Post by myworkinisgood » Thu, Aug 01, 2024, 11:28 AM UTC

trhway wrote: post #183

conductr wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My untrained eye has noticed. But I also think it's not really a big deal. There are so few events where the conditions are exactly the same every 4 years. Just kinda the luck of the draw if you happen to be competing in the most ideal conditions for WR setting in any event

> But I also think it's not really a big deal. the difference of the resulting turbulence from the wave bounced back from the bottom surface at 2m here and from the more traditional 3m is a big deal. The water is pushed by the swimmer's hands with the speed of something on the scale of 2 meters per second, so, as the swimmer moves forward, that turbulent movement of the water reflected by the pool bottom may as well…

It's not a big deal in terms of competition as long as all players are affected equally. People are just being whiny.

Re: Is a 'slow' swimming pool impeding world records?

#282

Post by djtango » Thu, Aug 01, 2024, 11:43 AM UTC

echoangle wrote: post #44

Xcelerate wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I trust the swimmers’ intuition far more than an ad-hoc CFD analysis. Plus the shape of the pool itself isn’t necessarily the only variable that might be affecting the race times. The gold standard would be an empirical randomized controlled trial to compare two pools, assuming you could hide “which pool” from the participants.

I don’t doubt that they are slower, I doubt that it’s the pool depth. To be more accurate, i have no idea if it the pool depth, but a swimmer saying that it is doesn’t tell me a lot. I’m not sure if the intuition of a swimmer can differentiate between the pool depth effect and other effects that could influence performance. I don’t doubt that something is making them slower, but i don’t believe it’s pool depth until…

It's pretty amazing that people here are willing to wade into a field and contest what is accepted amongst practitioners. Olympians literally spend around 40 hours a week in the pool if not more. Places like team USA and other well funded teams have an army of coaches and scientists trying to eke out every basis point of performance as their full-time job.

As a swimmer, I remember everyone lauding over how cool the Beijing Water Cube was because it was a uniform 3m deep which made it excellent for racing in - this was 16 years ago in 2008.

Since the Paris Olympics were accepted the regulation recommendation for pool depth has been revised from 2m to 2.5m

So clearly people vested in the sport and live and breathe it have seen enough evidence (including the sleepy regulatory board) to advise deeper pools.

If you wanted another possible explanation for how depth may affect the swim - a crucial part of the swim is the dive and also the underwater kicking. Both of those may have separate dynamics to swimming on the surface.

Re: Is a 'slow' swimming pool impeding world records?

#283

Post by djtango » Thu, Aug 01, 2024, 11:49 AM UTC

Rayhem wrote: post #94

MrPatan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intuition forms because it works. When it doesn't it's remarkable to the point of writing books and movies about it.

When it works we call it intuition. When it doesn't we call it superstition. There are all sorts of availability biases at work here; none of which really support the use of intuition as a valuable, predictive resource. After all, if your intuition fails to predict something, there must be some lurking variable somewhere that you failed to account for. Not that the intuition is wrong /s.

The thing is, depth discussions have been going on for decades and these swimmers literally live in the pool. When people spend literally 40+ hours a week in water I trust them well before I trust scientists because it takes scientists so much longer to catch up and measure what the practitioners are observing.

Like this reminds me of Beckham/Ronaldo doing free kicks. They had a deep understanding of controlling the ball well beyond what scientists knew how to measure and explain what they're doing.

Re: Is a 'slow' swimming pool impeding world records?

#284

Post by bhandziuk » Thu, Aug 01, 2024, 11:55 AM UTC

jonhohle wrote: post #208

tweetle_beetle wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no expert, buy there also seems to be loads more stuff lying on the bottom of the shallow floor than I remember from previous Olympics. Not even sure exactly what it is - large white panels and other equipment that the swimmers don't look that far off touching when underwater (not the robot cameras which are relatively unobtrusive).

Wouldn’t the underwater camera on a track cause currents?

I could be fully enclosed for the full length and just have a glass top

Re: Is a 'slow' swimming pool impeding world records?

#285

Post by dredmorbius » Thu, Aug 01, 2024, 12:26 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #129

johnp314 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to see a comparison of lane effect, say for instance, re-running a race after let's say a weeks rest with the top finishers now nearest the side walls and the lowest finishers in the center lanes. Oh and for incentive, let's say the average of their two times determines the winners.

The human factor would make this very difficult. A more scientific test might be to use RC boats with tightly regulated power outputs, with a wave machine to ensure consistency.

The fact that swimming competitions are so very close, often down to 100ths of a second, doesn't much help.

Olympic and similar competitions are timed to the nearest 1,000th of a second, but any result within the same 100th is considered a tie as that last bit is just entirely arbitrary, in part because pool dimensions themselves are not accurate to this degree. (The FINA standards mentioned in my earlier comment addresses dimensions accuracy standards.) The Olympics did break ties at the 1/1,000s standard in 1972, but has since judged any result within 1/100th as a tie:

https://olympstats.com/2014/02/12/timing-accuracy-at-the-oly...>

Re: Is a 'slow' swimming pool impeding world records?

#286

Post by KuiN » Thu, Aug 01, 2024, 12:29 PM UTC

hnburnsy wrote: post #224

phatfish wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paris La Défense Arena -- Aquatics (swimming, water polo finals) Paris Aquatic Centre -- Aquatics (water polo preliminaries, diving, artistic swimming)

> Paris Aquatic Centre -- Aquatics (water polo preliminaries, diving, artistic swimming) Why not have those events at a different temporary facility? Feels like they did not avoid building a white elephant... >Last Thursday, President Emmanuel Macron inaugurated the Olympic Aquatic Centre, but behind the flashes and smiles of the opening ceremony was a complex story that saw the budget increase by more than €115 mill…

https://olympics.com/en/paris-2024/venues/aquatics-centre

> From swimming lessons to recreational use and high-level competitions, the Aquatics Centre will be multifunctional. From July 2025, the Aquatics Centre will become a vast multi-sports facility open to all, including two pools (50m and 25m), a fitness area, bouldering area, paddle tennis section and pitches for team sports. It will also have an adjustable floor to serve a variety of purposes (swimming lessons for babies and children, etc.). The Aquatics Centre will also be the state-of-the-art facility that the French swimming community has been looking forward to for decades. The French Swimming Federation will be able to host national and international competitions in its four indoor disciplines. The Centre will also provide a best-in-class federal training facility for leading French athletes and will notably be home to the country’s diving centre

Re: Is a 'slow' swimming pool impeding world records?

#287

Post by BoringTimesGang » Thu, Aug 01, 2024, 12:29 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #277

BoringTimesGang wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's according to a theory to which you've added a strange caveat that a year is insufficient advance knowledge to know how to peak, despite annual world championships - and them often being the reason a competitor knows they're going to the Olympics at all. Allow me to be equally facetious: according to your theory, Lamine Yamal is currently doing the same training he'd be doing deep into a season. Which is im…

> No, that's according to a theory to which you've added a strange caveat that a year is insufficient I'm not the one who specified multiple years. You're making my point. Scarblac claimed people set personal records at the Olympics because they plan to set that record years in advance, adopting a personal regimen with the goal that their performance before the Olympics won't be as good as their performance during th…

People who are capable of setting world records are capable of beating the competition, to allow them to qualify for a more prestigious competition, without 100% effort.

Re: Is a 'slow' swimming pool impeding world records?

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Post by dredmorbius » Thu, Aug 01, 2024, 12:30 PM UTC

samldev wrote: post #5

I was a college swimmer, qualified for Olympic Trials in 2012 and 2016. There are absolutely slow and fast pools. It basically comes down to two things: 1. The depth - which is only 7ft in Paris, unusually shallow for a competition pool. 2. The sides. Does the water spill over the sides into the gutters, or smash into a wall and bounce back, creating more chop. A trained eye can see all the swimmers in Paris struggli…

The one aspect which isn't equal at least amongst Olympic and other competitions is that a slower (or faster) pool will generate fewer (or more) records overall. One measure of the current games' bias would be the number of new Olympic and world records set as compared with other events --- prior or subsequent Olympics, and other world-level competitions within the current year, say. I expect the quants at sites such as 538 would be looking at this.

Re: Is a 'slow' swimming pool impeding world records?

#289

Post by wizzwizz4 » Thu, Aug 01, 2024, 1:03 PM UTC

kergonath wrote: post #176

duggan wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as it's about winning the medals, this is about setting personal and world records, too.

Regardless, they have to make do with what they have. Nobody is moaning that the weather affects triathlon timings.

People are complaining that the local g varies, though. https://www.xkcd.com/852/

Re: Is a 'slow' swimming pool impeding world records?

#290

Post by jjulius » Thu, Aug 01, 2024, 1:07 PM UTC

glitcher wrote: post #235

jjulius wrote: post #169

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…

Setting a new world record is part of making history, and many are not broken at every Olympics. Consider this example - the men's 100m sprint world record was last broken by Usain Bolt 15 years ago! Now if you're not into that particular sport then maybe that doesn't mean much to you, fair enough. But wow, when someone comes along who is able to break that record it will really be something special.

Yeah, that's kinda what I was getting at. The way this talks about "impeding world records" makes it sound like they're expected to be broken frequently. If that's the case, to me, it kinda cheapens world records - that's to say, if they're broken so often, it doesn't seem as big of a deal. But when someone like Usain sets a record that lasts for a while, it does make sense to me that the breaking of that record is special.

It ain't special if it happens a lot, I guess is my thinking.