Swimming why is lane 8 bad

Log in. It is a common belief that swimmers in the central lanes are at an advantage. Modified 19 Jul Feature. Also Checkout: Tokyo Olympic Swimming Schedule In this article, we take a look at a popular belief associated with swimming - that the swimmers in the outer lanes are at a disadvantage. Also Checkout : Tokyo Olympics Swimming Schedule The reason for the disadvantage A lot of players and coaches believe that swimming in the central lanes will provide an added advantage to the athlete.

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Login to post your comment. Show More Comments. No thanks Delete. Cancel Update. Login to reply. Cancel Reply. Not surprisingly, the fastest runners — who are in the middle lanes — often win. Are these racers winning because those lanes are the fastest or because those runners tend to be the fastest? Similar to the idea behind clinical trials for a drug, the ideal way to test lane advantages would be to randomly assign runners to lanes and see how they do on average.

Thankfully, there is a subset of race data that does this: Typically, runners are randomly assigned to lanes in the first heats of events. By using data only from first heats of elite track and field events, I was able eliminate the bias from faster runners being assigned to certain lanes.

For the — which is run on a straightaway — I found no evidence of lane advantages. I found that it is in fact outside lanes that are associated with faster race times — on average lane eight is roughly 0. This is sizable for a race in which the world record is Faster outside lanes make sense biomechanically as tighter corners produce slower race times. But the result seems to disprove the idea that not seeing competitors can slow a runner down.

In the , I found no evidence that middle lanes are fastest. All lanes seem to be roughly equal. It is worth noting that there is more variability in meter times, so it is harder to detect small effects, if they exist.

But even this nondifference between lanes in the is striking. In the Olympics, people marveled when Wayde Van Niekerk won the final from lane eight , the farthest outside lane. Reply to JVW 3 months ago. Little Mermaid. Reply to Hswimmer 3 months ago. They practice diving into the ocean and escaping a chum slick of great white sharks!

Yea Baby! Gogo bibi. Reply to Gogo bibi 3 months ago. Reply to MickeyMouse 3 months ago. His mum was his coach few years ago btw , she will not be happy about that lol.

Last edited 3 months ago by Gogo bibi. Terry Watts.