A shallow pool at the Paris Olympic Games may be slowing swimmers down—resulting in sluggish times and fewer record-breaking performances.
The pool at París La Défense Arena is 2.2 meters deep (7.2 feet)—a whopping 3 feet shallower than pools at previous games, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In a sport often decided by milliseconds, the faster rebound of waves from the swimmer’s movements reverberating off the shallower bottom may be slowing this year’s athletes down, the Journal concluded after consulting multiple experts in the field.
ADVERTISEMENT
The pool itself was constructed on a rugby pitch usually home to the Racing 92, a French rugby club.
“To go deeper, they would have had to do significant modifications, and structurally, there are some concerns,” Olympic pool designer John Ireland told the WSJ.
World Aquatics, the organization that regulates Olympic pools, ruled in 2023 that the minimum depth for a pool at any future games needed to be 2.5 meters—but Paris got its pool approved four years earlier, so it was not held to this standard.
Despite the speculation about the underwhelming scores, an Olympic spokesperson told the WSJ that “Paris 2024 has received no reports of athlete complaints over the depth of the pool.”
