An Interesting Current

Watching the preliminary heats of the Women's 50 Free it was interesting to see that Lanes 7 and 8 were consistently faster than lanes 1 and 2 and often the fastest lanes in the pool. I noticed the same thing in Long Beach for the 50 Frees at the 2004 Trials. Of the 10 women that swam their 50 Free out of Lane 1, only two improved their seed time. On the other side of the coin, only two of the 10 women who swam their 50 Free out of Lane 8 DID NOT do best times, and one of those ladies only went up .04.

Even more interesting is the placing of the last four women to swim out of Lane 8 in the event:

• Anne Marie May of UC-Santa Barbara came into the meet seeded 32nd with a time of 25.95. Swimming out of Lane 8 in Heat 9 she finished with a time of 25.52 and is seeded 12th in tonight's semi-final.
• Sara Smith from Virginia Tech finished in 11th place with a time of 25.49 swimming out of Lane 8 in Heat 10. She came into the meet seeded 24th with a time of 25.79.
• 100 Fly Champ Christine Magnuson entered the meet seeded 23rd with a time of 25.78. She swam her 50 out of Lane 8 in Heat 11 and finished with a time of 25.41 and is seeded 8th tonight.
• Anne-marie Botek, swimming for the Athens Bulldogs Swim Club, was seeded 22nd with a time of 25.78. Swimming out of Lane 8 in the 12th and final heat Botek went a 25.46 and is seeded 10th this evening.

The last three women to swim out of Lane 1 (Karlee Bispo, Anna Poteete, Andrea Hupman) dropped from 19th, 20th and 21st to 42nd, 32nd and 58th, respectively.

What does this mean? Well to me it means there was a current in this pool which favored the swimmers in Lane 8 and was a disadvantage to the swimmers in Lane 1. Because of the Earth's rotation and gravitational pull it is pretty much impossible to eliminate a pool's current. A pool current usually evens out for races 100 meters and longer because the current will work for you and against you on alternate laps. But the one lap 50 Free does not work this way. The swimmers in Lane 1 were unfortunate to have the current working against them in the race today. It will be interesting to see if the current is reversed this evening and the swimmers on the other side of the pool have the advantage.