And having a better view on the competition in the neighboring lanes (just like in track running). There's even some applied psychology here, that competing swimmers 'push' each other to higher speeds because they can see each other more clearly (and 'feel' the push from someone just lagging).

Putting the faster qualifiers in the middle lanes is also a better view for the spectators on both sides of the pool.

Interesting to see the 400m and 200m track and field athletes starting to favor outside lanes.

That's because of the drag in the inner curves. There the outer lanes are faster.

Supposedly, that's why the fastest qualifiers get the middle lanes.

The rich get richer

If you put them in the slow lanes then there would be an incentive to place poorly in qualifying rounds.

Don't the qualifying rounds determine whether you get to compete or not? So if someone intentionally slowed down, even a fraction of a second, there's a chance they wouldn't get to compete at all.

Yeah, but it would create weird incentives where e.g. if two people are way ahead of the pack, one of them wants to finish after the other. So do they just wait until the rest of the field catches up and then try to trick the other guy into hitting the wall first?

Better to just avoid it by keeping incentives aligned with winning your qualifying heat.

Or they could randomize the order?

Good point. Some events do in fact do that.

But then there is no incentive to try to win the qualifiers.

Why not give them a choice of Lane?

Everyone would choose the middle lanes anyway.

Draw slips from a hat

Tactically this may not be valid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQNY5htc9_k

When the US 4x100m swim relay beat France about three olympics ago (the one where Phelps won all those medals), France was comprehensively faster man-for-man aside from Phelps in that relay.

The US won because Jason Lezak, the anchor, swam in the wake of the final French swimmer (a draft basically) and was able to save energy and pass him.

If the US and French had been separated by a lane, the US would have lost.

If you are slightly faster (and especially if you go out faster) than your #2 rival, you want to have a lap between you to deny them the draft.

Randomize the lane assignments.

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.

> 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 the finals itself and avoids perverse incentives in the qualification rounds.

I get it with motor racing like F1 because of the linear nature of the track, plus during the qualification laps they have a clear track and are not jockeying for position.

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...

The system isn't there to be fair, it's there to be entertaining.

If you wanted a fair system, there would be no qualifiers and no simultaneous racing. You would just have everyone compete at home and mail in times whenever they have a new record. Like eg speedrunning for computer games is done today, or like any world records for fastest time are done.

> I get it with motor racing like F1 because of the linear nature of the track, plus during the qualification laps they have a clear track and are not jockeying for position.

Track conditions can change throughout qualifying so that the later qualifiers might have a slightly faster or slower track.

You already get rewarded for better performance in the heat by being allowed to participate in the race!

Yes...that's what I'm saying.

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.

Random assignment should make it easy to detect, depending on the size of the effect

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...>

Yes, those on the outside will have choppier waters as the water bounces off the sides of the pools. The modern competition pools do a pretty good job of reducing this effect, but it is always there.

Could probably increase fairness by doubling the width and throwing away the last few lanes (leaving them empty). But would that incentivize the edges? I don't know.

They do throw away one lane on each side already, FYI (in addition to positioning competitors to minimize influence on results, as others discussed)

It's not supposed to be fair (as in equal) though, lane assignment goes inside-to-out based on qualifying times. The easiest way to avoid the chop is to get out in front and stay there.

Makes sense.

> The easiest way to avoid the chop is to get out in front and stay there.

While that's technically true, the drafting effect actually means that being a bit more than a body length behind the swimmer next to you is beneficial to you. That's another part of the philosophy why the fastest swimmers are assigned the center lanes, and the slowest the outermost lanes, to balance out the choppiness of being by the sides with creating a potential for drafting. Of course intentionally drafting is not a strategy that will win you the race, especially in short events, but in longer events it can be important to keep pace with the swimmer next to you while they need to expend more energy and you draft off of them either with the intention to eventually pass them or to stay ahead of the swimmers on your outside.

They put the most favoured (by entry times or heat results) swimmers in the center lanes, slower ones out from there. You've probably noticed that you usually see the race leaders in the middle, and you hardly ever see the edges winning.

In cases where there are less swimmers than lanes, they leave the edge lanes empty.

They could get almost perfect fairness in any kind of Olypmic-style race by just letting competitors all use exactly the same lane, one after another.

In earlier times, measuring equipment wasn't accurate enough, so races had to be done in parallel with people starting at the same time. Today, that's no longer necessary. In fact, people racing one after another is exactly how we hand out world records.

Of course, the Olympics and other events like them aren't there to find the best athletes in some absolute sense; these events are there to entertain spectators. Otherwise, swimmers could just do time trials at home and mail in times.

And spectators like people racing each other at the same time.

There's something to be said for racing _someone_ and not just the clock, for the swimmers/racers, not even thinking about the audience.

Additionally, it would make races take 8x to 10x amount of time.

> There's something to be said for racing _someone_ and not just the clock, for the swimmers/racers, not even thinking about the audience.

Yes, it's more fun.

> Additionally, it would make races take 8x to 10x amount of time.

Well, that's not a problem, they can run different events in parallel. Eg swimming and running shouldn't interfere at all with each other.

It's not just about the fun; having someone next to you can make you push a little harder.

They already run events in parallel.

Alternately: a swimming pool on the interior of a cylinder - rotated to provide artificial gravity.

Plus, you'd have a big advantage later if you start fast and gain a few meters from your two neighbors. Their waves would slow you down. Gliding is much faster than fighting through rough waters.