Quote:
Originally Posted by Hack&Lube
Hey so in swimming, what are the advantages to getting the middle versus outside lanes?
In the relay today, they said the french swimmer made the mistake of going toward the line and the American dragged on him like an extra 200 pounds to the finish. What is this? Is this like drafting? How does it work?
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Kind of. The lane ropes that are between each of lanes try to disperse any wave that is created. But it does not get rid of all of it. If a swimmer is to close to the lane rope, it could have little effect in dispersing the wave.
So if you are in the lane next to that swimmer, you can kind of tuck into the wave that is created, and sort of "draft" off him. Thus conserve a bit of energy.
As far as swimming in the middle vs the outside lanes, there really isn't much difference Theoretically, you will have "open" water to swim through, which is faster than choppy water. If you are lane 1 or 8, you do have a wall to deal with, and the water that you disperse hitting the wall and rippling back out into your lane. Again, this is a lot of water, but it can cut into your time (maybe 10ths of a second). Also, if you are in the middle, you can "see" the entire field.
Generally, when the races are set up, lane 4 is the person with the fastest entry time, lane 5 is the second fastest, 3 3rd fastest etc, until you fill out all 8 lanes.
This is also the case for the finals, and semi-finals.