BLOOMINGTON, Indiana, August 10. JUST hours after breaking news that stats demonstrate a large bias favoring specific lanes at the FINA World Championships, Dr. Joel Stager and the Counsilman Center had more to say to Swimming World on the subject.
“The issue, we hypothesize, has to do with water returning from the gutters,” Stager told Swimming World. “Turning the pumps off stops the filtration but the issue is really about what to do with the water returning from the gutters, and, of course the water sanitation as well.
The gutters are supposedly designed to keep the pool water as still as possible with no rebound back from the walls during the swims. This would be true for the side walls and the starting end and finishing surfaces as well.
Clearly there appears to have been a flaw somewhere. There is much technology to designing a fast pool up to the standards of a World Championship event.
[My team] is now going back in time to insure that this phenomenon was unique to this particular event. It is possible (though unlikely) that this is a common observation. If we find out this is uncommon and unique to this event, careful consideration and further thought will be required to make sure that the swimmers are not subjected to this bias in the future.
FINA will have to decide what to do with the results as they seem to be somewhat dictated by what lane the swimmers swam in.”
Stager and the Counsilman Center intends on releasing a more thorough analysis soon, and Swimming World will make sure we get this information out to the swimming community as soon as possible.