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Comment by tbenst | Hacker News Reader

There is another plausible explanation: there are many people, especially photographers, near the turn for lanes 1-4 but none for 5-8. The start has people on both sides. The rest of the deck is barren. Even after 15 years of competitive swimming, the visual presence of yelling people still had impact on my effort level, while the presence of a stroke & turn judge leads to a tightening of form (ie less dolphin kick in breaststroke).

Edit: of course, this could still be unfair but at least it would be due to human psyche rather than currents

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Another idea: many of the swimmers breathe only to one side (in the races that they breathe at all), so in one direction they would be able to (better) see the faster swimmers towards the center. Another possible psychological factor.

Wouldn't both these factors be constant over multiple events? Why would they impact 2 events out of 5?

It could depend on the particular layout of the pool deck at each event -- some allow people closer than others, etc.

You breath differently for different events?

That's something to check, but seems unlikely. The effect is noticeable in freestyle, where it's kinda hard to DQ, and there's a judge in every lane (iirc), so there's no reason to slow down.

The graphs make the effect look pretty linear, which doesn't fit with my model of sports psych. Shouldn't there also be a slight bump for lanes 7 and 8, because they're also closer to the smaller crowd on that side? Instead it's a straight slope straight across the pool. Is the inspiration boost that comes from moving from lane 2 to lane 1 equivalent to the boost from moving from 8 to 7? I'd expect some inverse square law to apply.

This is what the announcers speculated was happening during Ledecky's 800 freestyle heat, as they noticed she was swimming faster splits in one direction than the other.

It should be easy to check if the results are more or less skewed for back, breast, and fly events, where most swimmers do not favor a particular side.

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