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If this is a "slow" pool, then should we toss world records from "fast" pools? There are a lot of other events where factors affecting performance aren't completely controlled. Perhaps comparing records across different times and places is meaningless.

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No, in the same way that all Marathon records are set in only a few marathons which have very favorable conditions.

It's hard to control conditions for a Marathon, but what's to stop some future Olympic host from intentionally creating the fastest pool possible that wouldn't be objected to, just so they could watch "their" Olympics break all the records?

Don’t we want Olympic hosts to create optimal conditions for athletes to demonstrate their skills?

We want Olympic host cities not to go into billions of debt that they'll never make back, as that will make it hard to find good hosts. Paris tried to be prudent tinancially.

That is exactly what happens almost every time... Just not this time

>Perhaps comparing records across different times and places is meaningless.

This is a line of thought that leads to the consideration that sports as are whole are rationally meaningless. That leads to hobbies being meaningless. That leads to emotions and ethics being meaningless.

You can't apply rationality to explain why people care about things. But people do care about it, so it matters.

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