Differences between the best time in 25m vs. 50m in the 200m individual medley in relation to gender

Abstract

Background: Competitive swimming takes place in both short (25 m) and long (50 m) pools. Swimmers usually have better times in the short pool due to the greater number of turns, so there is a correction factor to convert short pool times to equivalent long pool times. However, the differences between short and long pool times according to gender in the style events are not yet known.
Objective: The main objective of this study is to analyse the differences between the best performance in a 200 freestyle event in short and long pool as a function of sex.
Method: For this purpose, the best times achieved in short and long pool in the 200 freestyle event by 100 top Spanish national swimmers in two seasons were selected.
Results: Data analysis was carried out using a Student's t-test for independent samples. The results show that in both sexes the best performance corresponds to the one achieved in the short pool (p<0.001). In turn, male swimmers show greater differences compared to females in the 200 individual medley between short and long pool (p<0.05).
Conclusions: According to these results, we suggest the use of a different correction factor to be able to transform the times between short and long pool according to sex for the 200 individual medley.
Keywords: swimming, performance, short pool, long pool.