What can make a potentially great pool and swim meet (78-80 degree deep water, wide lanes, great gutter system, good starting blocks, great lighting, large scoreboard, excellent officials, etc.) into a mediocre one? The lane lines.
We recently swam our championships in a new state-of-the-art pool. The only problem was the slack lane lines. The water was very choppy and continued that way throughout the whole race. They served no more purpose than the old “floaties” we used 45 years ago. They were so loose they visibly rose and fell with the waves and had so many horizontal waves they looked like serpents at the surface. The lane lines did not cut the waves but rather rode them. When there was a race with an open lane, the waves pushed the lane lines well into the free lane. Predictably overall times were not as fast as they could have been.
It is not necessary to have the lane lines are tight as a piano wire in order for them to be effective, but tightening them up for a meet is an area that is most often neglected. We work too hard at our craft not to be given every opportunity to swim as fast as the pool allows.
Parents
Former Member
I have had to ask the staff at my pool to tighten the lane ropes twice in the last week. We had one so loose that the old ladies bouncing up and down in the water aerobics class next to it had pushed it over so that the lane was 3/4 its normal width at the middle, and the swimmers in that lane were climbing all over each other and cracking each other's knuckles as they passed. The lanes are already narrow, and what with having to swim around the creatures floating in there, there's not much room to maneuver.
I think I would be rather irritated if that kind of thing happened at a meet.
I have had to ask the staff at my pool to tighten the lane ropes twice in the last week. We had one so loose that the old ladies bouncing up and down in the water aerobics class next to it had pushed it over so that the lane was 3/4 its normal width at the middle, and the swimmers in that lane were climbing all over each other and cracking each other's knuckles as they passed. The lanes are already narrow, and what with having to swim around the creatures floating in there, there's not much room to maneuver.
I think I would be rather irritated if that kind of thing happened at a meet.
