The best place to draft is directly behind a swimmer,
which you can do in practice and open water swims.
If you do this often in practice
you're likely to irritate who ever swims in front of you.
I think your drawing might be more handy if it were drawn from up above the swimmers.
In big prelim / final type meets in the 50 Free like NCAA's, swimmers often post their best times in the Prelims when there is less turbulence in the pool and less pressure on the race.
Many meets shuffle the final 3 prelim heats so,
the fastest swimmer is in heat 3 lane 4
the second fastest in heat 2 lane 4
the third in heat 1 lane 4
the fourth in heat 3 lane 5 and so on
in the 50 finals, in a 25 yard or meter pool, there's pressure to win combined with the turbulence from the 8 fastest swimmers all in the same pool at once. The swimmers have to turn.
Sprinters go a little deeper and stay under a little longer off the turn to avoid swimming into that wave that follows the swimmers.
Ande
Originally posted by ande
The best place to draft is directly behind a swimmer,
which you can do in practice and open water swims.
Perhaps not true. I think staying approximately at the leading swimmer's hip might be the best place, but not very easy in practice! It is, however, possible in open water events.
Notice how geese fly in a "V" formation rather than one behind the other?
It's been theorized that a swimmer can draft in the wake of someone in the adjacent lane.
I was toying with the notion that the bow wave could actually push someone in the adjacent lane forward, rather than drag them along.
The lane lines are now designed to eat up any turbulence by rotating as passing "waves" come along. It's all just speculation, but apparently not so by the sound of the story you mentioned.
This is what Kirk described, where one swimmer can be dragged into the wake of the other.... catching a free ride, like body surfing.
It's a sneaky trick that triathletes like to play in the open water. Not sure how effective it is.
Valhallan,
An interesting theory. However, if I may make an observation… In your diagram (very nicely done, by the way) you are showing the bow wave being generated by the hand entering the water. I think if you observe swimmers, you will see the wave coming off the head and shoulders, not the hand. Also this diagram is only showing the leading edge of the wave and not the body of the wave as your other diagram depicted. Yea, I know you have real stuff to do in addition to this. Again this is great work, do you do this for a living?
yeah that's it, now think about surfing,
where do you need to place your board or body to catch a ride?
you need to be a little bit in front of the wave you are riding
so I'd suppose it might be best to have the other swimmers bow wave at your chest to mid section.
It's pretty hard to intentionally draft in sprints.
have you ever done sprints with three people in one lane all going at once three across, the outside swimmers go fast and create the wave for the middle swimmer to ride. the middle swimmer needs to be a little ahead of the other 2
ande
1) What role would the lane bouys play?
2) Since the lead swimmer is in front of the other swimmers, woudln't he be travelling too fast , that is too far ahead of the bow wave to have it catch up to him?
the swimmers in the heat were
HEAT 7
lane / place / time / swimmer / yr / school / entry time
1 5 19.65 FARNHAM, DANIEL JR KENTUCKY :19.80
2 6 19.74 ANDERSON, LUKE SR VIRGINIA :19.58
3 4 19.46 CAVIC, MILORAD JR CAL. BERKELEY :19.46
4 2 19.32 DRAGANJA, DUJE SR CAL. BERKELEY :19.22
5 3 19.40 GREVERS, MATT C SO NORTHWESTERN :19.35
6 1 18.74 BOUSQUET, FRED SR AUBURN :19.52
7 8 19.90 BECERRA, CAMILO SR S.M.U. :19.76
8 7 19.89 TSAGKARAKIS,APOSTOL SO ALABAMA :19.84
here's the link to the results
www.ncaasports.com/.../P4
here's the link to friday's heat sheet
www.ncaasports.com/.../DAY1P
NOTE: The time listed in Ande’s post were seed time the final times are listed below. And except for BOUSQUET, the other 7 were within 0.58 seconds of each other.
1 FARNHAM, DANIEL JR KENTUCKY :19.80 - :19.65
2 ANDERSON, LUKE SR VIRGINIA :19.58 - :19.74
3 CAVIC, MILORAD JR CAL. BERKELEY :19.46 - :19.46
4 DRAGANJA, DUJE SR CAL. BERKELEY :19.22 - :19.32
5 GREVERS, MATT C SO NORTHWESTERN :19.35 - :19.40
6 BOUSQUET, FRED SR AUBURN :19.52 - :18.74
7 BECERRA, CAMILO SR S.M.U. :19.76 - :19.90
8 TSAGKARAKIS,APOSTOL SO ALABAMA :19.84 - :19.89
