Bobby Finke and Sven Schwarz swimming at 2024 Summer Olympics.Bobby Finke and Sven Schwarz (Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
Viewers of the 2024 Summer Olympics have been caught off guard by the surprisingly slow finish times in the swimming competitions.

The legendary Michael Phelps may be long retired, and no active swimmer will put on the clinics he performed at the 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016 games. Still, some of the world’s top swimmers have disappointed with their finish times at the 2024 Summer Olympics.

As Henry Bushnell of Yahoo Sports noted, the eight swimmers in the men’s 100-meter breaststroke final all finished with times that wouldn’t place them “better than eighth at the Tokyo Olympics three years ago.”

To put it into perspective, Italy’s Nicolò Martinenghi won the 100-meter breaststroke final with a time of 59.03 seconds. Three years ago, American Caeleb Dressel won gold with a time of 47.02 seconds, and eighth-place finisher Nándor Németh of Hungary finished a 48.10 seconds.

Given how much slower the swimmers have been at the 2024 Summer Olympics compared to the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, some viewers think the explanation is simple…that there’s a “slow pool” conspiracy theory:

 

As Bushnell and several others have pointed out, World Aquatics recommends that pools be three meters deep in Olympic events. The pools at Paris La Défense Arena (the venue for swimming events at the 2024 Summer Olympics) are significantly shallower, with 2.15-meter depths.

What would the Olympics be without another conspiracy theory that is quickly making waves around social media?

2024 Summer Olympics Are Off To A Thrilling Start

Even if folks have been disappointed by the surprisingly slow times of Olympic swimmers, it’s hard to complain about how the rest of the games up to this point.

The men’s and women’s soccer and basketball tournaments are off to exciting starts, for example. We also saw tennis legends Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic deliver a thrilling second-round performance in what is expected to be the last showdown between the two icons. There, Djokovic awaits the winner of Dominik Koepfer vs. Matteo Arnaldi.