Swimming lane lines do more than just keep athletes in their lane – though we all know that’s a valuable feature. In the sport of swimming, competition often comes down to milliseconds, making clean water an essential element in fair competition.
Lane lines might look like simple ropes across a pool, but they play a major role in reducing turbulence and evening the playing field across the whole pool to reduce athletes’ advantages from being in certain lanes.
We’ll explain how this seemingly simple piece of pool equipment can make your facility the place for swimming competitions.
The Science Behind How Swimming Lane Lines Reduce Turbulence
You’ve likely never taken a close look at the lines at your pool, simply viewing them as a standard piece of equipment. But this apparatus has undergone careful engineering to help give competitors an even playing field and achieve their best result.
The Challenge
During competition, you have many swimmers all with the same goal: to displace water behind them as fast as possible. But a pool is a finite space, meaning that the very act of swimming is creating waves and making it more challenging for other competitors.
Over the years, pools have improved to help reduce the energy movement, which is one reason why we can continuously see athletes setting world records.
Competition pools are uniquely designed to quell as many waves as possible. Pool depth is not arbitrary. Deeper pools allow for greater wave dampening as the wave is diminishes as it heads to the bottom of the pool, reducing how much of that wave is reflected from the bottom to return to the surface where competition happens.
The trough-like sides of a competition pool are also there to help consume the energy swimmers create. But the waves will still travel from the middle of the pool outward to the sides, giving athletes in the center an advantage.
That’s where swimming lane lines come in to help reduce the waves from spreading from lane to lane.
Swim Lane Line Hydrodynamics
Engineers have spent time perfecting the hydrodynamic efficiency pool lane lines provide. Modern equipment reduces drag and turbulence for the athlete thanks to wave-suppression discs throughout the lane line. You likely thought those were all about ensuring the lane lines stay afloat. And while they do serve that purpose, they also help reduce waves that other swimmers create to give each athlete clean water.
The discs feature many holes and are independent of one another, allowing them to flow freely to absorb water energy from other swimmers.
Cleaner, smoother water helps athletes glide, improving their stroke efficiency and therefore their advantage in the water.
The Importance of Materials in Lane Lines
In the early days of swim competitions, swim lane lines were made from simple ropes. But as engineering improved, composite materials have replaced those ropes to provide greater durability and buoyancy.
Competitor Swim selects materials that will withstand heavy use while maintaining their well-engineered shape and avoid breakdown from pool chemicals.
Research Shows Lane Lines Are Leveling Competition
Researchers conducted tests to better understand how lane positioning might give athletes an advantage. For years, people believed that athletes near the wall had large disadvantages compared to athletes in the middle lanes of a pool due to waves.
The study found that while athletes do generate waves that put others at a disadvantage, being on the ends of the pool is no worse than being in the middle when the pool features modern lane lines that absorb those waves.
Instead, all athletes are at a disadvantage when they are behind the pack because that’s where the water is being displaced. Swimmers at the front of the race naturally have cleaner water, dealing with fewer waves. All athletes behind the leader will deal with that leader’s waves to some degree, even with a well-engineered pool and swim lane lines.
The researchers found that it’s less common for leaders in swimming races to change for that reason, but it is common to see changes in second and third place for athletes.
Where to Find Well-engineered Lane Lines
Competitor Swim is a leader in well-engineered lane lines designed to be long-lasting, thanks to the new LifeSpan+ formula. Despite the harsh environments pools subject lane lines to, you’ll see material quality and integrity with vibrant pigments that stand up to the elements. Find a dealer now to offer your competitors the highest-quality experience regardless of their lane.
