The Weird but Real Connection Between Taylor Swift and the Lack of World Records at the Paris Olympics

If you, like me, have done nothing but watch the Olympics this week, you’ve probably noticed that there is a serious lack of world records being broken. That’s extremely unusual, especially given the amount of hype over a few of the “clash of the titans” races held this weekend. Believe it or not, this involves Taylor Swift.

So, long story short, Paris intended to build a fancy state-of-the-art aquatics center to host all of the water games in the Olympics. However, the governing body of swimming, Fina, dictates that all competitive swimming events must have a minimum of 15,000 seats for spectators. The new aquatics center ran over budget, and rather than continue to hemorrhage money, a decision was made.

The new aquatics center would be capped at 5,000 seats, and would host diving, synchronized swimming, and some water polo; and the swimmers would have to race elsewhere. Guess where they chose? A rugby arena! Yes, that’s right, the swimmers are racing in a temporary structure that recently hosted Taylor Swift and her Eras Tour, May 9 – 12. Then, it was closed for business and rebuilt into a swimming arena.

The plan to switch to the rugby arena happened sometime in 2020, yet all of the plans were hypothetical until they finally started to build the thing after the Swift concert, just months away from the competition. Now stay with me: A lot has been written about how this pool is significantly shallower than other Olympic pools. It’s 2.1 meters, which at the time the plans were approved was within the guidelines of what was an acceptable depth, although 3 meters was the recommended depth. The required depth is now 2.5 meters. (Fun fact, Beijing’s pool was 10 meters deep, which I find personally terrifying because that’s almost 100 feet deep. Too much water!)

Now there is some argument going on in the swimming community (a.k.a. the Reddit threads I read, and the people I hear yelling on the street) that the shallower the pool, the slower the swim will be. That’s because of physics, and forgive me because I did very bad in science, but the easiest way to explain it is: Go ask someone else The shallower the pool, the less space there is for the water being displaced by swimmers going very fast, to go, so it ends up slowing everyone down.

There’s some credence to this because so far, no world records have been set in the pool. (As of Wednesday afternoon, only one world record has been broken at the Paris games, in archery.) That’s practically unheard of. To contrast, the Abyss-depth pool in Beijing broke 25 world records and probably made contact with the aliens who live at the bottom of the ocean, too.

So look, the plan has always been 2.1 meters, despite every authority in the sport saying “But really, 3 meters is preferred.” That said, when you have less than 2 months to build the damn thing because Taylor Swift is there with the most successful tour of all time, you just power through with your plans, even if they’re not particularly, you know, good. I guess?!

You may be asking why at some point between 2020 and the Eras tour coming through, did they not rethink their plans. According to The Washington Post:

There are several reasons for the change, including structural concerns at the stadium; the desire to avoid losing additional ticketed seating (the higher up you build the pool, the more rows of lower-bowl seats must be removed); and the fact artistic swimming, which actually does require a depth of three meters, is at another venue.

Instead of vague concerns about the structure which aren’t explained, I think we should focus on the lack of seats (a.k.a. sales) because tickets top out at over $1,000 for medal ceremonies at swimming. So, money.

Now, look, I don’t think building the arena sooner would have helped anything because it seems they were committed to whatever this plan was. Additionally, Swift has licensed “…Ready For It?” for the Olympics and the U.S. women’s gymnastics team to use in their promos, so she’s off the hook. She’s done her part. None of this is on her, and even if she had her tour come through a month earlier, we’d still be in this situation. If anything, blame me because I’m the one who brought her up in the first place and then did a bait and switch and made you get really in the weeds on swimming pool depths. Sorry!