Abstract
Background: Swim performance can be divided into several key parts including start, swim stroke, turn/s and finish. The turns are the largest part of the total race time right after clean swimming.
In the short course 1500 m of freestyle, the turns - 5 m in and 5 m out - represent 39.33% of the total distance and race time. Objective: The aim of this study was to find out whether the achieved turn times can significantly affect the final performance in the swimming race or not.
Methods: We analysed all (59) turn times of four finalists of the 1500 m of freestyle final event at the 2018 World Championships in swimming (short course) in Hangzhou. Among the chosen competitors were all three medallists and one Czech swimmer.
Using the t-test for independent samples (p = 0.05), we observed the statistical significance of the difference in values between competitors. Moreover, we compared the results in terms of practical significance - time differences in measured values.
Results: Between Czech swimmer (5.27 +- 0.14) and medallists on 1st-3rd place a significant difference (p < 0.001) was found at the achieved time at the turn sections (5.00 +- 0.06; 5.09 +- 0.09; 5.01 +- 0.05). We observed that the Czech competitor (556.56 s) was faster than the competitor in the third place and the competitor in the second place (549.43 s) was faster than the competitor in the first place (553.88 s) during pure swimming.
Conclusions: The results show that turn sections might have a significant influence on the final swim performance and overall ranking in the race, even at the top international level.