These, with the new swim suits, are really effecting times at the Beijing Olympics.
How do wave-dissipating pools dissipate waves?
The pool in Beijing is 50% deeper than normal (3 meters instead of 2) and has a non-used lane on either side, so simply there is more water in there to dissipate turbulence.
The gutters on either side of the pool are apparently also designed to absorb wave force and not bounce it back out. Also, the lane divider things supposedly direct wave energy downwards, into the pool, rather than bounding it back as waves on the surface. The articles I’ve read (I can only find one example at the moment) haven’t been technical, and don’t explain these two points beyond this.
While the pool is deeper then normal, FINA requires the pool to be at least 2 meters deep, I don’t know why they say it has extra lanes on the outside. To the best of my knowledge all Olympic pools are 50x25 meters. The lane lines are 8 feet apart, almost 2.5 meters, this allows 10 lanes total. I can’t think of any pools that don’t have the extra two lanes on the outside, at least not large competition pools like this one.
I don’t know much about the lane lines, but I know they’ve had similar lane lines for a long time, or at least they claim to get rid of the turbulence. I don’t know much about the rest of the pool though.
I do think that training has really changed in the last few years. I know the butterfly has changed a slight bit as my coach has told me to change it up in the last year or so. Phelps has also started weight training, which he wasn’t doing a couple of years ago. I know when I started working out when I was training for a big meet it really helped out. Plus I’m sure that being at the Olympics and having to keep up with the guy next to you helps out a bit as well.