Impact of course length on swimming performance across age groups and swimming strokes.

Introduction: Swimmers typically achieve faster times in the same distance events in short course (SC) than in long course (LC) due to the higher number of turns in SC; however, the influence of age and sex on performance differences between SC and LC events remains unclear.

Methods: This study aimed to examine the differences in the top 200 seasonal times between SC and LC in the 50, 100 and 200 m backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, freestyle and individual medley events (200 and 400 m). Top 200 Spanish seasonal times of four age groups were considered for both sexes between two seasons. A three-way ANOVA with post-hoc analysis was performed to assess the impact of age, sex, and event type on the time differences between SC and LC.

Results: The results indicated that older swimmers showed greater differences between SC and LC times compared to other age groups in males and females (p < 0.05). In backstroke and breaststroke events, similar patterns were observed with higher differences between SC and LC compared to butterfly and freestyle, especially in 100 m and 200 m events (p < 0.05).

Discussion: These differences should be taken into consideration by coaches and swimmers when establishing differences in performance depending on the pool length.