2024 Olympic Games Race Data Breakdown: Men’s 1500m Freestyle

The French Swimming Federation (Fédération Française de Natation) recently released a booklet with data analysis on every event at the Paris Olympics. This data-rich guide lists information like swimmers’ 25-meter splits, time spent underwater, total strokes, and more in a table with a breakdown of each finalist’s information. Over the next few days, I’ll be picking some of my favorite events from the Olympics and analyzing the data from the fastest swimmers in the world.

This data goldmine, entirely in French, consists of four distinct sections: Round (divisions), Nagées parties (swam parts of the race), Parties without nagées (Parts of the race that are not swum, including start, underwater and finish) and Movements (Total number of strokes and so on).

REVIEW

Bobby Finke ended the competition with a bang, breaking Sun Yang’s long-standing world record of 14:31.02 from the 2012 Olympics. Finke touched the wall in 14:30.67, becoming the first man to go under 14:31 and winning the U.S. men’s only individual gold medal in the midnight hour. Longtime endurance mogul Gregorio Paltrinieri won his fifth Olympic medal and finished second behind Finke. Daniel Wiffen took home Ireland’s men’s second medal in the pool. The swimmers finished the season as follows:

1. Bobby FinkeUnited States (WR) – 14:30.67
2. Gregorio PaltrinieriItaly – 14:34.55
3. Daniel WiffenIreland – 14:39.63
4. David Bethlehem, Hungary – 14:40.91
5. Kuzey Tuncelli, Türkiye – 14:41.22
6. Ahmed Jaouadi, Tunisia – 14:43.35
7. David AubryFrance – 14:44.66
8. Damien JolyFrance – 14:52.61

ROUND (SPLIT)

I don’t want to bore you with all 240 50m times from the field (30×50 for each of the eight swimmers), so here is a summary of each swimmer’s fastest, slowest, and average times. Due to the long-distance nature of this event, this article will be a little different than the sprint articles I’ve summarized previously.

Fastest 100:

1. Jaouadi: 55.18 (closing price 100)
2. Finke: 55.34 (closing price 100)
3. Bethlehem: 55.51 (closing price 100)
4. Paltrinieri: 56.02 (opening 100)
5. Tuncelli: 56.08 (closing price 100)
6. Wiffen: 56.36 (opening 100)
7. Aubry: 57.06 (opening 100)
8. Joly: 57.61 (opening 100)

Slowest 100:

1. Finches: 58.76 (500-600)
2. Paltrinieri: 58.93 (100-200)
3. Wiffen: 59.31 (900-1000)
4. Bethlehem: 59.34 (1000-1100)
5. Aubry: 59.43 (300-400)
6. Tuncelli: 59.55 (200-300)
7. Joly: 1:00.16 (300-400)
8. Jaouadi: 1:00.42 (1200-1300)

This data is interesting because Ahmed Jaouadi had both the fastest 100 km leg and the slowest of the field. He had a faster final 100 km leg than Bobby Finke did something we very rarely see, but he was also significantly more inconsistent than Finke. Both Frenchmen rode their fastest 100m early in their race and their slowest 100m during the fourth 100m.

Average division per 100 (in seconds):

1. Finke: 58.04
2. Paltrinieri: 58,30
3. Wiffen: 58.64
4. Bethlehem: 58.73
5. Tuncelli: 58.75
6. Jaouadi: 58.89
7. Aubrie: 58.98
8. Joly: 59.51

Average 100 (ignoring the first and last 100):

1. Finke: 58.45
2. Paltrinieri: 58,50
3. Wiffen: 58.83
4. Bethlehem: 59.13
5. Tuncelli: 59.15
6. Aubrie: 59.25
7. Jaouadi: 59.33
8. Joly: 59.74

Standard deviation of 100 sections during the middle 1300 meters:

The standard deviation indicates how far a swimmer was, on average, from their average 100-second split time. The lower the number, the more consistent the swimmer’s times were. The higher the number, the more erratic.

1. Aubrie: 0.09
2. Bethlehem: 0.18
3. Paltrinieri: 0.20
4. Finke/Tuncelli: 0.24
5. .
6. Jolie: 0.29
7. Wiffen: 0.36
8. Jaouadi: 0.57

David Aubry was by far the most consistent of the field. There was only 0.29 seconds between his fastest 100-meter time and his slowest in the middle 1300 meters. Ahmed Jaouadi, who had a difference of 2.07 seconds between his fastest and slowest times, had the largest standard deviation in his times.

The graphs below show the general trends between each swimmer’s 100m intermediate heats. Note that these largely form an arc shape, with the fastest 100s occurring at the beginning and end of the races.

The following graph shows the podium swimmers’ split times compared to the others. Note that these graphs never overlap.

The chart below shows Aubry’s consistency alongside Kuzey Tuncelli, who was about average with his splits, and Ahmed Jaouadi, who had a lot more variation.

PARTIES NAGEES (PARTS OF THE RACE SWAM)

This section reports the swimmers’ times while “swimming,” taking into account everything except the start, the turn at each wall, and the finish. The ranking below is their total time spent “swimming.”

1. Finke: 13:09.81
2. Aubrey: 13:18.68
3. Bethlehem: 13:21.59
4. Wiffen: 13:29.26
5. Tuncelli: 13:30.89
6. Paltrinieri: 13:31.94
7. Joly: 13:36.10
8. Jaouadi: 13:36.28

More on this in the next section.

PARTIES NOT NAGEES (PARTS OF THE RACE NOT TO SWIM)

This section highlights the start, turn and finish of the race, including reaction times, time spent underwater and distance covered underwater, to name a few. The following leaderboard is the total distance covered underwater:

1. Aubry: 204.3 metres
2. Finke: 198.0 meters
3. Bethlehem: 191.8 meters
4. Joly: 181.6 meters
5. Wiffen: 176.0 meters
6. Jaouadi: 171.7 meters
7. Tuncelli: 169.8 meters
8. Paltrinieri: 163.3 metres

Time underwater:

1. Aubrie: 1:25.98
2. Finke: 1:20.86
3. Bethlehem: 1:19.32
4. Joly: 1:16.51
5. Wiffen: 1:10.37
6. Tuncelli: 1:10.33
7. Jaouadi: 1:07.07
8. Paltrinieri: 1:02.61

A look at this ranking makes it clear once again that there is not just one way to win a race. Finke spent almost 35 meters more underwater than Paltrinieri and spent 18 seconds more underwater. David Aubry spent by far the most time and distance underwater, but still finished in seventh place. Paltrinieri, on the other hand, spent by far the most the least time and distance underwater, but came second.

Each swimmer had their own race strategy and executed it in a way that worked for them. I’m sure if Paltrinieri and Aubry changed their race plans for their underwater events, times would be drastically different.

MOVEMENTS (STROKE)

In this final section, the total number of strokes each swimmer completed during the race was modeled. The following ranking shows the number of strokes from most to fewest.

1. Bethlehem: 1236
2. Tuncelli: 1167
3. Paltrinieri: 1136
4. Jolie: 1028
5. Finches: 1009
6. Jaouadi: 983
7. Wiffen: 965
8. Aubrieux: 906

Here too, the racing strategy is crucial. David Betlehem needed 330 strokes more than David Aubry did so, but the gap between the two was only four seconds. Bobby Finke lasted only 19 strokes less than Damien Jolybut the American beat the Frenchman by 22 seconds. The key here is to maximize punch efficiency, whereby Bobby Finke is on a different level. He didn’t need to have the fastest turnover rate or the best distance per shot; finding the happy medium was perfect for him in the long run and allowed him to break the world record.

The previous data breakdowns can be found in the following articles:

The full breakdown can be found in the brochure here.