Got curious about Olympic pool depths last week after watching swimming trials on TV. Saw some pools looking deeper than others and went down a rabbit hole searching online. Started simple – just typed “how deep are Olympic pools” into my browser late one night.
Big mistake. Instant confusion. Found sites saying 2 meters minimum, others claiming 3 meters, some even mentioning 1.8 meters. Felt totally lost. Decided next morning to go straight to the horse’s mouth – official Olympic rules. Took forever digging through the International Swimming Federation (FINA) website, scrolling through dense PDFs of their Facilities Rules. My eyes nearly glazed over.
Finally struck gold in Section FR 2 – Swimming Pools. Printed it out and grabbed my highlighter. Here’s the official scoop laid bare:
- Minimum depth: Absolutely must be 2.0 meters (that’s roughly 6 feet 7 inches). No arguments.
- Recommended depth: They really prefer it to be 3.0 meters (close to 10 feet) to help reduce waves bouncing around.
- What about the walls?: Even the ends need to be at least 1.35 meters deep at the turning points.
Got my kitchen scale involved too – weighed my empty water bottle, then filled it from my tap and weighed it again. Did the math (mass difference divided by density of water, volume popped out) just to visualize how much water we’re talking about filling one of those pools. Let me tell you, picturing millions of bottles was wild. Confirmed why keeping that water super flat is such a big deal for race times.
The whole journey? Super simple question, surprisingly hard to find a straight answer initially. All that digging just to land on a clear 2 meters minimum.
