Four Big US Meets Marred By Starting-Wedge Malfunctions

It’s been a wild few weeks of racing across the world, with the World Championships, collegiate conference meets, high school state championships, LSC Championships, and Sectionals meets colliding into a giant whirlpool of racing.

With so many high-profile meets going on, there are lots of common threads, but one that wasn’t on the bingo card was “wedges breaking.”

In at least four of these meets in the same weekend, starting block malfunctions marred competition, leading to bigger questions about safety and whether new blocks are built to withstand the ever-growing power of elite swimmers.

The “biggest” one, literally, came at the Pro Swim Series meet in Westmont in the A-Final, where video captured by SwimSwam’s Coleman Hodges showed all of the blocks flexing hard at the start with the wedge moving behind him. It appeared to impact Dressel’s race, though the 21.84 he swam is still a great result relative to where he’s been the last 18 months.

At the Minnesota Last Chance meet, meanwhile, you can see Wisconsin swimmer Charlie Jones fully kick the wedge off the back of the block on his start.

The same thing happened at NAIA Nationals where Arizona Christian’s Edgar Betancourt lost his wedge in the 200 free prelims. He ultimately went 1:48.40 in that race, with the first 50 split being two seconds slower than in his personal best time. He would later go a lifetime best in the 1650 free for 13th place, demonstrating that it wasn’t an “off meet” for him.

Betancourt says that besides the impact of the push, the surpise impacted his focus. He didn’t ask for a reswim because it was just a “bonus race” for him, but he said that the same lane malfunctioned at least three times during the meet at the Columbus Aquatic Center in Columbus, Georgia.

Three wedge malfunctions in one weekend?? Westmont Pro Swim, NAIA Nationals, Minnesota Last Chance. pic.twitter.com/K6pHvDhJKS

— Braden Keith (@Braden_Keith) March 12, 2024

Above videos: Minnesota Last Chance left, Westmont Pro Swim top right, NAIA Nationals bottom right.

But after I posted my Tweet on Monday, another occurrence popped onto my radar, this time from SwimSwam’s social media manager Jessica Stoddard, who is also a high school coach in Michigan.

“So lane 6 was wonky the whole meet, specifically when someone would move it. They had the college kids helping with the meet from Oakland University but they would have to mess with it all the time when someone would take it off or move it.

“Thankfully I did not have any swimmers in that lane but I saw it move a few times. It was locked in place on the left but the right side would move. They had to get some tools out and the college kids would have to come help with it a lot.”

Stoddard said that she discussed with other coaches, who indicated an issue with lane 4 as well. She had her swimmers put full weight into the wedge before the start so that if there was an issue, it would be identified before the buzzer.

We don’t have any good data on the incidence of this happening, but we have never heard this many reports of issues at this many meets at the same time. The incidents don’t seem to be isolated to any one brand or one specific style either.

It may be time to institute some kind of an updated testing or standards protocol for these blocks, as there seems to be very little accountability, even for championship hosts, in making permanent corrections to these kinds of issues. Perhaps the wedges are not engineered to withstand the repeated power of a modern elite swimmer, but with reswims not really solving the problem, it is time for the industry to inspect the issue at a deeper level and come up with a solution. If the technology to make the wedges work the way they’re intended 100% of the time (the same goes for the backstroke wedges, where we’ve also seen issues), then maybe the technology isn’t ready to be rolled out to the sport yet.