Post-Olympic Swimming Results vs. Seed Analysis

One of the best parts of Olympic swimming is the combination of events with relatively easy-to-guess winners alongside other events that have wide-open fields where many swimmers could take home a gold medal. The swimming portion of the Olympics has been finished for about a week now, so let’s take a dive back into the entry lists to see which events stuck true to their initial rankings, and which ones deviated from the original top eight. 

There are three designations next to a swimmer’s name under the Olympic entry lists: Olympic Qualifying Time (OQT), Olympic Consideration Time (OCT), and Universality (U). From World Aquatics: “OQTs correspond to the time achieved by the 14th place in the respective preliminary heats of the event in Tokyo 2020. All OCTs were derived by adding 0.5% to the OQT time standard.” Read more about the Paris qualifying standards here. Universality swimmers are typically not bound by any sort of qualification times, but are allowed to swim in the Olympics due to their country not reaching the OQT or OCT in any event. According to olympics.com, “Universality Places are a lifeline to athletes from underrepresented National Olympic Committees. They are designed to increase the diversity of participating nations across the sports programme of the Olympic Games.” While it’s unlikely we’ll see any universality swimmers on the podium in the near future, not much else truly embodies the Olympic spirit than seeing nearly every nation compete together in the pool. 

The Olympic Consideration Time is the rarest designation seen in the entry sheets, as it has last priority in terms of qualifying. If there are still open spots (considering the 852-athlete quota set by World Aquatics) after all of the OQT and Universality swimmers have been entered, then the next fastest OCT times will be entered until the quota is reached. Looking at this year’s games, all the swimmers that qualified for a final had achieved an OQT in their event. While we didn’t see any swimmers with the OCT qualify for an individual final, it’s still interesting to see the lower-seeded swimmers succeeding in the pool. 

Through taking the initial rankings of all the swimmers in their respective finals and averaging them, the lowest possible value an event can have is 4.500. This is assuming that all swimmers, ranked first through eighth, all made the final, with no swimmers outside the initial top eight earning a lane. While many events were close to this, we only saw it happen in one event: the women’s 200 freestyle. (Ariarne Titmus, Mollie O’Callaghan, Siobhan Haughey, Yang Junxuan, Barbora Seemanova, Claire Weinstein, Mary-Sophie Harvey, and Erika Fairweather were the top eight seeds going into the Olympics, and they all made an appearance in the final of this event). That being said, the closer an event is to 4.500, the closer the event sticks to its entries. The higher the average number, the more swimmers from outside the top eight qualified for the final. Here are the lists and graphs of the average seeds from the entry lists compared with the Olympic finals:

The women’s events stuck truer to the original top-eight rankings than the men’s did, and the 100 freestyle, 200 freestyle, and 100 backstroke of both genders appeared to be very safe bets for everyone’s Pick ‘Ems. Beyond those events, there doesn’t seem to be any immediately visible correlation between the event and the swimmers who qualify. The men’s events seemed to be more variable than the women’s, with the highest-average men’s event (200 fly) coming in at an 8.875, nearly a full rank higher than the averaged 7.750 seen in the women’s 100 breaststroke. 

FUN FACTS

On the women’s side, all top-seeded (and, interestingly enough, all fourth-seeded) swimmers going into the Olympics made the final in their event. On the men’s side, top seeds Sam Short (800 Free) and Qin Haiyang (200 Breast) both missed the finals. Both sides saw over 10 second- and third-seeded swimmers make finals.  

Lowest seeds to win:

Tatjana Smith: Women’s 100 breaststroke, Gold Medal (seeded 5th)

• Tatjana Smith was seeded fifth in the women’s 100 breaststroke, over a second off of top-seeded Tang Qianting. The reigning silver medalist in this event and the gold medalist in the 200 breaststroke swam just under her seed time to take the gold medal, bettering her entry by four places. 

Kristof Milak: Men’s 100 butterfly, Gold Medal (seeded 6th)

• Milak, in a similar boat to Smith, was the silver medalist in the 100 butterfly in Tokyo and the gold medalist in the 200. While the distance between first and sixth was less than a second, Milak beat the five swimmers seeded ahead of him in a field of 40 swimmers to take home the gold. 

Lowest seeds to medal:

Apostolos Christou: Men’s 200 backstroke, Silver Medal (seeded 18th)

• Christou improved by a whopping 16 places from his seed time, dropping a second and a half en route to his silver medal. 

Ilya Kharun: Men’s 100 butterfly, Bronze Medal (seeded 13th)

• Ilya Kharun completed the bronze-medal double with the 100 and 200 butterfly last week. The specialist dropped over half a second from his seed time of 51.09, eclipsing 10 swimmers to place himself on the podium in the 100 distance. 

Emma Weyant: Women’s 400 IM, Bronze Medal (seeded 8th)

• Weyant took off another half-second from her seed time in the 400 IM, placing third against a very tight field to win her second Olympic medal in the 400 IM. 

Meg Harris: Women’s 50 freestyle, Silver Medal (seeded 8th)

• Harris swam a lifetime best in the finals of the 50 freestyle, cracking under the 24.00 second mark to win a silver medal. She was seeded eighth coming into this year’s games.  

Lowest seeds to make a final:

• David Aubry, Men’s 800 freestyle: seeded 25th
• Neza Klancar, Women’s 50 freestyle: seeded 23rd
• Kregor Zirk, Men’s 200 butterfly: seeded 21st
• Naoki Mizunuma, Men’s 100 butterfly: seeded 20th
• Alina Zmushka, Women’s 100 breaststroke: seeded 20th
• Fei Liwei, Men’s 400 freestyle: seeded 19th
• Apostolos Christou, Men’s 200 backstroke: seeded 18th
• Anastasia Shkurdai, Women’s 200 backstroke: seeded 18th
• Leonardo Deplano, Men’s 50 freestyle: seeded 18th
• Kuzey Tuncelli, Men’s 1500 freestyle: seeded 17th
• Ella Ramsay, Women’s 200 IM: seeded 17th