The Olympic pool in Rio may have given some athletes an edge

A group of swimming researchers say the structure of the Olympic pool have may given unfair advantages to athletes who swam in higher-numbered lanes, according to The Wall Street Journal. Joel Stager, a director of Indiana University’s Counsilman Center for the Science of Swimming, says he and his team have run calculations that suggest swimmers who swam in the 50-meter freestyle in lanes five through eight received a slight speed boost. Meanwhile, those in lanes one through four suffered about a half-percent drag on their times. In swimming, even tiny fractions of a second can keep participants from the podium.

According to Stager, the issue stems from a design flaw in these types of world-class pools, which were constructed by a...