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The pool in question was obviously built when swim distances were based on yards.
Ah, thanks, I just thought it would be easier for mental arithmetic to think in feet. Perhaps it's just that the thought of always having to swim lengths in multiples of 3 to get to a round figure worries me. :)
I have noted all the different lengths of London lidos before but wasn't sufficiently aware that there were 33 1/3 metre pools, too. I thought they'd all been built before the EU destroyed our native British culture with its (the EU's) dastardly metric system.
Oliver Schick
No. My local pool is 33+1/3m long (as is the one I grew swimming in 30+ years ago). There's no metric equivalent of a 1/3m so that argument falls away. It's purely so that you swim a specific distance in a whole number of lengths. Most pools built nowadays are 25m, 33+1/3m or 50m for this very reason. Other lengths are generally due to space constraints.
The pool in question was obviously built when swim distances were based on yards.