Why Do Open-Water Swimmers Follow Competitors Instead of the Shortest Visible Route?
The shortest line is useful only if you can swim it without repeatedly stopping to find it.
Open-water swimmers follow competitors because a route is not only a line drawn between two points. It is a line that must be detected through glare, waves, spray, fatigue, moving bodies, and a field of vision that mostly faces downward. The shortest visible route may be geometrically efficient while being mentally and mechanically expensive to maintain.
A competitor ahead can solve several problems at once. The swimmer becomes a moving directional cue, a tactical signal, a shield from some water resistance, and evidence that the race is still flowing somewhere in front. Following may add metres, yet remove enough sighting, uncertainty, and isolated effort to reduce the total cost.
The shortest line has an execution cost
On a map, the fastest route seems obvious: connect the start, each required buoy, and the finish with the shortest legal lines. In the water, holding those lines requires repeated information. A swimmer must lift the eyes, identify the correct marker, distinguish it from boats or shore objects, estimate drift, and translate the sight into a course correction.
Each forward sighting can disturb body position. The head rises, the hips may fall, stroke rhythm changes, and the swimmer briefly pays more drag for better information. The straightest independent swimmer can therefore spend more energy verifying the route than a slightly less direct swimmer who follows a reliable pack.
| Route choice | Distance on the map | Information required | Possible total cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Independent straight line | Potentially shortest | Frequent buoy checks and drift correction | Low extra distance but higher navigation work |
| Follow a trusted swimmer | May be slightly longer | Continuous competitor tracking plus occasional verification | Less sighting and steadier rhythm |
| Stay inside a pack | Depends on the group’s line | Many nearby movement cues | Energy savings mixed with contact and congestion |
| Follow without checking | Controlled by someone else | Almost none until an error becomes visible | Efficient when correct, costly when wrong |
This creates Socially Outsourced Navigation. The following swimmer does not stop navigating completely. Instead, another athlete performs much of the expensive first interpretation of the course.
The swimmer ahead becomes a moving answer to a question the buoy answers only intermittently.
A person can be easier to track than a buoy
Race buoys are large, but they are not continuously visible. A wave can hide one, sunlight can flatten its contrast, spray can interrupt the view, and several course objects may appear close together. Nearby swimmers generate more immediate signals: splashing feet, bubbles, arms, wake, changes of direction, and the collective movement of a pack.
Those signals are also located at water level, where the swimmer’s attention already operates. A buoy may require a deliberate forward lift. The feet ahead can often be monitored through a smaller adjustment or through the water itself. Following converts an occasional distant landmark into a near, continuous reference.
| Reference | Strength | Weakness | Best use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Course buoy | Defines the official route | Can disappear behind waves or glare | Periodic confirmation |
| Feet ahead | Close and nearly continuous | Reveal movement, not correctness | Maintaining local direction and draft |
| Whole pack | Combines many athletes’ judgments | A shared mistake can look convincing | Reading the dominant race flow |
| Shore landmark | May remain visible above waves | May not align exactly with the course | Supporting orientation between buoy checks |
There is a cognitive advantage as well. Choosing a route alone requires repeated judgments under exertion. Following replaces many small decisions with a simpler task: maintain a useful position relative to the swimmer ahead. That preserves attention for breathing, contact, pace, temperature, and the moment when the pack changes speed.
Smart Tip
Use competitors as navigation aids, not navigation authorities. Track the swimmer ahead for rhythm and position, but confirm the official buoy at planned intervals and after any sudden change in the pack’s direction. If the leader’s line and your own course check disagree, treat the disagreement as information—not as proof that the crowd must be right.
Following can save energy even before navigation is counted
A swimmer behind or slightly beside another athlete can encounter altered water flow. The exact benefit depends on position, spacing, speed, technique, and turbulence, but useful drafting can reduce the effort required to maintain a given pace. The competitor is therefore not merely pointing toward the course; the competitor may also be changing the physical price of moving through it.
Following may preserve a smoother stroke too. Instead of lifting frequently and accelerating after every small directional correction, the swimmer can hold cadence inside a moving stream of information. The gain comes from combining several modest savings: fewer disruptive sights, fewer decisions, fewer corrections, and potentially lower resistance.
| Following benefit | What is reduced | What may improve | Condition |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visual guidance | Forward sighting frequency | Body alignment | The swimmer ahead remains visible |
| Decision relief | Continuous route calculation | Attention and rhythm | Independent checks still occur |
| Drafting | Effort needed for the same pace | Energy available later | Spacing and position are effective |
| Pack pacing | Uncertainty about sustainable speed | Tactical timing | The group matches the swimmer’s ability |
This explains why a longer route can still be the faster personal route. Distance is only one component of race time. If an extra few metres allow a swimmer to remain aligned, drafted, calm, and rhythmically stable, the detour may cost less than the independence required to avoid it.
The group can make an error look like evidence
Following becomes dangerous when movement is mistaken for knowledge. The athlete ahead may have lost sight of the buoy, may be compensating for a current incorrectly, or may be pursuing a tactical goal that does not serve the follower. A leader might move wide to avoid contact, seek a different current, position for a turn, or force rivals into extra distance.
Pack size can strengthen the illusion. If ten swimmers move in the same direction, the eleventh receives powerful social confirmation. Yet those ten may be following one another rather than independently reading the course. The apparent agreement can be a single navigational judgment copied repeatedly.
Good open-water racing therefore uses alternating trust. The swimmer borrows direction from competitors long enough to gain rhythm and efficiency, then checks the course independently before the borrowed assumption becomes an inherited mistake. Near turning buoys, exits, strong currents, or a sudden pack split, the value of personal verification rises sharply.
The fastest route is a negotiated route
The shortest visible line treats the swimmer as if sighting were free, water were still, landmarks were permanent, and no other athletes occupied the course. Real racing contains none of those simplifications. The swimmer chooses between distance, drag, information, uncertainty, contact, and tactical position at the same time.
This is why elite judgment does not ask only, “Which path contains the fewest metres?” It asks, “Which path can I execute at the lowest total cost while remaining able to correct it?” Sometimes that means leaving the pack and swimming directly. Sometimes it means accepting a slightly wider line because the swimmer ahead supplies information, pace, and shelter worth more than the distance surrendered.
Open-water swimmers follow competitors instead of the shortest visible route because the shortest geometric path can be expensive to navigate alone. A competitor offers a continuous reference, reduces disruptive sighting and decision-making, and may provide drafting benefits. But following transfers error as easily as it transfers information, so the strongest tactic is selective dependence: borrow the swimmer’s movement, verify the buoy, and leave when the group’s savings no longer justify its line.
Did you know?
An open-water pack can display information that no single swimmer consciously announces. A collective turn may indicate a newly visible buoy, a change in current, or simple imitation. The movement is valuable, but its cause remains uncertain—which is why experienced swimmers read the pack and the course rather than treating either one as infallible.
Jean Mustafa Kowalski Nakamurason Hernández Obromoviç
Always Local
“I did not lose the course. I joined a route with stronger public support.”
Jean entered the water with one navigational principle: the swimmer in front must know where civilization is. That swimmer followed another swimmer, who followed a third, who was merely avoiding a jellyfish with excellent political instincts. Twelve minutes later the entire group was moving confidently toward a fishing boat that had never applied to become a race buoy. Jean refused to turn back. A route chosen by this many people, he argued, had democratic legitimacy. When the official course boat redirected them, Jean demanded an independent inquiry into why the finish line had failed to follow the majority.
Who is this guy?