I haven't been watching but I presume its a 50m pool. So the 100M would just have one turn, and so the swimmers would only be going through the "wall of chop" t

I haven't been watching but I presume its a 50m pool. So the 100M would just have one turn, and so the swimmers would only be going through the "wall of chop" they generate once. In other words I'd expect shorter distance events to be less affected by pool depth and whatever turbulence effect that has. Also free might be less affected vs something like breaststroke due to the angle of the body in the water. (Without good technique breaststroke is really draggy, even amateurs can notice)