  In swimming competitions, the center lane is considered to be the best lane.
The main objective of this study is to discuss the validity of the assertion,
"good swimmers should be placed in the center lanes because these lanes has
advantage." This study extracts the (positive) lane bias in the center lanes
from many records utilizing statistical hypothesis tests. The data is collected
from nationwide competitions of Japan over 10 years. The data set contains more
than 5900 swimmers and 56000 records. No significant evidence was obtained on
the lane advantage of the center lanes.
