Michael Phelps may believe that 'a pool is a pool,' as he told one interviewer this week, but for those who designed the Olympic facility in London where he won his 18th gold medal, nothing could be further from the truth.

Swimmers set nine world records in London even after the full-body swim suits that enhanced performances at the 2008 Beijing Games were banned. Once the controversial suits were dropped in 2009, many predicted it would be a decade before swimming would begin to rewrite its record books. Instead, it took just three years, thanks in part to a pool engineered to reduce drag and absorb the waves swimmers create as effectively as any pool in the world.

From the swimming pool, to the velodrome, to the gymnastics venue and the running track, London has produced a series of performances that few expected ahead of the events, when everything from chilly weather to rule changes were supposed to hinder competitors from setting new standards. Much of that is due to facilities engineered to enhanceperformance and satisfy the desires of sports fans who yearn to see athletes achieve what none have done before. Every sport's federation has its rules and specifications for the design of the competition venues, but within those rules there are opportunities to innovate.

Ian Crockford, projectmanager for the Olympic Delivery Authority, the public body responsible for developing and building the new venues, said creating the fastest pool possible was his aim from the beginning. The key, he said, was a depth of three meters, an overlapping duct system at the pool's edges that all but eliminates waves, and two circulation systems, one at the bottom of the pool and one near the surface.

At race time, operators turned off the upper circulationsystem to still the water. Even though only eight swimmers raced at one time, there were 10 lanes, meaning no swimmer was too close to the wall. And the walls aren't actually walls in the sense that most people who swim laps in ordinary pools are used to. The visible side of the Olympic pool is really just a barrier, and its top edge is 2 inches below the surface of the water. The water then falls into a trough and a recycle duct that recirculates it. The design prevents the wall from sending any ripples back into the center of the pool, allowing swimmers at least the ones in front to swim an entire race through practically flat water.

'We're obviously very happy that we're getting world records,' Crockford said. 'The sport is progressive, the sport science behind it is progressive. You want to give the athletes the right environment to help them achieve their goals.' A crowd of 8,500 screaming fans within feet of the pool deck and several thousand more in another grandstand helped, too. 'It's an environment where they were really able to feel the public,' said Cornel Marculescu, the executivedirector of FINA, the sport's governing body, who tried to play down the impact of the pool's technology on the new records.

But Rebecca Soni, who set the world record twice in the 200 meter breast stroke on consecutive nights, said the pool undoubtedly played a role. 'It was just an all-around great pool and experience,' she said.

At the North Greenwich arena, site of the gymnastics competition, officials have said the equipment, from the floor to the vaults, is springier than it was a decade ago, and that has changed the nature of the competition. 'The athletes are being asked to do more skills than they ever have been, so the apparatus has had to evolve in the same way,' said Steve Penny, chief executive of USA Gymnastics, the national federation. 'It's different foam. It's more springs, it's everything.' The extra springs make landings safer, but they also allow competitors such as Gabrielle Douglas, aka 'the Flying Squirrel,' fly and tumble as gymnasts have never flown and tumbled before.

Gilbert Felli, the IOC's executivedirector for the Olympic Games, said designing facilities that allow athletes to go faster is part of the DNA of international sports federations.

'The aim of sport is to win medals and to beat world records,' he said. 'The aim of the organizations is to create as much of a possibility that records will be broken. You have to design so you can get the venue and the surfaces so that they will be the best possible for the athlete to perform.'

In some cases, he said, this isn't possible, such as when speed skating takes place at sea level in the Winter Olympics, which slows down the skaters because the ice isn't as dry. But whenever the opportunity is available, 'international federations love to provide the best tool for an athlete to break records,' he said.

Organizers certainly pulled that off at the Olympic Velodrome, nicknamed 'The Pringle' for the curved shape of its roof. In track cycling, speed is influenced by everything from track geometry to the temperature and air pressure inside the arena. The London velodrome was expressly designed to deliver the world's fastest circuit.

It may have exceeded expectations. The velodrome delivered 10 world records during the games. The British team has found the venue particularly to its liking: British riders broke world or Olympic records in all six timed events at the games.

The 250-meter track has a superfast surface made from 56 kilometers of Siberian pine wood. While the track itself is the same length as past Olympic tracks, the finish line has been moved roughly five meters from its usual location to provide a longer home straight for sprinters. That gives riders more time to accelerate off the banked turns, where speed decreases.

The steepest parts of the circuit, where the angle reaches 42 degrees, is similar to past tracks, but designers say the transitions from the banked turns into the straightaways are smoother to give team pursuit riders an easier and faster transition from straight sections to the banked areas of the track. Each international track varies slightly in terms of the balance between the length of the straights and radius of the bankings.

In addition, climate control experts were consulted to create optimal conditions for track cycling. They settled on 82 degrees Fahrenheit. The challenge was figuring out how to maintain that temperature with fans streaming in and out of the facility.

Heating under the floor was the first step, though it didn't end up being necessary. But there also is no air conditioning at the velodrome and fans entering the arena from outside are held in a glass corridor until the doors are closed, at which point they are ushered through an inner door leading into the velodrome. The elaborate entry system prevents the cool air from outside from seeping in. The heat keeps the air thin and more aerodynamic for cyclists, producing faster lap times.

Even the drizzly British weather has contributed to the blistering times. Air pressure has a major impact on speed in track cycling and low pressure allows riders to punch through the air more easily, meaning rain outside is actually conducive to faster times. Think of the weatherman who talks about a 'low-pressure system moving in' when rain and dampness are on the way. London has gotten lucky with the weather during the past two weeks, but in British terms that means clouds and brief periods of showers on most days.

The running track at the Olympic Stadium created its first record Thursday with Kenya's David Rudisha in the 800-meter. Rudisha took the gold and clocked in at 1:40.91, slicing a fraction from his previous world record of 1:41.01, set in 2010. Other runners have set personal bests. Seven of the eight men's 100-meter sprinters finished in under 10 seconds, led by Usain Bolt's 9.62. Jamaican champion Veronica Campbell-Brown ran a season-best in the 200 Tuesday night. In a semifinal heat of the women's 100-meter hurdles, five of the eight competitors ran a season-best, or set a personal or national record.

Mondo, the Italian company that designed the track, produced a softer, bouncier surface and installed an eight millimeter layer of diamond-shaped ridges below the top layer, which is five millimeters thick. Previously, the lower layer was made up of square pieces, but those pieces only absorbed shock of the foot forwards and backwards, not laterally. 'This was quite a stupid thing because most running steps are as much as 45 degrees sideways,' said Joe Hoekstra, projectmanager for London 2012. By angling pieces of the subsurface, the track provided shock deflection both laterally and backward and forwards, propelling and stabilizing runners all at once. Even the roof of the stadium is designed to reduce wind on the track.

'It's as fast a track as we've been on,' said Stephen Francis, the Jamaican coach.