Blame the pandemic. Or the morning finals. But these Olympic swim times are slow.

TOKYO — Other than backstrokers, Olympic swimmers aren’t supposed to go in reverse. But through the first three days of the Tokyo 2020 meet, the overarching themes have been the plethora of slower-than-usual times and the lack of new standards being set. In many events, when compared to the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games, the best swimmers in the world are going backward — which, given the strange set of circumstances, is hardly a surprise.