Building on @FJCC 's comment, this turns your sample data into something usable (HH:MM:SS format).
library(tidyverse)
library(hms)
df <- data.frame(Name = c("Swimmer 1","Swimmer 2", "Swimmer 3"),
Event.1 = c(22.50,25.90,27.56),
Event.2 = c(54.23,"1:01.13",59.54),
Event.3 = c("1:41.12","1:58.13","2:03.15")
)
df %>%
mutate(across(.cols = -Name,
.fns = ~ if_else(!str_detect(., ":"), paste0("00:00:", .), paste0("00:", .))),
across(.cols = -Name,
.fns = parse_hms))
#> Name Event.1 Event.2 Event.3
#> 1 Swimmer 1 00:00:22.50 00:00:54.23 00:01:41.12
#> 2 Swimmer 2 00:00:25.90 00:01:01.13 00:01:58.13
#> 3 Swimmer 3 00:00:27.56 00:00:59.54 00:02:03.15
Created on 2021-05-01 by the reprex package (v2.0.0)