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reat news to ban the suits. Not only were average swimmers stripping legewnds from the past of great WRs but the fast times with suits on have masked possible drug abuse in the sport. I dont belive 20% of top swimmers have asthma for a start and they use the inhalers to help breathe better. I suspect we will see an increase in positives leading up to 2012 now the suits are finished.

phillipellis - How could the suits possibly be masking drugs? All athletes are screened - it's not as though WADA will let them off screening because they have a fancy suit on. Furthermore, the main treatments for asthma are salbutamol and steroids - neither of which would improve performance without asthma.

I would not be at all surprised to see this change again in a couple of years time to allow these suits again.

It seems odd that you use Michael Phelps as an example of a swimmer who will now not be using the super suits given I thought he'd stopped using them about a year ago (or possibly had never used them).

Paul Biederman was the man who benefitted from the suits, not Michael Phelps. Regardless, banning them was clearly the easy way out. There's no reason other than cost that they couldn't have been worn by everyone - and really, when you earn as much as some of them do, there is no excuse for not buying one, least of all an ethical reason. They were within the rules and rightly so.

Hopefully they'll realise their mistake and make the suits compulsory from now on.

A couple of things. Suits have always moved forwards. This was just a bigger leap than most, but things would have calmed down, records would not have continued to be broken at the same rate. What FINA may have done is to prevent a generation of swimmers from breaking world records.

And Phelps DID wear a LZR - he was the Speedo 'poster boy' for them and went on wearing them. For some reason, maybe contractual, he didn't opt for the upgrade and used the media storm to his advantage when he lost.

I think it is a backwards step to ban them. It's all progress. Average swimmers wouldn't beat good swimmer if they were both wearing the same type of suit. And it's quite easy for that to be achieved.

The old legends were wearing something like cotton pyjamas and so it's only obvious that today's "average" swimmers might beat them.

So why drag the sport back into the past? Every other sport is embracing new materials and technology.

And what about the records set with the suit? Will they stand?

2/3

BulletMonkey - I disagree, I think its a brave decision to ban the suits and one I'd agree with entirely. Whilst the top swimmers earn a packet, most don't and whilst some countries can afford these suits, many can't.

Swimming has had to make a decision about what sort of sport it wants to be: one like formula one, in which the winner will be the best driver from the two or three teams who are able to afford and design the best equipment, or one like track athletics in which the technology used is tightly controlled so that the winner is the best prepared and the most athletic.

This is the response from the grass roots part of the sport and unfortunately when you have suits costing 250 GBP+, lasting a few meets, it gives the "haves" a significant advantage.
Swimming is not a cheap sport to paticipate in with training fees, ASA membership, Regional membership, county membership, gala fees, accomodation when competing at regional and national galas etc... to have another cost in order to ensure equality of your son/daughter will in the end drive out the talented who can't compete financially.

Surely they should swim naked.

That is only fair?

GL

In short term, this will create controversy because of much fewer WR to be made in next few years.

But as a context of sports, this decision is only fair. Afterall, recent WR is mostly made by the suits, not swimmer (people may argue on this point, but noone can tell for sure if the current WR is technically faster than previous holder if they were wearing same suit)

I just dont like the sports becoming based on "who can make the best swimsuits". Yes, players are making every effort in training session, but those effort are overshadowed by the progress of swimsuits techinique.

I thought the purpose of a race was to see who could could go fastest, not who has the best bit of kit. At least in F1 there is a constructors championship which highlights the fact that the person who becomes world champion might not be the best driver, but just happens to be in the fastest car.

Swimming needs to create a more level playing field so we can find out who is the fastest swimmer. Look to motorsport and you see the solution even though it doesn't work that well. Apply it to swimming and you could have regulations which specify the technical standards of kit permissable for each standard of race. Imagine you had 5 levels of kit ranging from very expensive hi-tech to cheap supermarket. Events would be matched with the standard of kit. eg National Championships and above would have the top grade, elite club and regional competition would have grade 2 etc. In general a swimmer might be expected to race in no more than 2 levels of kit in a season. As the specs of the kit would be known before the race all competitors would have an opportunity to obtain the kit. The spec of the top grade could be tweaked up each year if that is what swimmers and manufacturers wanted, but again this would be within limits. This way we will know who is the fastest swimmer and the manufacturers would have just enough for their ad campaigns.

Good riddance to them!

It's just as much cheating as drug-taking.

Interesting idea Boilerbill, but it would mean some swimmers having to have five levels of kit - presumably club championships, which almost all swimmers take part in, would be a level 1?

Midland 20, it's only cheating when it's against the rules. If you have been involved in swimming for any length of time you will know that kit has always evolved, one of the big leaps forward being the introduction of Lycra in the 70s. And let's not forget goggles, they haven't been around forever. If you want to get mad, get mad at the rule makers who introduce changes just to make times faster - underwater fly kick on breaststroke, turning on the front on backstroke for two - and then kowtow to the media storm when the kit producers do the same.