I would be much less skeptical of FINA's decision to ban the high-tech suits if the major stated reasons weren't

A. the old swimmers are pissed off that their records are being broken
B. this will make the out-of-shape fatties even lazier

Convincing stuff, swimming world. Especially the part about how squeezing into one of these suits makes all body types the same. Because somehow there are swimmers at the elite level who aren't in shape, and if they put on these new suits OMG they will beat Michael Phelps. Except they haven't. The only American athlete that seems to have benefited from the new technology who perhaps otherwise wouldn't be as successful is Dara Torres, and no one (even me) would argue that she doesn't work her ass off. Other than that, if you make sure that everyone has the same type of suit, the better swimmers still win. Often the more talented swimmers are the more ripped looking ones, but I'd venture a guess they aren't always, even before the advent of these suits. What's really going on here is that retired competitors don't like to see equipment progress, and they also think the younguns look weird. Old baseball geezers were complaining when the glove got bigger than the player's hand. Hell, they were complaining when players got gloves. A swimsuit, as long as it doesn't have technology that actually changes the swimmer's body in some way, is just a piece of gear. The argument that it does change a swimmer's body and thus is akin to a PED is so couched in the athletic version of obesity rhetoric (lazy slackers without washboard abs cannot be allowed to succeed!) that it's extremely hard to take seriously. Conversations about improved sports technology and the limits of acceptability need to take place, but they need to be better than this.

View Original Post at ftlouie.typepad.com/womensports

• Filed Under:  
• Swim, Sports, SportsPLUS, OpEd, Aquatic

• Tags:
• Swimming
• Other Sports
• FINA
• swimsuits