Editorial
France's Alain Bernard, Olympic 100m free champion, has lent support to the idea of a return to briefs. After getting the touch over world champion Filippo Magnini (ITA) at the Mediterranean Games in Pescara yesterday, Bernard said that he wore the 80% polyurethane X-Glide with a "heavy heart": it was what he had to do given the conditions delivered by FINA for the 13th world championships in Rome and given that he did not wish to race his rivals "with a handicap".
However, he liked Magnini's idea of a return to briefs and echoed the thoughts of the likes of Roland Schoeman and others last year: let's have a heritage meet, at which we line up in briefs and celebrate swimming.
Asked by L'Equipe what he thought of Magnini's view that the sport should return to briefs, Bernard said: "It's a idea. If there could be a meet, not just with Magnini but a group of sprinters, I think that would be a good idea, to promote swimming rather than the suit."
Schoeman, Magnini and Bernard are far from being alone, as we reported here. FINA would be wise to heed the views of such swimmers as it struggles to force monsters of its own making back into the Pandora's Box that it opened with Speedo in February 2008.
It is not hard to work out how FINA made its life more complicated than it needed to have been: while writing rules requires parameters and lines to be drawn, an almost complete "reliance on science" caused FINA to set a trap for itself. FINA president Mustapha Larfaoui continued to refer unwisely to suit "evolution" and science would be the weapon with which FINA would first cut out the nonsense that Europe witnessed in Rijeka last December, before getting round to dealing with the LZR that gave rise to the crisis. By 2011, certainly by 2012, the sport would have become a calm, quiet temple of pure sport in which swimmers' performances could once again be celebrated for what they truly are.
All the while that the bull bleeds to death in the stalls, the suit makers cling to the hope that the new sport of swimming as an equipment-based sport - with all its spriralling costs and growing expenses for swimmers, parents, programmes, coaches and federations - will survive any attempt to revive the technique-based sport that had developed over 100 years and more.
The slow-drip science has been a disaster. Not because the science cannot prove buoyancy and much else but because FINA tried to appease suit makers and in doing so was unable or unwilling, or both, to say to Prof Jan-Anders Manson: "tell us where the line is between this 2007 suit and this (these) 2008 suit(s) and we will set that rule and rid ourselves of a big headache".
Now, on the cusp of what will be a most uncomfortable 13th world championships for the international federation, among others, FINA needs more than ever to pause along the path of its phased solution and consider the issues.
These questions and answers can help FINA on the way to simplicity and clarity of thought:
- 1. Do the 2008-09 generation of fast suits enhance performance beyond the natural capacity of the athlete? YES
- 2. Do the 2008-09 generation of fast suits provide different levels of benefits to different swimmers on different strokes and distances? YES
- 3. Have the world ranking lists been transformed beyond all recognition in the past 17 months? YES
- 4. Does the fact that virtually every national record on the books across the world has been broken - and that many have been broken by margins that fall within a relatively tight percentage margin - reflect the effects of the fast suits? YES
- 5. Has swimming shifted from being a technique-based sport to one that is equipment-based? YES
- 6. Is the sport on the cusp of using equipment capable of biofeedback? YES (it is already there, say some experts)
- 7. Are points 1 to 6 desirable? NO
- 8. Have FINA's independent suit tests provided the answers it needed t prove what we all know (ie, points 1-6) to be the case? NO
- 9. Has Prof Jan-Anders Manson proved that the suits do indeed enhance performance? YES (the data he has for the first few seconds of dive-force at the start of a race prove that all 2008-09 suits behave differently and provide varying levels of advantage: the result is skewed from the start of a race based on equipment, not athlete).
- 10. Is there a point to FINA suit tests at world championships given that the Jaked01 and the Blueseventy Nero Comp, among other suits, are in the water? NO (although it will relieve poolside officials of the impossible responsibility of identifying brands they may never have seen before)
- 11. Can FINA testing ever identify biofeedback and if a 'yes' to that question were ever possible, would you really want to turn the pool deck into a medical laboratory? NO
- 12. Is eternal blanket poolside checking of hundreds of models of suits ultimately cost-effective, necessary or desirable? NO
The question that follows is obvious. How do you make a suit that rids the sport of all of the above complexity and nuisance?
Answer: define a suit profile and define 'textile' in a way that limits the influence of fabrics and 'engineering' that can enhance performance well beyond the natural capacity of the swimmer, serve some more than others and skew the result sheet.
There are significant numbers now favouring briefs and half-jammers for men and hip to shoulder suits for women, while FINA has come to the view that it needs to mirror what happens in anti-doping when it comes to defining "textile". A panel of experts is likely to be called in to work with Prof Manson and this time round the international federation must be clear about what it wants the scientist to deliver: an end to suits that dominate the sport and overshadow the achievements, talent and hard work of swimmers and those working alongside them.
To bite that bullet requires a shift away from the thing that FINA fears: being strict with suit makers. FINA has nothing to fear. One of the key sources of revenue in the sport has been the likes of Speedo, arena, TYR and others. Take two of the longest-standing supporters of the sport of swimming, Speedo and arena. If tonight FINA put out a statement saying 'back to textile briefs from Jan 1, 2010' would those two companies walk away from their core headline business and their raison d'etre? Absolutely not. They would do what they have been doing for many years: making great kit and working with swimmers, coaches, programmes, and investing in the sport.
Sports federations around the world, particularly at continental and global level earn the bulk of their money from broadcast rights. Would RAI walk away from Rome if FINA said: all in briefs and singlets. No. Would NBC walk away if Phelps donned briefs? No. Would the BBC walk away if Adlington wore a cossie? No.
But the image of the sport, the sexiness of the suits: that would all be lost, some cry. Nonsense. There are a fair few folk who feel that a row of black-suited lookalikes and rubberised red and bronze numbers do nothing for swimming apart from add to the complaint of anonymity that some already complain of. There was a time not long ago when you could flick through a pile of photos of swimmers and have a decent expert name just about every swimmer in the shot, no matter how difficult the angle. There are myriad shots out there now in which the suit is sometimes hard to identify and the swimmer's identity might even fly over the head of his or her own mother.
The bodysuits will ultimately lead to far less financial support through the swimming ranks. Indeed, that trend has already taken hold and is hurting a fair few, as contracts are shredded by swimmers who are contracted to wear X but fear loss of world-titles place on their national team if they don't wear Y. Loyalty, long-term relationships and genuine "working with the suit makers" have been abandoned in the rush to find the fastest suit. And suit makers will be left with only one direction to go in: more money spent on research into products that can beat off rivals, make headlines, for better of worse, and in the process make a mockery of the sport. And beyond that, in a world in which doping remains a problem, systematic and otherwise, we all know where things will go once (not if) biofeedback is better understood and open to the harness.
The doomsayers who tell us that swimming will become unpopular if the bodysuit disappears are misguided. Swimming has been among the top three most popular Olympic sports at every Games since it all began and one of the most positive images for the sport has been lost of late: the amazing physique of the swimmer is no longer visible. One of the other key positives lost is central to the whole debate: the credibility of performance. Doping robs sport of its worth, it cheats the victim and cheats the cheat and cheats the sport. The same applies to anything that casts doubt on the performance of the athlete. It is why FINA Rule SW10.7 states that no device (and that is the current suit, regardless of the lie that tells us otherwise) "may aid speed, buoyancy or endurance".
FINA should have stuck to that shield in its guardianship of performance and a sport that has long been about man v man, woman v woman in water, an element that requires understanding, that requires long-term preparation. Bodysuits, with their core stabilising factors, serve at best as artificial props to performance and at worse as apparel that serves some more than others and skews the result sheet. That has happened to such an extent that the likes of L'Equipe has taken an editorial decision for its print edition to ignore world, continental and national records because it knows that they are meaningless.
FINA's short-term answer for Rome is "Availibilty". That, of course is a red herring. Is it the same thing to be an athlete who spends 6 months working closely with a suit maker to develop a product and to be an athlete who turns up in a room in Rome the day before racing and borrows a suit of kind X and is left to experiment on the very occasion when every coach worth his salt will tell you that the aim of preparing the big athlete for the big moment is to leave no stone unturned. Add to the list of things not left unturned the last-minute rush to get your hands on a suit that you never tried before.
No-one should avoid taking a bold step simply out of blind fear of what might happen. But that is not what has happened in swimming. The sport now has sufficient knowledge in its midst to know that much damage has and is being done, that the thread of history is torn, that biofeedback is at the door and that such things are only possible if you cover the body with fabric that can be engineered in a way that enhances human capability.
Why would swimming want to go there? Why would swimming want to take one more step in that direction, knowing that the threat of law suits in the years to come may not only represent the tub-thumping of suit makers who came through the door five minutes ago and now want their "high-tech" way and the money they see in that market. Rather, the lawyer knocking at the door might be a man representing parents who have good reason to believe that the sport of swimming was not such a healthy place to send their offspring after all.
The sport may well have a debate on its hands about cut of suit. There is a large pool of world-class athletes who would be happy to go back to briefs for men and hip to shoulder for women when it comes to all events in which FINA has a say, directly and indirectly. Some prefer jammers, for cultural reasons (the beach scene in parts of the US has a distinctly different feel to that on the Med coast and in Australia, for example).
The answer lies somewhere between a brief and a jammer for men and a hip to shoulder suit for women, in synch with a definition of "textile" that allows the technique-based sport of pre-2008 to swim once more. Time to vote for swimming. Time to vote for skin. Time to vote for athletic performance that can be celebrated without the taint of so-called "technology".
