State of Play
So, the old continent gets set to take the plunge at what will be the last international championship to allow shiny suits that have enhanced performance and continue to skew results in the race pool these past two years.
The European short-course championships in Istanbul gets underway in the morning against a backdrop of a 22-month period in which 235 world records came to stand at the helm of a tidal wave of continental, national and personal records that tell a tale of a short-lived, unfair and uneven era in competitive waters. That more records will fall in Istanbul is as predictable as mass on Christmas Day. There have been 140 European records this year, the level of standard-cracking a reflection of the suits being worn.
The next four days in Turkey will be the appetiser for a festive fowl about to be served with a healthy portion of cold turkey: from January 1, 2010, bodysuits, suits made of non-textiles such as polyurethane and thus props to performance will be banned from the race pool. No more props.
The suits, which afforded different swimmers different advantages over different distances and on different strokes, depending on morphology and physiology, changed swimming from a technique-based sport to an equipment-based challenge in which the gap between the extraordinary and good was all but eliminated, certainly much reduced, in many events. For some, time drops have ranked beyond the extraordinary things achieved through foul means, while fast times were achievable, it seemed, whenever, wherever in whatever event, time of season, phase of training, no longer a bar to a best time.
Given that comparison between speedy suit performances is troublesome and comparison between 2009 times and 2010 times impossible, many in Istanbul will be focusing on the only constant: themselves. How to compete with anything but a shrug, a giggle or a burst of tears when your are past and beaten off the podium by swimmers who improve 5 and 10sec over 200 and 400m events to world and European record.
That sort of thing - and more - happened a year ago in Rijeka at the same championships, at which swimmers took to wearing two and up to four suits at a time to increase buoyancy (why else would they do it). The suits crisis in the sport came to a head, led to inquiry, turmoil and ultimately that 168-nation vote in Rome to forbid any suit that pumps up the volume well beyond the noise a swimmer might normally make. The speed at which greats of the past slipped down and out of the all-time rankings was little short of break-neck.
Rijeka served as a wake-up call the timing of which may well, in the long run, be considered as a gift to the sport in the same way that the iceberg 19km long and heading for the Aussie coast today coincides merrily with the gathering of the powerful folk in Copenhagen whose mantra continues to be "let's gather more science and set sensible targets" while other folk watch their homes sinking into the sea. Perhaps the will and urgency is now there to do the right thing.
Meanwhile, media accreditation for the event in Turkey is down, some key media outlets no longer interested in paying to following the circus up close. Omega Live Timing will do just as well when times are somewhat meaningless and finishing orders not all that reliable either. Not good for the sport. The entry among swimmers, while very strong, is also down.
A quarter of all titles will not be defended by the holders, while LEN reports that 88 of the 115 medal winners in Rijeka have returned for more in Istanbul. If times on the clock are somewhat irrelevant (L'Equipe will maintain its policy of not reporting a single silly suit time as a record) then so too will be the finishing order of nations and many of the other measures by which progress and excellence in the sport have traditionally been judged.
Some nations have not bothered to send their best teams this year: Britain's cream will largely bypass Istanbul in favour of racing at the duel with the USA in Manchester next week. Britain has also made the Commonwealth Games, and not the European Championships, its priority event for 2010.
Seven 2009 World Long Course Champions of Rome will race in Istanbul: Federica Pellegrini (ITA/200m and 400m freestyle), Lotte Friis (DEN/800m freestyle), Alessia Filippi (ITA/1,500m freestyle), Nadja Higl (SRB/200m breaststroke), Sarah Sjoestroem (SWE/100m butterfly), Paul Biedermann (GER/200m and 400m freestyle) and Daniel Gyurta (HUN/200m breaststroke).
Slovenia’s Peter Mankoc, LEN notes, will attempt "an amazing feat: his tenth consecutive European Short Course title in the 100m individual medley. He has not been defeated in this event in the Europeans since 2000, a series of victories never seen before."
The event offers a total prize pot of Euros 35,000 for outstanding performances, with 5,000 euro cheques for first, 3,000 for 2nd and 2,000 for 3rd. Omega will award one of its fine watches for the best effort of the day each day.
Good that there should be prize money in these straightened times, though interesting to note that before bodysuits, let alone non-textiles, became the big thing, the prize pot in Europe, seasons 1998-2000 was much bigger than it is now, as winner of the Euro Stars Prize Yana Klochkova would be able to testify after earning the equivalent of about US$100,000 from LEN in 2000 in a competition that linked Euro s/c, Euro l/c and Olympic results. So much for swimming having to fear the future and rue the day.
Swimming has nothing to fear from a return to textile. I had to go through some photos today for a project I'm working on. There were Popov, Van Almsick, Evans, Gross, Darnyi, Egerszegi, Hoogie, Mary T, Barrowman and many more. They looked terrific. I don't recall a single moment of their years as being boring or belonging to a dark old bygone age. Quite the contrary.
The future of the sport is much brighter than what we are about to witness in the dying days of the sad suits saga. Swimmers must do what they must do over the next four days, and some will don the silly suits, some will not. Whatever their decisions they should not expect to be cheered on (alas ... but that is where swimming remains for some just a couple of weeks before a date with deadline) in a false world that has nothing to do with the sport of swimming enjoyed by those greats of the previous paragraph, nothing to do with fairness and the celebration of excellence through talent, hard and smart work and nothing beyond it of an artificial nature.
Over to you Mr Starter for one last blast of the bodysuits that buoy and prop and make less of a sport that will soon, once again, celebrate the aesthetic, athletic and technical.
