Comment: I missed this a few days ago while out wassailing. No surprise that the best piece Swimming World has come up with for a long time should come from John Lohn, a fine writer who knows his swimmers and swimming and is much underused in the reporting and writing of the sport.
Swimming World, which has done fabulous work down the years, has at times of confusion in the past two years reminded me a little of The Independent newspaper back in the last century. The paper decided that royal stories were not worth a light and that republicanism and meritocracy were the way to go. The paper simply stopped reporting anything, as a rigid policy, related to royalty. Then someone called Princess Diana, HRH, died in a tunnel in Paris. Tricky that one.
So it has been with suits and Swimming World, which has allowed comment-moderated debate to rage (no harm there) and deal to some extent with reporting the news in context, while the reporters largely reported every passing meet as if it were business as usual in the race pool. All the while, SW commentators saw fit to make and allow comment (and all comment is welcome, I hasten to add) on SwimNews coverage of suits. SW did a better job, from time to time, on its Morning Show, but an apparent inability to face the matter head on out of fear that an athlete here or an athlete there might take umbrage was, at times, excruciating.
The reader comments on the end of Lohn's article are incisive. Good debate on issues done and decided. Scotswim, whoever you are, great points, as are those of David Rieder and others. No prizes for guessing where I rest my case but I say this of the notion that shiny suits created a more level playing field: never has a more untrue word been aired in swimming since Dr Kipke was tub-thumping on an anti-doping platform while sticking needles into teenagers backsides back home.
The history of swimming is awash with people who took doping in order to bring themselves up to and beyond the level of those who were truly the best at what they were doing. So, if it be grand to don a suit that can make everyone the same, tighten the gap, pump up the show, why not just handle out some needles full of artificial juice marked Made in Kreischa (and for the record, no-one ever said suits were the same as doping, what was written was that they had performance-enhancing traits that led down a parallel track of falsehood to a similar end: an unfair result).
And sticking with a German theme on a lighter note, the idea that the suits only worked for Paul Biedermann is perverse and down right wrong. Biedermann mastered the suit on his skin in Rome after having stuck with textile between Feb 2008 and June 2009, and the man was as honest on his suit as the days in Rome were long, as was his coach Frank Embacher. The commenting "swimmer" at the end of John's piece should try to get out more, or at least read more. There are legion examples from 2008 and 2009 of swimmers who came from well down the pile to the very helm of their sport. And some of those, at least, will slide back down the pile in 2010 because the suit they wore and will wear no longer contributed greatly to their elevation. Mercifully for some younger athletes, they will have time to adjust and will excel for reasons other than their suit in the years ahead.
That same "swimmer" wedded to his suit and taking a club to Lohn, seems to feel that only swimmers who wore the suits (and very many of those cannot wait for 2010 to arrive and have gone on record the world over to say just that) should be allowed an opinion. So, let us all tell Popov, Evans, Gould, Rose, Hackett, Hoogie, you name it, to shut up. Perhaps not! It is the height of childishness in debate to suggest that only schoolchildren should have the only say in what books are bought for the school, so to speak.
One other thing struck me as particularly daft, and I fully realise that this will anger some but I shall state it nonetheless:
Have a poll among swimmers? While I am all for swimmers having their say (not the final say on many issues, however, for their job, until retirement, is to race, for which they should be able to expect reward), I remind those who have an ear to listen that athletes are not always the best people to ask. Here is an example - and there are a fair number of similar things out there, some with greater scientific samples - of something that ought to urge caution among those crying for the voice of athletes to be the only thing that counts:
- In 1995, U.S. physician Bob Goldman asked two questions of American Olympians or aspiring Olympians:
- a) You are offered a banned performance-enhancing substance, with two guarantees:
- 1) You will not be caught;
- 2) You will win.
- Would you take the substance?
159 athletes said yes, three said no.
- b) You are offered a banned performance-enhancing substance that comes with two guarantees:
- 1) You will not be caught;
- 2) You will win every competition you enter for the next five years and then you will die from the side effects of the substance.
- Would you take it?
More than half of the respondents said yes.
Now, for the angry and bitter out there who may wish to twist meaning, I am not suggesting that most swimmers would willingly take doping. I am merely suggesting that balance is the key and the fallibility of human nature ought to be factored in for fairness to thrive. Of course swimmers should have a say but they should also expect that say to be challenged, and by their peers too and swimmers from bygone eras whose opinions are just as relevant.
Mention in the comments on John Lohn's piece is made of "taking the sport back 10 years". Get over yourselves, young pups and masters who need gussets, garters and sporting corsets to feel that they're turning the clock back in a way that nature would not allow them to do. Ten years ago we had the start of Thorpe and Hackett, we had VDH, we had Popov and Klochkova, O'Neill, Hyman, Heyns, Kovacs and young Jones on the up and many more contributing to the thrill. We had great racing and a great sport. It will be so again. It did not take a suit to make it so. It took great athletes with what have often been rounded lives and great personalities and it took coaches with lore to tell. The sport lives on people, not suits.
In an agency report from Istanbul I read the following: "Credited with helping set 238 world records (the reporter has counted the 4x50m relays from 2009 but not 2008 for that tally) since February 2008, the era of the suit will come to a close in Istanbul, where they were first seen in 1999 during the same competition."
Not true on two counts: Bodysuits were first seen in 1998, courtesy of adidas, and worn by Paul Palmer and Sue Rolph from Britain before Thorpey had got the chance; and, more importantly, those suits were textile and cannot be likened to the suits of 2008 and 2009, the non-textile nature of which was a huge part of the trick, hence the difference between the LZR Racer 2008 and the arena X-Glide of 2009 (50% trickery, 100% trickery - pretty simple).
Christmas is upon us. The clock ticks. The debate that made enemies of people who in other circumstances would be the best of friends through the love of a great sport is tired. Time for the record of what came to pass to be framed free of the fibs inherent in some of the comments that swirl yet in the death throes of a dragon that tormented swimming for a while. The statistics of 2008-09 compared to all that went before in the sport cannot help but hoist the shiny sword of truth over the trembling neck of the shiny suit, whether in regard to individuals or tidal waves of performances viewed en masse.
Many swimmers are already steeped in a time of renewal, even many of those still racing in the silly suits having moved on in their minds and management of the new and fairer environment they face. Whatever side anyone has taken in an argument that ended in July 2009 at the height of silly season in the race pool, the relevance of it all will soon, mercifully for swimming, sink into the murky depths of inflated times just as the talent, work, determination, dedication and lore of swimmers, coaches, their teams and backers rise to the surface of the lake once more. And ... breathe ...
