A Blog From The North
All is fair in love and suit wars, said the Brits on the eve of a USA Vs E-Stars European select Duel in The Pool in Manchester that marks Michael Phelps's racing debut in Britain.
"To have the greatest sportsperson of all time here is fantastic, I hope some of us can stand up and beat him," said James Goddard, a man with an eye on Phelps should they clash in the 200m medley on Saturday. Entries will not be confirmed until 1pm tomorrow. "I hope we grit our teeth enough to beat him."
To beat or not to beat Phelps in textile jammers. That is the question at the last major international to allow the use of non-textile apparel before it is banned on January 1, 2010 (there will be some shiny action at the Salnikov Cup in St Petersburg over the weekend too).
Appropriate that we should be back in Manchester, where it all got underway in earnest back in April 2008 as Speedo launched its LZR Racer to the wider public beyond the pool and on the best possible platform: a world s/c championships.
On the eve of those championships, I wrote this. Much water and many an inflated time under the bridge. This northern English city that washed the LZR Racer into the consciousness of the wider world will now wash the polyurethane booster suits and the bodysuit with them out of a sport about to be revived.
But temptation is strong yet just this side of the sell-by date : the chance to tell your grandchild that you once beat Phelps. But then you'd have to tell the child the truth and nothing but the whole truth, surely? "If I was to beat Michael Phelps I wouldn't have to mention the suit to my grandchild, I'd just say I'd beaten him," said Goddard with a grin.
Teammates Rebecca Adlington, double Olympic champion, Liam Tancock and Gemma Spofforth, world champions, Lizzie Simmonds and Fran Halsall, European junior champions and London 2012 smart tracked uber-talents will all will wear the 2010-compliant Speedo LZR, cut off above the knee and made of textile.
And you, James? Good-humoured laughter all-round as he replied. "Right, you guys all wearing 2010 [raucous laughter]... I'm not sure yet. I'm undecided. I want to beat Michael Phelps."
Goddard, perhaps, has his eye on the 200 metres medley, the last individual event at the sell-out event at Manchester Aquatics Centre before the meet closes with relays tomorrow. No contest, surely. Phelps, Olympic champion, was 2.89sec faster than Goddard when both wore the 50 per cent polyurethane Speedo LZR Racer that started the suit wars in February last year. Before that, in textile suits, 5.15sec split the pair at their best. But the duel is swum in a short-course, 25 metres pool, a rare environment for Phelps. On paper, Goddard, in a 100 per cent polysuit, is 0.24sec faster than Phelps’s best time. They sit at No11 and No12 all-time, which reflects some of the suit and some of the fact that Phelps rarely races short-course and when he does he does so in the winter when his arms are like clay from the heavy duty work he has endured since his early teens back in Baltimore with coach Bob Bowman.
A similar scenario is to be found in the 200m butterfly: Olympic and world champion Phelps is a league ahead of Britain's Michael Rock but last week Rock raced in a shiny suit and is now 0.94sec faster than the American ever was in a 25m pool. Rock's record had stood to James Hickman, a five-times world s/c champion and now a Speedo rep who joked "I hate the suits now" - now that the world record he had held finds itself demoted from all-time top 3 to No 17 in just 18 months and is second-best to Rock, up at 11 among 14 times that relied on a shiny suit.
Hickman's time was exceptional for its time but we will never be able to report "who's time was not improved on in Britain for 20 years" as we might once have done. As it was, the mark stood for 11 years and was sunk by a touch of plastic fantastic on the skin of a swimmer whose hard work and terrific improvement live in the shadow of a suit that makes his achievements impossible to measure in a meaningful way.
Would Goddard, coached by Sean Kelly at Stockport down the road from the Duel venue, not acknowledge that he would not have beaten Phelps, he would have beaten Phelps in a suit?
"Oh, would that make a difference for you?" he asked, the tongue of a man who must have been reading SwimNews rooted firmly in cheek. I hasten to add at this point that Goddard is one of the most talented, naturally gifted swimmers I have ever seen. He was also helped greatly by suits - just how much in relation to others around him we will never know.
Which is one of the things that has made a mockery of a sport that at times over the past two years has resembled a kindergarten scene in which the motto over the door is "win at any cost regardless of how you do it, as long as FINA (who we hate, by the way) says it is ok". We recall 168 nations voting to ban the suits in July and under normal circumstances the new rules would have been enforced 60 days later. The extension was to grant suit makers time to adjust. Some swimmers used the chance to adjust. Some not, yet.
The voice of the tempted, and the justification that was delivered to a backdrop of good-hunoured giggling all round, came from Goddard: "It's a team event so when each of us steps up it has to be individual, you have to stand up for yourself and give it your best shot to win the race. If you've got a better shot of getting more points when you've got a newer suit on, should we take it or not?" pondered Goddard.
"If you want to do what's best for the team maybe you should put a faster suit on to get more points. The suits are going to change next year anyway so we'll all see what happens in the future.
"The most important thing is to race fast and hard and try to beat the Americans and try to get points for our team. If for some of us that means wearing a faster suit then why not?"
Goddard refused to see the hollowness of unfair advantage. He is not alone, of course: we don't yet know who will wear what - but we do know that many will wear what it takes and will do so with encouragement from coaches just as keen to preserve pride.
Goddard added: "If I've touched the wall before him then I've beaten him. He is the greatest swimmer of all time. It's not just a suit that is going to beat Michael Phelps, it's going to have be an extraordinary swim. The suit can't do it alone." No, but the suit was what got so many past him on the world cup last month and what may get some past him in Manchester too, and was what placed some ahead of others in 2008 and 2009 when a different result would surely have unfolded in many a race at national and international level the world over. And that's before we start on counting all the state money and sponsorship garnered for teams that boasted a billion records as evidence that swimming in their countries had never been so strong. A false picture.
Such issues are not the responsibility of the likes of Goddard, of course. Tancock, who will wear textile when racing Aaron Peirsol and Co, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with his teammate when he reflected the resignation of many to wearing the shiny suits when backs are up against polyurethane walls: "We are about racing as a team here and sometimes you need to step up for the team and you need to decide on the suits for that, so I think there could be issues around that, but I think it is going to be decided by the powers-that-be." He added: "All is fair in love and war."
And in sport when guardians get it woefully wrong. But not in fair sport, of course, where there are anti-doping rules and rules that create standardised competition conditions. Tancock pointed out that the suits were within the rules. At best, yes, at worst, a rotten interpretation of rules that in 2007-08 already disallowed the use of "any device that may aid speed, buoyancy or endurance". The Congress vote in Rome was largely about correcting the bad interpretation of that rule.
And that is a happy state of affairs for the majority of swimmers gathered in Manchester, even among those who will wear a shiny suit for the last time. Some, like Adlington, noted that no-one will miss the big and painful squeeze, others cited fairness and the right to race without the shadow of artificial props. Technology would always be there, Adlington noted. It was those who set rules to find the right framework and in 2010 swimming would move on and be all the better for having done so, she suggested.
Phelps is already there and is unlikely to be swayed into a shiny number even for relays. He is unlikely to need to be: on paper the US looks set to dominate. The job still needed to be done, Phelps noted, before reflecting on events at the world cup last month, when last he swam a man of textile among poly coated sharks: "The funniest event to swim in the World Cup was the 100m freestyle. I stood up and I was in a little jammer and everybody else was in a full body suit. I was looking round and thought this probably looks kind of funny."
He noted: "At this point it doesn't matter, a race is a race. I get up and swim and I know for the time being I'm as prepared as I can be and whatever happens here happens. It's not really what happens now that really matters, it's what happens at the end of my career that matters, in London 2012.
"The goals I have for London are very high and they are going to be very challenging," he said. “I think there is something there that excites me and I know what I want to achieve and if I achieve those then I can look back and say I've done everything in the sport that I wanted to do."
What he has done so far earned him 4th place in an AP poll in the US on the greatest athlete of all-time, behind Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong and Roger Federer. The man who was punished for drink-driving post Athens 2004 and for holding a bong to his face at a private party post-Beijing, offered a sympathetic word for a golfer fallen from grace.
"He (Woods) is going through a hard time right now. It can't be easy but I just wish him the best for himself and his family. At a time like this you see who your actual friends are." As do wives, and children perhaps, some might say.
"I'd be the first to admit I've made a lot of mistakes both in and out of the pool," said Phelps.
"But of the mistakes I've made I've never made the same mistake again. I've become a much stronger person and I've helped other people not make the same mistakes."
Phelps may not say so himself but he has earned and won the sincere admiration of his peers. Goddard led the charge by ignoring the US poll and calling Phelps "the greatest athlete ever across all sports", a man who had raised the level of swimming across the world. A man indeed whose efforts transcended suits.
Goddard's comments also transcended suits. "Swimming is a great sport. It is exciting. With Michael Phelps here, the greatest sportsperson of all-time, it's fantastic. To stand up with people like that ... its why we train and why we race. It's going to be exciting."
He was among many swimmers who believed that skills, suits aside, were key to short-course success. Short-course was "pretty much a different sport", said Goddard. Underwater skills needed to be much sharper, starts and turns more critical, while the meet format - no heats or semis meant "just standing up and giving it your best in one race and not holding anything back". Tancock added: "If you don't get the skills right, you can really pay."
On advantages beyond suit talk, Aaron Peirsol and Gemma Spofforth were among those who believed that anyone who had raced in college head to heads and faced multiple events in tight sessions on a regular basis would have an edge. Phelps may well be the exception to that, of course: his route to outer orbit took a different trajectory.
Phelps has swum at several Duels with Australia, however, and loves the head-to-head arena. He agreed that the meet would be "exciting" for spectators. Great fun too, without doubt: a meet at which even the use of suits, and the timing of the use of suits, is likely to be amusing as teams seek to claw back deficits and hold on to advantages on the points table. Five for the win, three for 2nd, 1 for third, nothing for the rest, and winner takes all (7 points) in relays.
One thing, though that organisers of future duels should consider if they truly want a Ryder Cup of swimming: Europeans will not come to the party if they think it is a one-suit-brand show. Brits posed in their newlook LZRs here today (and very nice they all looked too - they looked liked athletes, tone and muscle in view) and then attended an E-Stars press conferences with no Germans and no Italians. The pool had all teams of Europe training apart. The United States is a far stronger entity, of course, that The united states of Europe.
A plausible explanation was offered that no media from those nations was present and therefore it would not have worked too well to have a mixed team facing a media only interested in Brits and Phelps. Understandable, and understandable too that Britain should wish to promote its sponsor and that the sponsor should want that to be the case, especially when the image being portrayed goes so very far to setting right what has been wrong for too long. Speedo-2010 clad swimmers splash the pages of the British media the morning after. No bad thing at all.
The Duel, though, long-term, will need to be more inclusive for all in future if it is to woo wider Europe.
Of course, there are two sides to every story, and organisers had a hell of a time getting this fledging duel off the ground. Posters boast Pellegrini (off noshing at a posh dinner, without Berlusconi and his bruises we assume) and Lochte (injured), while Jackson is missing through illness, Paul Biedermann is in St Petersburg at the meet that kept Russia away, a clash of sponsors kept France at bay (regardless of what other explanations were given) and Britta Steffen's mistimed venture Down Under led her to cancel her winter race season.
It is not easy to put on a meet like the one that gets underway in Manchester tomorrow, and those who have got this far deserve praise and encouragement. The USA Vs Europe duel could be a jewel in the sport's crown.
For Britain this week, the duel, to be televised at home by the BBC and in the US by NBC, is a great platform for the sport of swimming. Adlington, with a nod to the crowd of around 2,500 (on ticket sales), said: "I was lucky enough to be in Manchetser 2008 (world short-course championships) - that was so brilliant. It's rare that we get everyone cheering for us... it makes such a difference."
Tancock added: "A home meet is always pretty exciting. It [manchester 2008] was pretty incredible ... swimmers were getting out of the pool and getting their name chanted. That, to me, was the first [taste] of what it will be like in London [2012]. We will take it into our training and carry it through to London."
