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Suits: The Next Chapter From Speedo
Nov 30, 2011 - Craig Lord
The lessons learnt from the use of non-textile booster suits, banned at the end of 2009 after 255 world records fell in 23 months, will be unveiled in London today when the FastSkin3 makes its public debut.
Speedo has kept under close wraps the race apparel in which most Americans, Australians, Brits and leading swimmers from a number of countries will chase honours at London 2012. The manufacturer’s “back to the future” competition kit - the name of which makes the link with Melbourne 2007 and the pre-shiny suits era - will be revealed in East London, not far from the Aquatics Centre, where the next chapter in Olympic history will be written.
Expect clever appliance of science in a return to helping swimmers bypass obstacles to speed; do not expect claims on speed, buoyancy and endurance, nor 19 world records before Santa dons a different kind of red suit fit for speed.
FINA, the international federation, has approved the news apparel under rules and guidelines that forbid a suit from “aiding speed, buoyancy or endurance”.
The race to find the best hydrodynamic shape for elite swimmers resumes from where it left off at the World Championships in Melbourne in March 2007, just before suits were described as “doping on a hanger” by Alberto Castagnetti, the Italian head coach who passed away in late 2009.
Although 108 world records fell in 2008, largely to swimmers wearing the polyurethane-panelled Speedo LZR racer, and 168 were sunk in 2009, mainly by swimmers wearing full polyurethane and neoprene bodysuits that buoyed performance and altered angles of natural buoyancy in athletes, just seven world marks - only two of those in the Olympic 50-metre pool - have fallen since the ban on bodysuits and non-textiles came into force on January 1, 2010.
Just as it did on suits, FINA is sticking to a decision taken on world records, even though some standards are set to survive for many years to come and will surely leave at least a generation in some events knowing that a global mark will remain beyond their reach. FINA has also turned a blind eye to the fact that swimmers are now racing in altered conditions courtesy of the federation's own decisions, direct comparison of 2008-09-10-11-12 negated, the world rankings awash with irrelevant times, precedent for drawing a line in the book ignored.
A saga that started with the introduction of bodysuits, albeit textile, in time for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games took on a new dimension at the 2007 World Championships, where Americans introduced what Australian coach Bill Sweetenham dubbed “the fifth stroke”: a powerful underwater dolphin kick out of the start and off the wall at every turn, the streamlining speed of which exceeded the pace of rivals swimming for longer at the surface.
The advantage gained by those who had been part of a university research project aimed at having swimmers mimic the movement of seals and porpoises, was decisive. Americans, led by Michael Phelps, dominated the championships. The swimmer still ruled the waves. But Americans and Australians then left Melbourne for a secret mission in Canberra, testing what would lead, 11 months later, to the arrival of the Speedo LZR Racer, the first non-textile suit, employing Nasa technology and polyurethane panels (about 50% of the suit, a proportion Speedo would not add to for the duration of the crisis that followed).
On February 16, 2008, Olympic champion Kirsty Coventry, the US-based Zimbabwean, felled Hungarian Krisztina Egerszegi's 17-year-old world record with a 2:06.39 over 200m backstroke. By the time Britain's Liam Tancock clocked 24.47 over 50m backstroke the day after April Fool's, his new global standard was the 19th to fall in just six weeks at a time of year that had been regarded as "off-season", a time of training and lower-key racing practice, for all but Antipodeans racing in late summer Down Under.
Just over a week after Tancock's celebration, Manchester hosted the world short-course championships: 17 world records fell, many by margins that took the breath away. The sport was living through a time warp, standard setters registering times perceived to be several years or even a decade ahead of their time.
Arena, the main brand rival to Speedo, lodged an official protest with FINA, the international federation, and issued an open letter it wrote that "reliable and transparent analysis of these materials, as well as a careful assessment of approval procedures, is urgent. Such action is in the supreme interest of the sport."
FINA Rule SW10.7 back in 2008 read: "No swimmer shall be permitted to use or wear any device that may aid his speed, buoyancy or endurance during a competition".
To justify allowing the LZR Racer into the race pool, FINA's executive reinterpreted that rule and suggested that it was intended only to prevent the use of paddles, fins and other 'devices'. But the suit had indeed become a device overnight, one that boosted speed, buoyancy, endurance and worked better for one morphology and physiology than another.
At a vote in Rome at which non-textile suits were banned and a cut of suit introduced that limited material cover from waist to above the knee for men and body cover down to above the knee for women, with arm straps and and open back, the word "swimwear" was added to rule SW10.7.
The escalation in suit wars only just beginning, however, and in the eights days of racing in Italy that followed the vote a farcical 43 world marks were felled at the Roman circus.
FINA's executive stuck to decisions throughout even when it was obvious to many that swimming was being sunk by a new sport, while the shiny suits made no economic sense. Schism was rife in the sport but maintaining the falseness of it all was simply unsustainable.
One revolution to come out of the battle: FINA introduced a suit-testing regime, backed by a panel of material experts led by Professor Jan-anders Manson in Lausanne, the days when suit testing stretched to a bucket of water and a flight of flotation gone for good.
Today is expected to mark a welcome return of Speedo to the race to reduce drag, turbulence and anything that gets in the way of a swimmer’s optimum speed and potential for streamlining, without taking them to places they would never get to under their own steam.
That mission, of course, goes well beyond suits. Milt Nelms, “the Water Whisperer” from the US, husband to triple Olympic champion of 1972 Shane Gould and a guru who has worked with Ian Thorpe and many other Olympic and world champions down the years, has long pioneered coaching methods that encourage swimmers to shift their angle of buoyancy to maximise efficiency of flow in water and understand their relationship with water.
Nelms was of the view at the height of the shiny suits crisis that what it had taken swimmers years to perfect through training and understanding of their relationship with water, including surfing sessions in the ocean, the plastic fantastic compression garments did overnight, and all the more so in some cases for athletes of lesser fitness and skill.
There will be science and even rockets perhaps today in London - but no rocket science designed to propel the sport out of its own skin beyond a sport in which swimmers and swimming counts the most once more.
That was then
This is now
What's next:
SwimNews will report on the future when the details of the FastSkin3 are revealed later today.
