FINA has cancelled the mail vote of Bureau members on the issue of permeability and a return to textile suits in 2010. It had wanted federations to send in a "yes" or "no" to a series of questions that included 'do you want a return to textile suits in 2010'.
SwimNews understands that the rationale for doing so was what one source close to FINA described as "an inability to be sure that the scientific values assigned to permeability were accurate".
France replied to the questions - answers to which were due tomorrow, July 3, before the vote was cancelled - with more questions, including a demand that "textile" be defined. Good for France. Good for those who have now cancelled the vote: you cannot provide an answer, let alone the right one, if you don't base your question on facts and a clear idea of how you wish to frame the rule that will deliver the race-pool environment that you seek.
With each further step that FINA takes down the road of "science", it discovers more questions than answers. For example, the fact that there is a difference between air and water permeability had not been adequately understood by the FINA executive.
Myriad are the experts around the world to speak in favour of suits and against suits. Two things are certain: the suits enhance performance and FINA is unlikely ever to be able to control what it woefully described as "evolution" of suits.
The answer that has dawned on many within FINA is that simplicity of message and rule is key to a peaceful future in which the technique-based sport of swimming can be revived.
There are some within FINA who would like to announce 2010 standards as soon as possible, before the world of swimming gathers in Rome for racing. However, SwimNews understands that the new team that is likely to govern aquatic sports after and election in which Julio Maglione is the only candidate for the presidency of FINA, wishes to delay the decision and announcement until it takes office.
That seems sensible, for the new Bureau is the Bureau that will carry responsibility for what happens in the next four years, starting with 2010. It would be wrong to saddle those who must justify the solution for 2010 with decisions taken by an executive led by the departing president, a man who has remained virtually silent while the sport he supposedly presided over plunged deeper into crisis and delivered the least desirable of options for the 13th world championships: a freak show of suits, an unavoidable circus in which one suit or another overshadows every podium and final for eight straight days.
Many federations and swimmers and coaches now believe that a definition of textile and a specified suit profile cannot come soon enough if the sport is to wade out of the soup of suits that aspire to being surfboards.
