News and comment
The FINA World Open Water Championships draw to a close today with the 25km races for men and women in Lac St-Jean, Roberval, Canada, and as the swimmers stroke towards the finish line, so more details emerge of how suits came to leave a bitter taste among athletes, coaches and federations at yet another major meet.
FINA maintains that all suits bearing a FINA approved label and worn in Roberval were given the thumbs up in the April 15 round of approvals. However, on May 31, USA Swimming issued guidance to its open water swimmers that read:
"On May 31, 2010, FINA updated its list of swimsuits approved for competition and also included suits which have been approved for open water competition. The full list of approved suits is attached and those suits specific to open water are indicated as such with the words 'open water' to the far right of the suit description."
The note to racers then lists the specific open water suits that were added to the list on May 31, namely full pants suits by Tyr, Mizuno and Descente. USA Swimming then runs the entire FINA approved suits list, timed and dated on May 31 at 9.03am by FINA. None of the Jaked open-water-specific suits were listed by FINA as of May 31, all of the Italian makers approved suits being specifically in line with the elite race pool requirements on suits and none with full pants at that date.
Two other federations, in Europe, that issued similar advice to their swimmers, sent full FINA approved suits lists to their teams before the World Cup event in Setubal in Portugal in the third week in June. Just as Jaked open water suits were missing from USA Swimming's May 31 note, so too were they missing from the lists - direct print-outs from the FINA website, timed and dated - of the other two federations issuing advice to swimmers heading for Roberval.
On the list at May 31 and in the first two weeks of June, were the following Jaked suits (among other models):
- Jaked J07 SHARK full-knee women
- Jaked J07 SHARK pants-short men
On the eve of Roberval racing, the list included:
- Jaked J07 SHARK FWL full-body women OWS only
- Jaked J07 SHARK PL pants men OWS only
- Jaked J17 SHARK FML full men OWS only
So just when were the above added to the list given that they are supposed to have been approved April 15 but were nowhere to be seen as late as mid-June and were not worn, as far as we are aware, at the Portugal round of the World Cup in the third week in June?
Adding to the confusion are the following suits that do not appear on any FINA list, are banned from swimming and presumably intended for triathlon, but are commercially available from Jaked alongside its other race pool suits with no reference to them no longer being allowed in the race pool (they are the 100% polyurethane suits of last year) by FINA:
- J01FML - Competition body suit man full body long (reduced from euros 372,00 to 297,60)
- J01FWL - ompetition body suit woman full body long
- J01FMS - ompetition body suit man full body chest.
Setting that last, self-contained aside apart, there are two overiding possibilities on the confusion of dates and lists above: the domestic federations simply sent out old lists by mistake; the international federation had not, by May 31 and a little later in early June, updated its approved suits list from the April 15 round.
The complication stems in part from the practice of allowing suit makers to amend their suits if a model submitted fails to pass muster. So, if suit A failed on April 15 but an amended suit was sent to FINA by May 30, it might then have been added to the list as an April 15 approved suit without the need to wait until the next submission date. Hardly ideal in terms of making it clear to swimmers and federations what can and cannot be worn at a specific moment in time, and hardly in the spirit of a rule that demands suits be available to all well in advance of a major meet such as a world championship.
The other rider to this is that FINA does not add approved suits to its list until a suit maker has paid its bill, sources in the industry tell SwimNews. If that is the case, then, as in the paragraph above, the system is not working in the best interests of swimmers. Not too tricky, one would imagine, to say to any suit maker 'you're suit is approved, you now have 7 days in which to clear your bill and failure to do so will mean that your suit will not be added to the list of approved suits until the date of the next approvals round.' The kind of rules we all live with when it comes to mortgages, phone bills, electricity charges and the like.
The other factor is commercial availability. If you go to the Jaked site, as one example, you find two suits only recently approved for use by FINA "out of stock". Can there have been such a rush, such a demand for a suit retailing at more than euros 120 a pop, a suit that is of little use to anyone other than those about to race or train to do so?
FINA may well have systems in place but events in Roberval indicate that not enough thought has gone into getting it right in the interests of the people who count for more than anyone else: the competitors. Stricter timetables, with clear deadlines and dates in place for all to see, are a must.
For Shanghai world titles in 2011, the July round of suit approvals just passed was the cut-off for all those who wish to have their suits in the race next year. However, watch that list carefully on a regular basis: if a suit fails, is left off the list but is amended to make the grade a few weeks later, or if a suit maker has yet to pay their bill, the suit in question may still be added to the list, it seems from the experience of Roberval.
That ought to be avoided and the best way to do that is for FINA to issue as soon as possible a clear set of deadlines known to suit makers, swimmers, coaches and federations, as in this theoretical example:
- July 1: last date for submission of suits for approval testing
- September 1: last deadline for any resubmissions
- September 15: no more additions allowed
- January 1, 2011: all suits on the approved list must be commercially avaliable
Most suit makers are now not only complying with the rules and working in the spirit of the rules, even though the circumstances are neither comfortable nor commercially ideal in terms of production lines and the process of churning out large numbers of suits. There is no second guessing of the testing process right now, with suit makers having had no access as yet to equipment used by FINA testers. Equipment used by makers to test suits before submission often produces different measurements to those produced by the equipment and methodology used by FINA. The drive to get as close to the line as possible has caused many to fall just shy and been forced to resubmit suits in amended form (resubmissions are FINA-fee free). FINA intends to make the equipment it uses to test with more readily available to suit makers at the suit design stage, to avoid the need for too many resubmissions.
And all such complications and nuances lead us back to one thought: keep it simple. Suits are not supposed to enhance performance and the easiest way to avoid them doing so is to keep skin cover to a minimum in a world where men are men and women are women and their purpose is not surfing, skimming of the pursuit of unfair advantage but rather swimming and fair play for all.
