It looks like Speedo is seriously pissed off with FINA right now over the new suit ruling. They seem to think the LZR does not belong in the same category as the other new speedsuits. I can understand their anger, but their arguments seem pretty stupid if you ask me. “The company said its suit has helped boost the popularity and profile of swimming.” --So we should keep the LZR because they think it is the reason swimming is popular? I thought that had more to do with Michael Phelps and less to do with Speedo.
I thought that had more to do with Michael Phelps and less to do with Speedo.
sort of…would Phelps have broken record after record w/o the suit?
Wouldn’t surprise me at all if he did. He blew some records away by such a margin that he probably could have done it wearing a burlap sack.
Not to mention, he has almost always opted for the jammers or legsuits, and rarely ever used the full body suits that most of the other competitors were using.
Sure, there are some records/wins he probably wouldn’t have gotten without the LZR (.01 sec win in the olympics, etc), but I doubt it would have seriously changed his dominance.
I thought that had more to do with Michael Phelps and less to do with Speedo.
sort of…would Phelps have broken record after record w/o the suit?
Wouldn’t surprise me at all if he did. He blew some records away by such a margin that he probably could have done it wearing a burlap sack.
Not to mention, he has almost always opted for the jammers or legsuits, and rarely ever used the full body suits that most of the other competitors were using.
Sure, there are some records/wins he probably wouldn’t have gotten without the LZR (.01 sec win in the olympics, etc), but I doubt it would have seriously changed his dominance.
I think Cavic wore full body suit in 100 Fly, and Phelps just had the legs on. So perhaps he would have won my more than 0.01 seconds. His “disadvantage” made the race more exciting!
Part of Speedo’s complaint is that they’ve also got a lot of unused full leg Fastskins in their inventory that are not not going to meet FINA guidelines in addition to the LZRs. They claim that they need to be able to sell the full leg Fastskins in order to be able to turn around and make jammer length racewear in large numbers again.
As hard as it is for Speedo (which hasn’t always been on the best financial ground) FINA has to comply with the rules overwhelmingly voted on and passed by its general assembly.
Masters and US high schools haven’t signed onto the new rules yet. Maybe Speedo can dump old inventory there.
thorpe never got to wear these fancy suits and his 400m free still stands from 2002. the fast guys today are still 3 seconds off his world record time.
the suits help people who are already fast, they don’t make crappy swimmers great. if everyone has access to the suits, what is the big deal?
I can totally understand why speedo is pissed but I like the ruling. Will be interesting when it happens. Nearly all top swimmers have spent their entire career racing in body suits. Time to up the number of pilates sessions a week
That really sucks. Speedo took a risk to make suits within the rules, and the rules were changed because they did such a good job. Not only do they have an inventory problem simple because of the recession, now they have inventory which is essentially worthless. Depending on how many of those suits they have lying around, it might take them a while to recover. I hate regulators.
Since you usually seem pretty up-to-date on all this stuff, do you know how this affects open-water swimming? I’m assuming the same rules will apply as for pool swimming?
Just curious because I focus on OW swimming during my “off-season” (a few races of which abide by FINA rules) and was getting ready to buy a speedsuit before this ruling came out.
Speedo had a pretty good hammerlock on the speedsuit market, clearly winning the most medals. Nike even had to give its sponsored athletes permission to use the Speedo suits in Beijing.
If we go back to fabric suits, Speedo loses a lot of brand and market dominance. It’s easy to see why they won’t be pleased and have a lot of incentive to lobby against this.
not everyone has acess to the suits because the majority of them are over $350. Men’s college teams can’t afford to be asking their school for an extra 16-20 $350-$500 dollar suits because most of them are the next program to get cut. While having your parents buy them for you or fundraising yourself may get the suits for your team, it gives the school an excuse to cut the team’s budget even more. There is no doubt in my mind they offer a huge advantage, I’ve seen tons of mediocre swimmers go times they get nowhere near without the suit on. Now ncaa coaches have to ask what kind of suit the high schooler swam their time in. These suits have created a huge problem in swimming with recruiting and ncaa team budgets and unless something is done about it, the number of teams getting cut is going to increase and the competition between schools will become even more diluted.
Open water swimming is also governed by FINA so I assume at the top level, only jammers will be allowed. For local comps, hard ot say. In Australia, I have no doubt that FINA rules will be followed. Not sure for the USA.
Does anyone have any idea what will be allowed for non-wetsuit tri swims?
I know it wasn’t made of polyurethane…but your reason is bullshit. It was a technical suit and he wore because he thought it was faster. Either way, it’s still illegal as of Jan. 1.
Depends on who sanctions the race. General US swimming rules, it’s going to be the new swimwear guidelines as of 1/1/10 for both pool and open water, AFAIK. It was mentioned that masters swimming is going to have to make its own decision on apparel, so if it’s a masters sanction it may be different, and there are some open water races that operate under joint USS/USAT sanction because USAT makes it really easy for participants to get a one day competition license and because of the overlap between the groups.
