Should surgical body modifications on swimmers be considered cheating?

Would you consider repairing a torn rotator cuff or replacing a degenerated hip as surgical body modifications? I would hazard a guess that a swimmer with a repaired rotator tear is going to see a much greater improvement over a swimmer who gets liposuction. Originally posted by ande what else could people do? I heard of people having surgery to repair broken arms and legs and suture gaping wounds. However, I’ve never heard of anyone doing any of these with the intent of defrauding Masters Swimming, so to your question, no I don’t consider any of these cheating.

Team TYR is getting surgery to add webbing between their fingers and toes? Why those dirty...

Dang, Ande- you mean they might outlaw my extra-capacity beer storage cavity?

As long as they don't get their toes and fingers webbed it should not matter, we had a swimmer who was born with webbed toes and fingers, he sure could swim a fast 50 or 100.

Originally posted by nkfrench Gender reassignment would probably provide a big advantage to a swimmer, such as a "Renee" formerly known as a "Richard". Nancy I understand your thought on transexuals, but since there are no rules in USMS or FINA there isn't much to go by. A while back we had a transexual swimmer attending our meets and we had to investigate what this means regarding competition, records, top ten, etc. We defered our ruling to the IOC (Internation Olympic Committees) ruling on transexuals. According to the IOC, if they have had the surgery and been living as the new gender for a certian period of time (I can't remember how long) they can compete in the new gender catagory. We figured that if the Olympic committee feels it is fair, we do as well. The interesting thing about this, is that there have been well documented cases of former male athletes who have gone through gender reassignment and have competed as females, but none of the to date have over powered the competition. Renee Richards certianly didn't rise to #1 in the world of women's tennis.

I have asthma. I am always worried about peole who think that the drugs I take are performance enhancing. In fact, they are at a very distinct advantage over me because I usually start to wheeze during a race. I used to have a lung capacity of 11.5 liters. Now it is around 9 liters. Last year at our state I had to stop during the 200 free. So even thouhg I have really large lungs they don't work too well. Also, I've had my colon removed. And I have some webbing between my fingers & toes.

Gender reassignment would probably provide a big advantage to a swimmer, such as a "Renee" formerly known as a "Richard".

OK, sorry, I misused the term "gender reassignment". No offense intended, this was supposed to be a silly example of a different type of cheating - instead of making yourself faster, just make the rest of the competition slower. Yes, probably the hormone changes would even it all out after a while.

Originally posted by nkfrench No offense intended, this was supposed to be a silly example of a different type of cheating... There was a remarkably long discussion about that issue in one of the threads, don't remember which one. (You can probably search for it.) i.e. If you mention something silly, odds are there has been a serious flame war on the subject somewhere on this forum. :D

If the surgery is performed to make someone more "normal," then it doesn't give him or her an advantage. *** reductions, stomach stapling, etc. are done to correct a problem, which actually makes it a more fair race. I would think that the surgery and recovery would give the swimmer a disadvantage in the short run, especially since it takes the person out of the water for a month or two.