This description is inherited directly from USA Swimming rules:
USA-S 102.10.10 No swimmer is permitted to wear or use any device or substance to help his/her speed, pace or buoyancy during a race. Goggles may be worn, and rubdown oil applied if not considered excessive by the Referee.
The USA Swimming Rules & Regulations Committee issued an interpretation back in 1999:
Until FINA determines otherwise, use of the full body suit, designed and marketed for competition, is permissible in USA swimming events. Use of suits of neoprene or other buoyant material, such as wet suits, is not permissible.
The key here is "neoprene or other buoyant material". A buoyant material in a swimsuit links the apparel to USMS 102.15.9/USA-S 102.10.10. It would seem apparent to me that a suit is buoyant or significantly improves buoyancy like a wetsuit has always intended to be illegal.
The current FINA rule, while not necessarily dispositive, is even vaguer:
FINA SW 10.7 No swimmer shall be permitted to use or wear any device that may aid his speed, buoyancy or endurance during a competition (such as webbed gloves, flippers, fins, etc.). Goggles may be worn.
Now enforcing a wetsuit rule is a different matter. At a meet, you don't have many tools to measure buoyancy other than dropping the suit in the water, and the "if it looks like a wetsuit, it's illegal" test. That would go against the grain in which the rest of the technical rules are judged for the most part (the benefit of the doubt going to the swimmer).
If only I really could attach an outboard motor. Then my pitiful breaststroke wouldn't get beat by people 40 years older than me.
Patrick King
This description is inherited directly from USA Swimming rules:
USA-S 102.10.10 No swimmer is permitted to wear or use any device or substance to help his/her speed, pace or buoyancy during a race. Goggles may be worn, and rubdown oil applied if not considered excessive by the Referee.
The USA Swimming Rules & Regulations Committee issued an interpretation back in 1999:
Until FINA determines otherwise, use of the full body suit, designed and marketed for competition, is permissible in USA swimming events. Use of suits of neoprene or other buoyant material, such as wet suits, is not permissible.
The key here is "neoprene or other buoyant material". A buoyant material in a swimsuit links the apparel to USMS 102.15.9/USA-S 102.10.10. It would seem apparent to me that a suit is buoyant or significantly improves buoyancy like a wetsuit has always intended to be illegal.
The current FINA rule, while not necessarily dispositive, is even vaguer:
FINA SW 10.7 No swimmer shall be permitted to use or wear any device that may aid his speed, buoyancy or endurance during a competition (such as webbed gloves, flippers, fins, etc.). Goggles may be worn.
Now enforcing a wetsuit rule is a different matter. At a meet, you don't have many tools to measure buoyancy other than dropping the suit in the water, and the "if it looks like a wetsuit, it's illegal" test. That would go against the grain in which the rest of the technical rules are judged for the most part (the benefit of the doubt going to the swimmer).
If only I really could attach an outboard motor. Then my pitiful breaststroke wouldn't get beat by people 40 years older than me.
Patrick King
