Ban the tech suits?

As for me, I am disinclined to do any USMS open water races until speed suits are placed into a division separate from briefs. I have no interest in incurring travel expenses to go and compete in races with the deck stacked against me. Everybody knows that speed suits alone give a substantial advantage. They are changing the sport to be more about gear than about skill. Unlike developments, for example, in timing, which create a fairer playing field, the speed suits create a non-level playing field, which is the whole point of their existence. This is especially absurd in non-professional leagues like USMS. The legalization of speed suits has started an arms race. Is the end game a destruction of the sport? Get rid of them. Get the speed suits out of the competitions, USMS. Please.

Never has a slow swimmer been stuck swimming a 50.00 second 100 yard free and put on a tech suit enabling them to swim faster with no aditional training? A 50 second 100 got you top 10 at nats last year in 35-39, top 20 in 40-44, top 11 in 45-49, top 5 50-54 and first place in 55-59 so therefore that is not slow swimming. A person who swims a 1:30 and dons a LZR will still be slow, that's my point. As a side point, my age group sucks, too dang fast.

Get rid of them. Get the speed suits out of the competitions, USMS. Please. USMS...please keep the suits. Allow the people that want to wear them, and don't feel they are cheating to do so. Allow those that think they are bad, to continue to wear briefs and think like they are in the 80's to do. Allow each person to decide. Cyclist...yes, it is about fast times. The vast majority of people aren't going to remember years from now what suit they were wearing when the achieved the fastest time they ever went. They are just going to remember their time. So, you can say "it's an invalid argument and the technology is a joke" but they are valid. Do the suits aid in speed, sure, anything that allows one to cut through water, does...but one still has to do the actual swim. Now, if some of the suit are shown to float, like a wetsuit, then definitly get rid of them((B70). But any suit that doesn't aid in floation, should be allowed to stay, regardless of the amount of coverage. The sport has advanced beyond briefs. I hope we never go back. The body suits are fun to wear and make one feel good on the deck and in the water. If you don't want to wear them, support them, don't. But don't try to ruin it for those that do...let each person make a choice.

I like the way you compare cycling and swimming. I wonder if a carbon fiber bike gives a one second advantage per 100 yards over a steel bike. This is a strange statement as I don't know any bike races that are 100 yards or meters. Most sprint tris are at least 15 miles, many more than that. I promise you riding a carbon bike versus a steel bike will make your time vastly better so don't go telling me that what is good for the goose isn't good for the gander. As a cycling purist are you riding a steel framed bike? If not, this discussion is over with you. Charged - first, I hope you recover quickly from your upcoming surgery. Second, a tech suit never has nor ever will make a slow swimmer fast.

I like the way you compare cycling and swimming. I wonder if a carbon fiber bike gives a one second advantage per 100 yards over a steel bike. Two swimmers have the same abilities and training. One wears the expensive and questionably legal suit. The other wears Joe Speedo. It seems that Mr. Tech Suit wins. Not due to training but due to the one second advantage per 100 yards created by the expensive and questionably legal suit. The "100 yards" thing is a red herring. I'm positive that a carbon fiber bike, aerobars, disk wheels, etc provide well over a 1-second advantage over typical race distances. Ask Laurent Fignon. Though I am not really a fan of the tech suits, I do find it a bit laughable to hear cyclists or triathletes complain about them. "Questionably legal?" Is that like questionably pregnant? They are legal, period. Until they aren't.

Get rid of tech suits, put men in briefs and then it is the swimmer and training that are measured. Do you actually swim and compete? If so, you know that a fast suit does not make a slow swimmer fast. Nor does it supplant training. I have never lost to a slower swimmer in a fast suit, nor have I beat a better swimmer when I was wearing one. Briefs are from a bygone era, move on, get over it, we aren't going back and no amount of your whining will change that.

I notice that everyone seems to agree that tech suits are in a class by themselves: superior to tank suits (briefs), but not buoyant, unlike traditional wetsuits. And everyone also seems to agree that tech suits are faster than tank suits, which acknowledges what Speedo, TYR and Blue70 have been investing in all along. Rather, this debate seems to be about whether it is reasonable to put tech suits in a division with tank suits. For my part, I'm all for having a division that showcases the latest, greatest technological advances and the records they help great swimmers set. A division that showcases advances in technique would be nice too. But I feel it's imperative to protect the essence of the sport: it's about strokes, not suits. I might also question if there is a double standard here, where a heavy hand is applied to developments in swim techniques (e.g. requiring one to break the surface in a backstroke start before the 15), but the hand is so gentle when it regards developments in gear. Be that as it may, since "my" races are long distance open water, I am particularly concerned with the way tech suits will reshape those races, whose roots are in the feats of man and woman versus nature, red and raw, cold and cruel. I am not interested in leveraging human ability with gear. I'm interested in human ability. And that is why I swim. Open water swimmers will generally agree that the outcome of a race -- before the tech suits -- depended on toughness and skill: withstanding cold, maintaining efficient technique over a long period, shrugging off bottomless depths and invisible sharks, ignoring searing jellyfish stings, and, of course, drafting and passing strategically. Many of those challenges disappear with a friction-reducing body covering. Furthermore, a tech suit that gives a swimmer a one second advantage over 100 meters, gives a ridiculous advantage over 5,000 or 10,000 meters, to the point where it makes the race foolish. And of course the suits change the nature of pack swimming, team work and drafting, both because they diminish the need, but also because, as some people believe, they create dangerous situations whereby swimmers' bodies are less attuned to the presence of others. There are venerable open water racing organizations, such as the Manhattan Island Foundation and the Channel Swimming Association, which recognize that tech suits so fundamentally alter the sport of open water swimming, that they are disallowed, or, in those races where they are allowed, they are appropriately placed in a wetsuit division. I have yet to hear a rational argument that, all things being equal, the man or woman in a tech suit is the superior athlete over the man or woman in a tank suit, particularly when it comes to crossing through an hour of 70F chop and lions' mane jellyfish. The tougher athlete is the one wearing the least protection. And the laurels should go to the tougher athlete, not the better-protected, or the better-sponsored, or the more moneyed. It is natural for the sport of swimming to embrace technology and change, but new divisions (if not new events) may be needed to maintain a level playing field. Other sports have done this to accommodate developments in technology, most notably auto racing. Different strokes for different folks. The beauty of open water swimming is that although man or woman is humbled by nature to the extreme, we still emerge. Channel swimmers (English, that is) have long agreed that a tank suit, goggles, lanolin and a couple of swim caps is all you get. Anything more and you don't even get mentioned in the books. In New York City, open water racers are blessed with choices. We have a full calendar of highly competitive races with divisions for those who prefer to race in nothing more than a tank suit. The overwhelming majority of racers choose to enter this division. However, for those who want to wear a tech suit or wet suit, there is a separate, and much smaller, Chicken Division.

And you have all this crap going on at college dual meets where one team is suited up and another is not and it screws with the meaningfulness of any college meet where people are either all suited up or all not suited up and all you get is people asking "was he suited up when he did that time, pretty lame for such and such school to suit up in season against a non-suited team, etc..." This sort of thing pre-dates tech suits by decades. Except in the old days it was about one team slightly resting and shaving their swimmers for a dual meet -- usually it was the weaker team doing so and it would come as a surprise to the other team. It was as lame back then as it is now. (Although, to be fair, in some cases only some swimmers would be shaved and these might be swimmers who wouldn't make the conference team and so it was their chance to swim fast.)

IMO a suit that aids in cutting through the water is the same as a suit that floats. Get rid of tech suits, put men in briefs and then it is the swimmer and training that are measured. Then get rid of caps too...plus goggles...they help one cut through the water faster too. Someone said swimming is about "body and mind" reaching goals. Last time I checked, ALL sports are about that too.

I'll give up my relatively inexpensive tech suit when I go to a triathlon and don't see a fat dude riding an all carbon bike with carbon soled shoes in a $200 helmet and a $500 wet suit. Until then, no cyclist is allowed to ever speak to a swimmer about gear again and no whiney swimmers are allowed to tell me how to spend my money. When cyclists go back to steel framed bikes I'll ditch my suit. Until then, zip it. 100% AGREE!!!