I'm sorry but in what swimming events do women compete against men?
On a non-serious note, at meets where women swim before men, I look for the fastest girl swimmers and try to beat their times for my race. For some of us, this a pretty tough challenge.
But to answer your question, I'm looking for an equal opportunity, and it has everything to do with compression.
What I am saying here is that I think it is unfair to limit which of these compression-benefit areas based on your gender. In just a regular tank, women get buttocks, hips, stomach and chest compression. In a knee-skin, they get everything! If men get jammers, it's just thighs and buttocks; but going all the way to briefs, it's just buttocks. And on top if this, if women are stuck with only a tank and men get jammers, why do men get to benefit from the thigh compression and not women? See where I am going?
Recent swimsuit fabric technological advances have been coupled with suits designed and cut for muscle compression. The thigh, buttocks, hips, stomach and chest carry a lot of flab (especially with masters swimmers) - but also a lot of muscle, and compression of these areas by these suits have led to plenty of benefits for many who can better harness the energy created. Since we can't do much with the fabrics anymore, compression will be the name of the game in design.
The next time you (everyone) get a chance, find a strong and muscular swimmer on your team to watch underwater. When they push off the wall, or do underwater SDK, you'll see some massive muscle movements in the thighs. This is what I'm talking about here - everyone wants those things compressed to better harness energy. For an elite athlete view, check out Margaret Hoelzer (best views at about 1:35). There are also some views of her doing SDK w/ a full LZR on for a contrast point, and it's hard to see, but those legs are not moving in that suit the way they are in the tank.
After the last 6 months of soap opra, nothing that FINA does surprises me. They should never make a decision of that magnitude without the input of a large percentage of swimmers and their representatives. The decision was probably made be 15 people tops, many of whom have vested interests in the outcome. If I recall, last year at this time the same people were telling us that the LZR was the greatest thing since sliced bread.
I think they could have easily gone back to the pre LZR standard of 2006. No one complained about the Fastskin, Powerskin and Aquapel.
I am wondering if they even considered other options or notified the suit companies of thier intent to make a binding decision prior to 2010. I always assumed that they would solicit input and make a decision on a date certain, in the fall.
I wonder if it was done quickly and quietly, without public notice, to purposely catch the affected swim suit companies by surprise.
FINA and USA Swimming are a trainwreck. Colleges are shuting programs down and swimming is irrelevant to the average American except for a week every four years. We need better leadership.
This decision should be reconsidered by an entirely new, unbiased, panel prior to 2010. :censor:
The proper thing to do is to "reset" swimming world records back a few years, it's not really fair for men in jammers & women in knee skins to try to break records swimmers did in full body tech suits. Let's go back to WR times done by swimmers who wore qualifying suits, like Popov's 21.6 50 WR then let the breaking begin.
I really disagree with this. The world records were set in compliance with the rules at the time. It would be totally unfair to the athletes who set records in tech suits to just roll things back. You can't just wipe out a few years of swimming history like that.
I'd rather swim nude than without goggles.
I can't even function without goggles in the pool. People who I train with were telling me about the days before they had goggles and I am like, "What, how did you survive?"
Perhaps I missed it in another thread somewhere, but Brent Rutemiller has a great editorial in July's Swimming World Magazine about what to do with this whole tech suit issue: create a professional swim league.
link
We didn't survive that well without goggles; quite aside from the green halo to your vision after practise and red, running eyes, it was much more common to misjudge your walls- jammed fingers, sprained wrists and the dreaded full face plant were common.
I'm glad they did this. Now it will mean more when a world record is broken. I wonder how long it will take for someone to break one of the tech suit records wearing a non-tech suit.
