Before 2009 Kukors best 200 IM was 2:10.40 World class for sure, but still a cut behind the top women in the event. Today she goes a 2:06.15 and in two days shaves more than a second off the world record. I nominate this swim, just ahead of Bousquets 20.94, as the most ridiculous suited up swim of all time.
Why ban the suits? To level the playing field. To have athletes compete against each other without the aid of technology giving one athlete an advantage. It gives one athlete an advantage over the other. Each suit is different, and not every athlete has the means to obtain these faster suits. So, if you ban the suits, you rule out the "unknown" (suit technology) and you have swimmers competing against each other on a more level playing field.
What makes it wrong is, you can have two identical athletes, same abilities, same heart and desire to win, and if one has an advantage because of the special suit they are wearing, I don't think that makes it fair. This trickles down into youth leagues as well. Now it becomes a social and economic issue, where some athletes can afford these suits, while others cannot. If this continues, those athletes who cannot afford the suits, might not be fast enough to earn scholarships compared to other athletes. You see where this is going?
It is simple to level the playing field by banning the suits.
If you want to level the playing field why stop at the suits?
There are far more expensive pieces of training technology that some people have access to. I don't hear announcers talking about how Johnny got to go and do a bunch of swimmetrics sessions at 100-500 a pop while Billy didn't. The suits are just an obvious thing to point to and discuss because it's what people see. It's the tip of the technology iceberg. But we should probably just standardize all training equipment and decide upon a per swimmer budget ceiling for all swim clubs so that technology doesn't give one swimmer an advantage over another.
Some people can afford to move to Baltimore and join the NBAC, some can't. I grew up with a pal who went to Florida to train with Bolles for a summer. No way I got to do that. He came back a lot faster. Is that fair? It hardly kept the playing field, as defined by the resources available in our fairly isolated geographic area, level. Should we stop allowing people to move to join better programs? That would hardly be an issue if there were appropriate controls in place. I'd like to request a standard coaching program be heretoforth decided upon and administered uniformly in all swimming programs.
It's not fair that Phelps is 6' 4" and I'm only 6' tall. I think I should get extenders to make my effective length and wingspan comparable, or he should have to swim with one leg weighted down and a restrictor plate on his mouth to level his O2 intake.
And yea shall we go on into the 102nd year of our Ford. Slip, slip, slippery sliding on down to this metaphysical unreality of a level playing field.
I don't think that we should just go nuts with the suits, and I think that the best idea put forth in these forums is to establish a better control process on them. But I don't at all buy the idea of there ever being a level playing field.
Why ban the suits? To level the playing field. To have athletes compete against each other without the aid of technology giving one athlete an advantage. It gives one athlete an advantage over the other. Each suit is different, and not every athlete has the means to obtain these faster suits. So, if you ban the suits, you rule out the "unknown" (suit technology) and you have swimmers competing against each other on a more level playing field.
What makes it wrong is, you can have two identical athletes, same abilities, same heart and desire to win, and if one has an advantage because of the special suit they are wearing, I don't think that makes it fair. This trickles down into youth leagues as well. Now it becomes a social and economic issue, where some athletes can afford these suits, while others cannot. If this continues, those athletes who cannot afford the suits, might not be fast enough to earn scholarships compared to other athletes. You see where this is going?
It is simple to level the playing field by banning the suits.
If you want to level the playing field why stop at the suits?
There are far more expensive pieces of training technology that some people have access to. I don't hear announcers talking about how Johnny got to go and do a bunch of swimmetrics sessions at 100-500 a pop while Billy didn't. The suits are just an obvious thing to point to and discuss because it's what people see. It's the tip of the technology iceberg. But we should probably just standardize all training equipment and decide upon a per swimmer budget ceiling for all swim clubs so that technology doesn't give one swimmer an advantage over another.
Some people can afford to move to Baltimore and join the NBAC, some can't. I grew up with a pal who went to Florida to train with Bolles for a summer. No way I got to do that. He came back a lot faster. Is that fair? It hardly kept the playing field, as defined by the resources available in our fairly isolated geographic area, level. Should we stop allowing people to move to join better programs? That would hardly be an issue if there were appropriate controls in place. I'd like to request a standard coaching program be heretoforth decided upon and administered uniformly in all swimming programs.
It's not fair that Phelps is 6' 4" and I'm only 6' tall. I think I should get extenders to make my effective length and wingspan comparable, or he should have to swim with one leg weighted down and a restrictor plate on his mouth to level his O2 intake.
And yea shall we go on into the 102nd year of our Ford. Slip, slip, slippery sliding on down to this metaphysical unreality of a level playing field.
I don't think that we should just go nuts with the suits, and I think that the best idea put forth in these forums is to establish a better control process on them. But I don't at all buy the idea of there ever being a level playing field.
