Should USMS follow "suit" ?

But why would FINA agree to this concept? Well, FINA has already stated that it's previous ban did not apply to masters and that it never intended to regulate masters.

Well, FINA has already stated that it's previous ban did not apply to masters and that it never intended to regulate masters. True, but I thought that was another of their "temporary insanity" moments. Masters represents a very large, international venue in swimming that increasingly has a large cross-over to USS and FINA events. It makes no sense that they would just cut masters loose to do their own thing.

I think if we allow the suits and everyone else bans them then it turns USMS into the equivalent of a beer league. Maybe some people think this is fine, but not me. Why is this such a big deal? I like wearing paddles in practice, too, but I'm not advocating their use in meets. The sport has become a laughingstock due to these suits.

True, but I thought that was another of their "temporary insanity" moments. Masters represents a very large, international venue in swimming that increasingly has a large cross-over to USS and FINA events. It makes no sense that they would just cut masters loose to do their own thing. Perhaps not. But I was under the distinct impression that we were not even on their radar screen at the moment. Also, and this is only my sense, it appears that the Europeans are even more attached to their tech suits than USMS members. Lots of suit manufacturers and very fast swimmers outside the US ... Kirk, I don't agree that the "sport has become a laughing stock because of the suits." The suits are fun, cool and exciting. I think the current crisis is caused by FINA and its stupidity and inability to gradually roll out and/or otherwise regulate suit technology.

Geek, I give you "A" for effort and "F" for reality. If player safety was tantamount in the MBA, Andro and steroid testing would have put the game on"hold" years ago. The reason aluminum bats are outlawed in professional baseball is you can't hide them. It's a blatant use of technology to artificially enhance performance. I also think the impact of how "traditional" or insular MLB is, keeps the bats wood - aluminum bats would change the culture of the game, and most players prefer wood. Personally I hate aluminum bats in baseball - at any level. Plus baseball has a lot more ways to win than the big hit - so I think we maybe over estimating aluminum bats impact on the game. As for safety a coach was killed a year ago, but that may have happened if the ball came off a wood bat - just a tragic accident. A number of years ago a pitcher, Bryce Florie, was hit in the face with a line drive - he never made a comeback. As for PED - well that is a huge hidden problem.

Even if USMS decides to continue with allowing these suits I really doubt the manufactures will continue making them. My understanding from selling suits as a retailer is that none of the manufactures will ever make a profit on these suits and reducing their levels of suits manufactured to a small portion of 40,000 plus swimmers wouldn't be, in my opinion, a wise business decision. I already struggle getting these suits to colleges and national level swimmers let alone a few masters swimmers around the country once or twice a year. I really doubt your local swim shop will carry these suits in stock in the future. You are going to have to buy them on line or directly from TYR, Speedo, Jaked, etc... and hope you get them in time for your meet.

I am with John. I am not wearing them anymore, but I could care less if someone else in masters swimming wears them. The one caveat is if swimmers that I think I should be able to stay with start flying by me and I can't compensate by training better, then maybe I will finally fully concede and join the rubber age. FINA is the worst sports governing body in the world. They will probably change their mind multiple times between now and January 1st. I have full confidence that the rubber age is here to stay and I think there will be many other beneficial changes. They are going to move the line for underwaters out to 20 to 25 meters and you will be able to wear whatever suit you want. They will also allow flip turns in breaststroke and butterfly and any transition turn in the IM. Phelps will break a 49 in the 100 fly within a year and everything will be fine. What is the point with all these rules? No one enforces them anyway and they just slow people down which makes no sense. I haven't seen a DQ in major competition in the last 10 years. We don't need all those people on the deck looking down at the swimmers like they are actually trying to enforce the rules. We could save costs and make things faster, a double bonus! We just need a starter, one person at the other end to make sure people touch the wall with some part of their body, and a person in the middle of the pool making sure people break the surface at the 25 meter mark. On second thought at least 2 of those jobs aren't needed because they could be replaced by touch pads and a laser at the middle of the pool. I mean, heck, in track and field they don't tell you how to run, they just tell you how far and what your lane is. They don't tell people how they have to get over a hurdle, you can get over it anyway you want. The only rules in breaststroke should be that you have to recover your arms underwater and together and anything else goes (unlimited flutter or dolphin kick, whatever is fastest - it almost looks like Soni does a dolphin kick now or she isn't far from it). The breastroke kick is bad for some peoples knees so this is just to protect the athletes, right. Personally, I love it that Kitajima is out of the record books, that great "innovator". Maybe Kitajima should be the head of FINA and implement my evil "almost anything goes" plan. Maybe that dude from the WWF could do the commentary with Rowdy too. Bowman is such a purist. Boo, hiss! There is no room for him in this sport unless he changes his ways. Tim

I can't swear to this, but I am pretty sure that the predictive model that Chris linked to was done by our very own USMS colleague, Joel Stager, Ph.D., an exercise physiologist at U. Indiana's Councilman Center for Swimming Science. If this is the study he told me about, he and his colleagues took the data from previous Olympics and number crunched the trajectory of ever-improving times over the years to predict the likely times at the (then upcoming) Beijing Olympics. They had also done this for the previous Olympics and were able to predict, with quite a bit of precision, what the actual times turned out to be. The suit technology at that time was still pre-LZR--not sure it if it was FSPro yet or the FS1 or FS2, but these suits did not bust the predicted curves, leading the researchers to conclude they did not provide a ludicrously unfair advantage to those that used them. In fact, some interpretators of this previous study used it to indicate that the earlier tech suits didn't do much, and may even have been sort of placebos disguised as swimming costumes. Not so for the LZR/B70 generation of suits. These allowed swimmers to swim much faster in most events than the predicted improvement that swimmers had been showing for decades of Olympics. Chris is probably in a better position to explain all this than I am. And Joel Stager is certainly in a better postion to do so. (He will be at LCM, and I can ask him.) But in terms of your question--"where is the data?"--the "data" are the Olympic winning times for each event over X number of past Olympics (not sure how far they went back); these times are then fitted onto a graph and the equation that best describes its change over time is then applied to predict the next Olympics; and finally the actual times and the predicted times are compared. In most cases, the actual improvement in times with the suits at Bejing proved to be more than a full standard deviation better than the mathematical model (which had been heretofore accurate for decades) predicted they should be. The idea they were nothing more than placebos no longer remotely applied. These suits caused the smooth, ever descending line on the graph to take a sudden and steep bend in the direction of hell! (The final resting place, as FINA officials would soon enough discover, for all Faustian bargains.) That's the data. The sad part for those of us who actually like the suits, if for no other reason that they allow us to avoid body shaving, is that Speedo could have had a nice little market. But then they contacted NASA and got the rocket scientists involved. Nothing good comes when the rocket scientists start mucking around in pool water.

Even if USMS decides to continue with allowing these suits I really doubt the manufactures will continue making them. My understanding from selling suits as a retailer is that none of the manufactures will ever make a profit on these suits and reducing their levels of suits manufactured to a small portion of 40,000 plus swimmers wouldn't be, in my opinion, a wise business decision. But what about a manufacturer such as blueseventy? I think they got into the pool swimming market because of their expertise in making wetsuits and realized they could make a "wetsuit like" pool legal suit. When FINA puts in place the new rules will they even continue to make suits? It's hard for me to imagine why they would want to make a textile jammer, but if there's still a decent market (in masters) for a full-body suit, then maybe they will continue to produce the Nero or some new variant of the Nero. Possibly same thing for Jaked, although they are still a tiny player in masters--at least in the U.S.

That's kind of the issue here. For me and big ugly Paul, Masters is a "beer" league and it is for fun. But winning is also fun. Can you deny that when you swim in a meet you want to win? If you're wearing briefs and the guy next to you is wearing a Jaked your chances are greatly reduced. Obviously you and Paul are talented swimmers, but even you two aren't going to beat a fast swimmer if you're in briefs and he's in a Jaked.