I started a similar poll before,but time has changed things and I thought since USMS is going to have to do something definitive so they should have some input from the forumites
Former Member
Oh! Please let the suits be legal among Masters! We have other rules different from the “elite”, why not this one? Who cares one person breaks a master world record on suit?! The world records are actualized in a period of 6 months! The European in a 2 or 3 months periods, the TOP10 are a disgrace… so we are different from the “elite”, we swim for fun ! and putting on a suits that makes look like wonder woman is GREAT! Hiding the “faults “ of our aged body is terrific!! It is be a dream thinking the brands will keep improving suits only for Masters , so new techonoly will be finished here! Let keep the ones until 2009…..
Sorry , American colleagues but was in mood to express…
Swim for fun! :blush:
for some reason FINA put this article on their Site today, 10/5/09, it ran on USA Today on 8/3/2009
Swimming all the rage, thanks to suit flap
Source: USA Today, Updated 6d 14h ago By Mike Lopresti, Gannett
Somewhere out there, boxing and hockey and horse racing and every other sport craving more notice must be turning aquamarine with envy. There's a new master when it comes to attracting attention to itself.
We give you … swimming?
You bet your polyurethane suit.
They're arguing about what they should be wearing. They're trash talking. They've got a rivalry going that's starting to remind you of Michigan and Ohio State in goggles. They set world records at the world championships in Italy like they were on jet skis, and then worrying if they were going too fast.
The pope had a few of them in for a get-together, but the most famous invitee –Michael Phelps— declined, saying he needed to rest for a race. He also probably remembered what can happen when you attend a social function where there'll be cameras.
It's all been a seminar on how one sport can get exposure on a crowded landscape. Here people were, talking about the 100-meter butterfly over the weekend, and this is not even an Olympic year.
That's like talking about your Christmas shopping list in June.
This all came from recent days in Rome, where swimming times became like a fishing limit. If it wasn't a world record, you had to throw it back.
Forty-three world records fell in a week, with some of the old standards shattered so thoroughly, you started wandering if maybe past swimmers had to backstroke through oatmeal.
But no, apparently much of the speed came from these new polyurethane suits, which must be the greatest technological advancement in the swimming pool since chlorine. After hearing about how well they worked – how, in fact, they had alarmed so many that they are to be banned at year's end – I spent the weekend trying to find one myself to give it a test swim.
The idea was to see if the engineering was so good, it could turn a paddle boat into a torpedo. Nothing polyurethane at the sporting goods store, though. Nothing at Wal-Mart, either. I did get a number for a supplier. In Italy.
Just as well, because the editor probably would have wanted art had I squeezed into one, and those pictures would have had to be confiscated faster than dunks on LeBron James.
Phelps, you might have heard, hasn't been swimming high-tech, either, mostly because he stayed with his sponsor's old suit, even if that style was so last year.
Milorad Cavic – the Serbian butterflyer whom Phelps beat in Beijing by the width of a gnat – was quoted as saying maybe Phelps should get a new model before their rematch in Rome. He'd even buy one for Phelps, because he wanted his rival at his fastest.
Would Padraig Harrington offer to buy Tiger Woods a new driver?
They met Saturday in the 100-butterfly in swimming's version of Ali-Frasier. A fired-up Phelps beat Cavic again, and had the angry look of a man who was ready to fight a dragon. Or maybe we should we say the Speedo LZR beat the Arena X-Glide, except that sounds like two wrestlers on cable television.
Whichever, it was an electric moment, and afterward Cavic mentioned how the race was exciting but his quotes had not been presented quite the way he meant.
'The media has a way of taking just one tiny little thing and making it into something that it's completely not,' he said at his press conference. "Especially the American media."
The sport shouldn't mind. This is starting to sound a little like Super Bowl media day.
Now what? The Cavic camp suggested a future match race between the two. Phelps and Cavic have become Seabiscuit and War Admiral.
Alas, the championships are over, and the polyurethane suits will have a going-out-of-business sale soon. The geniuses who designed them ought to be hired by Detroit carmakers.
To think, in non-Olympic years, swimming is normally as visible to the American public as Pluto. But this has been a clinic on how to get headlines. Works even better now than positive steroid tests in baseball.
Some European federations demand previous written authorization to swim abroad, after demand forms and written forms to official times done, if those procedures are not done the times will not be official in the federation where you are affiliated…. Some European Federations demand the local organization of an event to send the results formally through a specific program, some organization do not have that program …. Seams incredible but can keep on describing so many weird situations… One personal, a ER done in France from Spanish swimmer was not on TOP10 FINA ranking J and could go on, 16 years of really funny stories
But lets stop here , the issue are the suits; we are not “elite”, we should be able to wear what we have been wearing until now.
The majority of USA swimming athletes are not elite either. I don't really see this as an elite/non-elite issue.
So I guess we shouldn't be expecting Europeans to follow any new rules that are issued then?
It's hard to believe a country is "unable" to submit times. Can a federation really be that disorganized? How can you even hold meets to generate the times if that's the case?
Some European federations demand previous written authorization to swim abroad, after demand forms and written forms to official times done, if those procedures are not done the times will not be official in the federation where you are affiliated…. Some European Federations demand the local organization of an event to send the results formally through a specific program, some organization do not have that program …. Seams incredible but can keep on describing so many weird situations… One personal, a ER done in France from Spanish swimmer was not on TOP10 FINA ranking J and could go on, 16 years of really funny stories
But lets stop here , the issue are the suits; we are not “elite”, we should be able to wear what we have been wearing until now.
The growth we have seen over the past couple of years in the sport of swimming has a lot to do with Michael Phelps of course, but also because of the new technology that the sport has allowed into its arena. I do think this HAS to come into consideration by our governing bodies to keep continued growth.
Where is the evidence that any (recent) increased popularity is due to the tech suits? As pro-suit proponents never cease to remind me, tech suits have been around for at least 10 years.
If you are saying that the recent spate of WRs is the reason for increased popularity, I'll have to disagree. As Shaq said on his show with Phelps -- which I thoroughly enjoyed -- such things result in "golf claps."
There is simply no way people will swim this well in season if they ban the suits - just for that reason, they should leave everything up to the swimmers ....
In-season wearing of tech suits is not enough, as I found out first hand: swimming well in-season is at least as much a function of training as the suit. Wearing a tech suit when I'm fatigued from training brings to mind the phrase "lipstick on a pig...!" :)
Nevertheless I take your meaning: I know you are a proponent of swimming fast in season (which basically means not swimming in meets when too tired, ie not getting too tired in-season). And throwing on a suit is like an instant shave: it is that much easier to get time close to season-ending times.
Of course, if it is that important to you, you can still shave for in-season meets. I've done it before, and I even like the after-effects of being (partially) shaved in practice for the ensuing weeks after the meet. It would be like wearing the suits in practice...but not as hard on the pocketbook.
But I also really like having significant drops at season-ending meets. If I go to the trouble of tapering and travelling to nationals I'd like to have more than a 0.5-1.0 sec drop in time. And maybe I'm too old-school, but I don't share your fondness for swimming too fast in-season. I like training hard during the season; I do this as much for the training as for the competition.
I've done it the other way (ie, fast in-season meets) before and it can come with the price of somewhat slower swimming at the big meet. But that's just me. Even at the elite level you see people all over the board on this: some who do well mostly at the big meets, when rested, and others who swim fast almost all the time.
Nevertheless I take your meaning: I know you are a proponent of swimming fast in season (which basically means not swimming in meets when too tired, ie not getting too tired in-season). And throwing on a suit is like an instant shave: it is that much easier to get time close to season-ending times.
Of course, if it is that important to you, you can still shave for in-season meets. I've done it before, and I even like the after-effects of being (partially) shaved in practice for the ensuing weeks after the meet. It would be like wearing the suits in practice...but not as hard on the pocketbook.
But I also really like having significant drops at season-ending meets. If I go to the trouble of tapering and travelling to nationals I'd like to have more than a 0.5-1.0 sec drop in time. And maybe I'm too old-school, but I don't share your fondness for swimming too fast in-season. I like training hard during the season; I do this as much for the training as for the competition.
I've done it the other way (ie, fast in-season meets) before and it can come with the price of somewhat slower swimming at the big meet. But that's just me. Even at the elite level you see people all over the board on this: some who do well mostly at the big meets, when rested, and others who swim fast almost all the time.
It's important to me, and much more fun, to swim fast all the time. I did this train, train, train for THE big taper meet all the time when I was a kid. It is old school, and I like doing it completely differently now as a master. I love tinkering with my training periods and training in general; and I can't always get to Nats anyway. (Judging by my family's current tolerance level, I think I'm going to be 0 for 2 next year.) Plus, as a geezer, I'm leery about training for THE meet and then getting sick or injured or have a family issue interfere with the plan.
Now I do own one of those magic suits that does the swimming for me. Otherwise, I'm sure I'd just swim slow all the time in season from lack of training. ;)
