Fina rulemaking: How to run swimming into the ground

Modern competitive swimming throughout its history has upheld standards of athletic purity and fairness that have been the envy of the sporting world. Of course there have been occasional lapses–some serious, like performance-enhancing drugs or abusive coaches–and some not so serious, like spitting in competitors' lanes or bonging in front of cameras. But the greatest threat to swimming's integrity as a sport isn't posed so much by lamentable incidents or individuals, as it is by the very rules that govern the sport. The embarrassing fiasco around performance-enhancing bodysuits is only the tip of the rules iceberg, but let's start there, because that problem isn't solved. FINA half-solved it, a pattern of behind-the-curve improvisation that has become all too familiar. HALF A BODYSUIT IS STILL A BODYSUIT Why do we wear swimsuits anyway? Well, to cover our private parts in public, or as FINA puts it, to "not offend morality and good taste." A swimsuit should neither impede nor enhance our progress through the water. In other words, we as swimmers should be solely responsible for the speed we achieve. There are many ways to artificially improve our times in the pool: we could wear fins, or leg floats, or caps with foils like cycling helmets; we could design pools with springy starting blocks and end walls. None of these artificial aids are permitted, and for good reason. Once you permit performance enhancers, it never ends: helium belts and jet packs and who knows what else. Swimming is not NASCAR. When bodysuits first appeared a few years back, FINA was romanced by the excitement of falling records and rising corporate influence in the sport. However, by not taking a principled position against artificial speed aids of any kind, FINA failed to anticipate just how bionic those bodysuits could rapidly become. As things got really ridiculous, FINA panicked, taking half-measures. Literally. Rather than full-length bodysuits, males and females are now permitted to wear genderized versions of half-length bodysuits. So the sawed-off half-suits enhance performance, only about half as much as the full bodysuits. Problem solved? Not until it is generally acknowledged--by FINA and the swimsuit makers and the swimming community at large--that competitive swimsuits should not enhance performance. And they very much do, in a variety of ingenious ways. Bodysuits compress and reshape the body, making it more like a torpedo fuselage. Their surface is more hydrodynamic than human skin, lessening drag. The tightness and wetsuit-thickness of bodysuits minimize muscle vibrations and the resulting turbulence. Bodysuits are allowed a degree of buoyancy, which makes them (sorry, no gentler way to phrase it) flotation devices. And finally, they are allowed enough impermeability to trap air within the bodysuit. This is a snap solution to the age-old problem in swimming of keeping the lower half of the body high in the water, so you don't drag it behind you like an anchor. Unlike the design of bodysuits, the solution to this rules crisis is not rocket science. Suits for males should not rise above the navel or cover any part of the leg. Suits for females should not cover the arms, neck, or legs. All suits should be single-layer woven textile fabric, non-buoyant, permeable to air and water, and gossamer thin. Tightness? That's up to you. COMPETITIVE SWIMMING INVOLVES STROKES (THAT MEANS ARMS) Another classic example of FINA having a broken rules compass is the issue of underwater swimming. The technique popped its head into living rooms around the world during the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, when two swimmers medaled (gold and silver) in the 100M backstroke using a streamlined underwater dolphin kick for much of the race's distance. Because the new experimental underwater technique had not previously been very successful, FINA backstroke rules had not addressed its use. After Seoul FINA reacted by improvising a series of rules changes over the next few years that variously permitted, but limited, underwater streamlining. As the rules stand today, the head must break the water surface within the first 15 meters of any pool length. Streamlining is disallowed only in the breaststroke. Why 15 meters? No reason. For awhile FINA had it at 10. Why the same rule for all size pools? Good question. Why would streamlining be allowed for 30% of a long-course meters pool, and 66% of a short-course yards pool? 15 meters is about 49 feet, which for most American school competitions means you have to swim a mere 26 feet on the surface. For a decent swimmer, that means two or three strokes to the end wall. The NCAA men's short-course championships this spring felt like whale-watching. Then there's the question why breaststroke gets left out of the streamlining party. Maybe for FINA it just didn't feel right. Yet. The real question is why FINA didn't see the basic principles that streamlining violates, and respond accordingly. Was it, like bodysuits, the siren song of more records falling? Competitive swimming has long applied a separation-of-strokes principle: events are divided into different strokes, each with defined kicking and arm movement requirements, which (with the exception of butterfly) streamlining obviously violates by introducing an alien kick. Breaststroke is defined as a whip kick and a double-arm pull with a below-surface recovery (to the elbow). Backstroke requires an alternating kick and single-arm pull on one's back. Freestyle is largely 'free' in name only: you can't use any of the other three strokes in medley events (what's left?). Freestyle is of course also confined by the streamlining rules among many others. Might as well rename it 'frontstroke,' defining it as an alternating kick and single-arm pull on one's front. The only stroke where underwater dolphin kicking can possibly be considered consistent with the stroke definitions is butterfly, with its dolphin kick and double-arm pull with above-surface recovery. Is that the solution then, to allow streamlining only for butterfly events? Only if we are comfortable abandoning a second principle that competitive swimming is built upon: events are contested using different strokes, with defined arm and leg movements performed in coordination with one another. Sure, streamlining is fast, and it rests the upper body. But it's not a stroke or a part of a stroke: it's an underwater kick or body undulation done in the absence of an accompanying arm stroke. Besides, the rules for streamlining will always be stuck choosing an inevitably arbitrary distance limit (or no limit at all). Instead of forever ditching the long-held principles that swimming is competed in a quartet of different strokes using distinct arm-and-leg propulsion techniques, let's take a reality break and consider returning to a modernized version of the pre-streamlining rules. After an entry dive or pushoff, swimmers should be required to surface after performing one kicking sequence associated with their stroke (one whip kick for breaststroke, two dolphin kicks for butterfly, six flutter beats for backstroke and 'frontstroke'). The bottom line is that there were some extraordinary performances in the last years of the pre-bodysuit, pre-streamlining era–Janet Evans's distance feats come to mind–that deserve our utmost respect. Would her 20-year-old world records have finally fallen without bodysuits and streamlining? Wouldn't everyone like to find out?