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During the World Swimming Championships in Rome, the United States swimmer and Beijing relay gold medalist, Ricky Berens, tore apart the bottom part of his body-suit, leaving bare buttocks revealed. He was just about to step up to the starting block in the qualifying heat of the 4X100 freestyle relay. As Berens leaned over to stretch the suit tore open, revealing all.
It is more than just revealing bare backsides however, that has the body-suits embroiled in an International pool of controversy.
From Jan 1 2010 FINA (International Swimming Federation) will ban the record breaking high-tech body-suits from the 1st January, 2010. Suits which aid flotation, while the swimmer remains high and dry.
“The new technology in suits probably are more performance-
The extremely expensive suits make a really difficult situation for many athletes who can't afford, several times a year, to spend $600 for updated bathing suits. Woods said, “However the primary reason is that the suits have made the sport unfair".
Phelps chose to remain with last year's Speedo LZR Racer, which is less than half polyurethane, when competing against Bidermann, who wore a 100% polyurethane Arena suit, in the World Championships. A suit Phelps had spent two years helping his coach to design. Phelp’s coach threatened to pull him out of all future competition unless the situation was sorted out. The body-suits from Italian manufacturers Arena and Jaked are considered to make the swimmer move more efficiently through the water.
FINA, under pressure, announced that suits must be approved 12 months before Olympic competitions, or world championships and must be available commercially, at least six months in advance.
Material experts, plus a scientific commission from each continent will have to approve the swimsuits and will monitor developments in technology. This will include the sort of textile, or fabric a suit can be made from.
All records will however be allowed to stand up to 2010, in spite of around 70% of records having been broken by swimmers wearing full body-suits. The problem now is that swimmers competing in world championship events and the Olympics, after the start of the official ban of the body-suits, will be competing against records that have been set using a major technological advantage.
The questions remain – will this be opening up a can of worms? Numerous sport use technologically enhanced equipment from running shoes, helmets to kayaks, tennis rackets and even boxing gloves. Should competitive sport return to the original Greek method of competition – naked?
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