Links posted on August 02, 2009
Today was the final day of the World Swimming Championships in Rome and the biggest stories were one dude's suit letting him down and Phelps crushing Cavic in the rematch of the 100m fly that you may remember from Beijing 2008. The most interesting sideline, however, has to be the decision by the world swimming authority to ban most of the new high-tech suits starting next year. (Indeed, part of the Phelps/Cavic drama was when Cavic said Phelps should get the newest 100% polyurethane suit if he wanted to win. Guess it doesn't make the difference in every case.) As a result, world records set at this event are expected to stand for a very long time once swimmers lose full body synthetic suits.
This is unprecendented in sports, as far as I know. Too many records have fallen in the last few years and people have started to feel it devalues athetic ability over simply having the newest and greatest suit. But hasn't this been happening in almost every sport? I'm certain that every year sees new shoes, kayaks, bicycles, etc.... will any other sports follow suit (ha!) and ban further innovation? (By the way, I'm sort of for this announcement. It seems weird to me that every world wide swim meet breaks almost every event's record. Shouldn't it be harder to break than that?)