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?)
In the real olympics, they competed naked. They should just go back to that.
I think they wore sandles - though I know at least one marathoner in recent history won gold running barefoot.
Yes. this guy
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It's been a while since I've read about it - so I don't remember all the details, but there is some effort by the international cycling union to standardize bikes. Though I think most see these restrictions as silly. For instance there is a weight limit that modern bikes fall under (6.8 kg I think) - so mechanics have to add weight (yes, that's right - add weight) to the bikes before riders can leave the start. (there are also specifications about geometry in bikes -- how far the seat can be above the bars, or how far out the bars can extend from the bike, etc.)
With regards to new cycling positions - there has been some controversy in the world hour record (how far someone can ride in an hour - usually in a velodrome). For a while they did not have these rules and records started falling (check out position by Graeme Obree - think there was even a movie about him). The geometry restrictions above would prevent these positions - though the end result was that one had to ride what we think of as a standard bike in the standard position. The Cannibal even held the record for a few years -- the best cyclist of all time.
posted by pablo at 09:09AM CST on August 03