WASHINGTON — Vindication is sweet! During last summer’s
Olympics, I
wrote in this space that the high-tech swimming suits worn by
competitive swimmers in the events and manufactured by Speedo
with the assistance of NASA scientists were irrelevant to sport
and destined for further controversy. In fact, I argued that the
suits, known as the Speedo LZR racer, were as inappropriate for
competitive swimming as wearing swim fins in the pool. Now a
rising chorus of swimming coaches and competitors at this week’s
NCAA Division I swimming championships seems to agree.
The LZRs are made of high-tech material. They cover a
competitor’s body from shoulders to ankles. The material allows
the body to float higher in the water. It also offers less
resistance to the water than human skin, allowing those who
encase themselves in it to glide through the water faster.
Consequently, in championships everyone wants to wear an LZR.
Those who do obviously have an unfair advantage over those who,
for whatever reason, do not. Not surprisingly, since the arrival
of the LZR the incidence of world records has increased — though
this does not mean that today’s champions in their high-tech
suits are really faster than pre-high-tech swimmers.
In fact, the use of the high-tech suits by Michael Phelps last
summer casts doubt on the claim that his performance was greater
than that of Mark Spitz’s in 1972. Phelps won eight golds, one
more than Spitz. But Spitz, wearing a pre-tech suit best
described as a brief, set world records in every event he won.
Phelps equaled Spitz’s 7 world records, but the records he beat
were set in olden times, before the advent of the LZR. It is
estimated that the LZR improves a swimmer’s time by at least 3%.
Did Phelps best each world record by at least 3%? He did not.
Spitz’s Olympic performance is arguably history’s best.
We can thank the inventers of this idiotic aquatic contraption
for this idiotic debate. Also we must thank NCAA officials who
last September decided to allow its use in intercollegiate
swimming. Why did they not allow the use of swim fins too?
Now coaches are grumbling that the high-tech suits have
introduced a variable into the sport that detracts from the
essence of competitive swimming: stroke mechanics, rigorous
training, and competitive drive. Dennis Dale, the swimming coach
at the University of Minnesota, told the Wall Street
Journal, “I’m very disappointed that our sport has come to a
point where I have to be as concerned with swimsuits as I am with
the swimmers.” Said Phil Whitten, executive director of the
College Swim Coaches Association: “It’s like having one
pole-vaulter using a fiberglass pole and another using a wooden
pole. It’s an absolute mess.”
Moreover, the introduction of high-tech suits not only gives an
advantage to those who wear them. The LZR gives a special
advantage to fat swimmers — yes, I said fat swimmers. The suits
compress competitors’ flesh, making their bodies more buoyant and
allowing them to float higher in the water. Yet when the fat of
corpulent swimmers is compressed their bodies become more buoyant
than the body of a lean, dense-muscled swimmer. Thus the fatties,
according to the Journal, “float higher in the water and
swim faster.”
Another problem is that the LZR suits are tremendously expensive.
Whereas the ordinary brief that most swimmers still wear costs
around $25, the LZR costs $550. Equally appalling, it is good for
only a few races before it is worn out and falls apart. This adds
thousands of dollars more to cost of athletic programs that might
better use their money on scholarships. The LZR redirects
competitive swimming from sport to technological experimentation.
It causes athletic programs to place a swimmer’s swimsuit above
an athlete’s education.
At the heart of the matter we see a clever swimsuit manufacturer
expanding its profits hugely by bringing out a hitherto
unimagined product. What allowed Speedo to get away with this?
Doubtless the officials at the NCAA assume that they are part of
history’s march to progress. Well, if it is progress when
swimmers wearing a high-tech swimsuit break world records, it
would be even more progressive if the swimmers took up my
suggestion and wore swim fins. With them the swimmers would swim
even faster and at much less cost. A standard pair of fins goes
for about $30, and they last for years.
