Michael Phelps lost a race. That’s right people, Phelpsie lost his first race in FOUR years. It wasn’t the pot (I’m sure he didn’t inhale!) it was……his competitor’s swimsuit. Yes, his swimsuit. Apparently the German had on a pure Polyurethane suit that gave him an unfair advantage. So much of an advantage, in fact, that these particular suits are now going to be banned by FINA (the International Swimming Federation) next Spring. Phleps, who has a promotional agreement with Speedo, will not be able to wear the soon to be outlawed Arena X-Glide, so his solution to that little problem is this—he will not swim competitively until the suits are officially out of the water next year!
Michael Phelps’ coach, Bob Bowman said, “(the ban) has to be implemented immediately. The sport is in shambles right now, and they better do something or they are going to lose their guy who fills these seats.”
Really? It just smacks of poor sportsmanship to me to say you are going to exit the game because your (supposed) talent cannot outrun a swimsuit. On the other hand, it is apparent that suits are making a difference. At the Beijing Olympics, twenty-three world records were decimated and 94% of the gold medals were won by competitors sporting the Speedo LZR.
Arena and Jaked, both Italian swimsuit makers, decided to up the ante by creating the pure Polyurethane suit. Records fell even faster! Scientists are now being hired to determine if pockets of air are trapped between the suit and the swimmer’s skin thereby adding buoyancy—an obvious advantage.
So, what happens to all those new records? Do we erase scores back to pre-polyurethane? I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know, these days, in just about every sport, it’s more about technology and less about skill. I personally miss good old-fashioned skill. Look at tennis. I remember as a child watching Billie Jean King, Ilie Nastase, Arthur Ashe and Chris Evert gracefully placing balls with their wooden rackets. It was a dance and it was thrilling. Nowadays, players use rackets made with Hyper-Carbon which is 65% lighter and 4 times stronger than the graphite or titanium models. Hyper-Carbon is found in satellites, airplanes and bridges. Wow. That’s some fancy racket. The record 155 mph serve will surely be broken in short measure. That’s great, I suppose, but where is the delicate top-spin that makes a serve out of reach because of amazing placement not amazing, arm-breaking speed?
Maybe I am old-fashioned and need to get with the times, but my favorite sport of sailing has also lost much of its grace. The America’s Cup is less about a strong, cohesive team and more about how much money the owner has to spend on covert ‘improvements’ to the hull or sails. It seems everyone is looking for an easier way to be better. When a NASA engineer is developing swimsuits, I think it has gone too far. Whatever happened to good old “practice makes perfect?”
