Against the tide?

The decision to ban bodysuits has evoked a mixed response from swimmers

The ban on vuvuzela for the next FIFA World Cup (2014) may not take away the shine from the sport, but the ban levied on the high-tech body suits by FINA, swimming’s governing body, has made the sport of swimming retrograde by two decades. In what has been termed as a landmark decision, one which will “slow down” even Michael Phelps, came into effect in January 1 this year. Body/racing suits including the famous wear — the Speedo LZR Racer, BlueSeventy Nero, Aqua Zone Renegade, Jaked, and the new TYR A7 have thus been rendered useless.

While the FINA decision is debatable and also deplored by most swimmers, the new suits will be less glamorous and more body revealing. More importantly, they will slow down the pace of the swimmers. Under the new rule, men will be restricted to suits that extend from the waist to the top of the knees and women’s suits cannot go past the shoulders or beyond the knees. What do the Indian swimmers feel about this decision?

Olympian Sandeep Sejwal welcomes the move and says, “20 years ago swimming was on the basis of strength and swimmers didn’t have the technical advantage. Now new swimming techniques have evolved, so its unfare for those who held the records for long and after the suits records were broken with huge margin.”

Claiming to be as good (in terms of performance) even without the suits, Sejwal says, “We are in the process of getting used to swim without the suits. In some time we should be able to better our timings.” Sejwal says that it took time getting used to the advantage. “We will have to use more energy to float and move ahead. The suits helped the body to float and swimmer could use all the energy to move forward.” he adds.

Bangalore-based Olympian and 2010 Arjuna Awardee Rehan Poncha feels the swimmers will have to work that much harder. “We’ll have to recreate all that’s missing in terms of technique, floating and others. It is better to swim with the suits than without them,” says Poncha. He strongly disagrees with FINA’s decision, “It’s stupid to ban the swim suit. Every sport progresses with time. Then, let’s cancel the progress made by other sports, let tennis players play with wooden racquets,” he exclaims. FINA has revealed that the world records set by swimmers wearing the new suits were unlikely to be retrospectively erased, but conceded that a caveat may be added to the times.

The question is how much difference is it going to make? A simple experiment can answer this: Wear a high-tech swim suit and swim 25 metres. Rest and recover, and swim the same distance with the FINA approved suit. Make sure to give your 100 per cent in both cases.

Needless to say, one will know the technical advantage. The advanced suits are buoyancy-enhancing, putting a swimmer in a better swimming position without any effort. The friction-reducing polyurethane in the suits helps in muscular compression, and hence a smooth swim in the water.

Now, that the suits are a thing of the past, swimmers would look like their counterparts of the 1990s. Since the ban came into effect, no world record has been equalled, let alone erased. Let’s see if Michael Phelps can break a few records while swimming against the tidal wave created by the authorities.