[Newsbot]

Title: Swimsuit ban creates obstacles
Category: Sports
Posted By: Hyack
Date: 2010-08-20 15:37:33
Canadian

[TuavDan]

Seems to me that good old physical conditioning is not good enough for todays sports. Those countries that have the money and technology are looking for "loop holes," to use this technology to shave seconds off of world records!

[andyt]

The only fair way is to have all swimmers compete naked.

[Brenda]

Get rid of all the "fake" records, and go back to plain swimsuits and speedo's. It's the athlete that counts, not the clothing. At least, imho.

[Freakinoldguy]

This whole thing is bullshit. If they let the records stand for people who had access to these suits then they may as well let Ben Johnson's record stand to, since both of them were acheived by creative "science' and not athleticism.

But I do wait with bated breath for the next scientific breakthrough in sports, that will rewrite the record books. And for anyone who believes these Olympic atheletes have stopped doping, I've got a bridge for sale..........cheap.

[Khar]

The moment I had heard that the American team were using a whole new technology for their suits, I was not happy about it, and, of course, I ended up mentioning it on a forum I visited at the time. I got a lot of responses calling me a party pooper, only in a little bit more nastier tones.

I really felt that the Olympics were supposed to show as a context of athleticism, and not as a place to showcase the newest advancement in multimillion dollar suits. The news article states the reason myself and others were against it even before Phelps and company got those medals, they absolutely simply were not fair, nor in the spirit of competition. That this was so blatantly obvious and announced with such fanfare is what got me most irked -- I expect doping to get through, but when this was passed off with a shrug it didn't impress me much. It also kind of ruined the swimming component of the Olympics for me, because the entire time I sat there with this negative twitch in the back of my head going "Is he winning because he deserves to, or is he winning because of the suit? Did he win the medal, or did he win someone else's medal?"

I felt it very silly when the medals were handed out at the end, as well as a ton of records. With a sweep like that, it should be clear (108 world records later) that the suits deserved to have those medals and records at least as much the people who used them to dash what were likely legitimate scores before them. It seems we rotate through forcing fairness into the various sections of the Olympics, from bidding, to figure skating, to swimming, and so on.

I know technology already plays a big role in sports. I'm sure golf clubs, tennis rackets, and such go through revolutions every season. But if it can be avoided, like the article mentioned it could have, in a sport with one form of technology outside of doping available (the suit), I'd hope people would op for a little more uniformity, especially if it's not a widely available technology.