Study: New Swimsuit Aided Record-Setters at 2009 Championships
Yes, the 2009 swimming world championships were just as devious as you suspected.
A study by Northwestern University has found that the 43 world records set at the event in Rome were accomplished primarily as a result of the participants’ swimsuits.
The study, published this month in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, found the slippery suits reduced drag, improved buoyancy and compressed muscles to create what many considered a mockery of the sport.
The researchers deemed Speedo’s full-body LZR Racer suit, a woven elastane-nylon and polyurethane piece launched by the swimwear giant in February 2008, to be a primary culprit of the enhanced swim times.
“Our data strongly indicate that it was more than just hard work that allowed athletes to set the unprecedented 43 world records during the 2009 world championships,” said Lanty O’Connor of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “The swimsuits played a significant role.”
Men set world records in 15 of the 20 long-course (50 meters or longer) swimming events recognized by the Federation Internationale de Natation, the sport’s sanctioning body. Women set records in 17 events.
O’Connor noted in the study that just two world records — in the men’s 1,500-meter freestyle and men’s 200-meter individual medley — have been set since FINA banned full-body, polyurethane technical swimsuits in 2010. (Each record was set at the 2011 World Championships in Shanghai.)
Make this suit available to all competitors or ban it if it is that influential. It would not be fair to allow select athletes to use something that provides a technological advantage that is not achievable by other means. Plain and simple.
On the other hand, I think that anything that enables humans to push the boundaries of the attainable is a good thing overall.