As regular readers of this weblog know, competitive swimming is my favorite sport. This is why I was so tuned in over the past week to the 13th FINA World Swimming Championships, which were being televised from Rome, Italy.
No doubt the draw for most fans was seeing if phenom Michael Phelps would be able to emulate his feat at last year’s Beijing Olympics by winning all of his events. And this was by no means a guarantee — given his six-month layoff, during which he evidently smoked pot as often as he ate the Kellogg’s Corn Flakes he endorsed.
As it turned out, however, coverage of Phelps’ expected exploits was upstaged by coverage of all of the no-name swimmers who were breaking world records. Specifically, the story of these Championships was the polyurethane, rubber-coated bodysuit, called the X-Glide and made by the Italian company Arena, in which these swimmers glided to an unprecedented 43 world records.
But nothing heralded this supposed triumph of technology over talent quite like an erstwhile no-name German swimmer named Paul Biedermann defeating Phelps in the 200m Freestyle on Tuesday in decisive, if not humiliating, fashion. In fact, Biedermann’s time of 1 minute 42 seconds was 0.89 under Phelps’ world record.
This was when the Championships became more about the Arena bodysuit than about swimming:
They can probably expect Michael not to swim until [FINA’s ban on those polyurethane bodysuits is] implemented. I’m done with this. This has to be implemented immediately. The sport is in shambles right now, and they’re going to lose the guy that fills these seats.
They’ve lost the history of the sport. Does a 10-year-old boy in Baltimore want to break Paul Biedermann’s record?
This was how Phelps’ coach, Bob Bowman, reacted after Biedermann’s shocking win. And, for the record, I would answer his egocentric and parochial question by saying, “No Bob; but a 10-year-old boy in Munich probably does!”
At any rate, Phelps’ participation has become so indispensable to the success of any international meet these days that, just hours after Bowan’s hissy fit, FINA announced that it would implement its ban — not in April 2010 as previously announced but in January 2010. (I assume because there are no international meets between now and then.) Bowman duly decreed that this was acceptable.
For his part, here’s how Phelps reacted to his first loss in this event in almost six years:
Technology ….. has changed the sport completely. Now it’s not swimming. You hear a headline; it’s always, ‘Who’s wearing what suit?’ It’s not swimming. I’m looking forward to the day we can call our sport swimming again.
I am constrained to note, however, that many people protested against the competitive advantage Phelps’ (then) technologically superior Speedo LZR bodysuit allegedly gave him at last year’s Beijing Olympics; which makes the way Bowman and Phelps protested against the Arena X-Glide at this year’s World Championships seem somewhat hypocritical.
Meanwhile, the much anticipated showdown between Phelps and Milorad Cavic in the 100m on Friday demonstrated just how misguided, and fraught with instructive irony, this swimsuit controversy was.
First it might be helpful to recall that Phelps defeated Cavic by a mere wink of an eye in this event at the Olympics to keep his quest of winning eight gold medals alive. But, despite photographic evidence of his loss, Cavic insisted that, because the entire world had become emotionally vested in this Phelpsean quest, Olympic officials conspired to rob him of his Olympic glory.
Now, after hearing Phelps effectively blame his loss in the 200m Freestyle on Biedermann’s superior swimsuit, Cavic offered to the even the playing field as follows:
If Mike wants an Arena, he just has to say it. If he wants a Jaked [a similar polyurethane bodysuit] and they don’t want to give it to him free, I’ll buy it for him. He has options. I think in the media it’s been portrayed that he has no option, he has to swim for (Speedo). It’s a complete lie.
In fact, such was the widespread belief that it was all about the bodysuit at these championships that Speedo took the commercially embarrassing step of granting all of its athletes permission to switch to Arena of Jaked to improve their chances of victory; and many of them did … but not Phelps.
Imagine his (and Speedo’s?) vindication then when he beat Cavic in this seminal grudge race in undisputed and world-record fashion. Indeed, it seems to have only enhanced Phelp’s aura of invincibility.
There is nothing that guy can’t do. Michael Phelps is Michael Phelps and he does what he does — and he did.
(Cavic)
The irony, however, is that in beating Cavic in his “inferior” Speedo, Phelps made a mockery of all of the calls for FINA to ban the Arena bodysuit. Never mind the obvious fact that not every swimmer who won at the Olympics wore the Speedo LZR, just as not every swimmer at these Championships wore the Arena X-Glide.
Therefore, instead of banning the Arena and Jaked, FINA should allow swimmers to wear whatever they want, in accordance with public decency, and let the best swimmer (and his or her swimsuit) win.
Incidentally, Phelps participated in six events and ended up winning five gold medals (in the 400m and 800m freestyle relays, the 100m and 200m butterfly and the 400m medley relay). And as indicated above, he has to settle for silver in the 200m freestyle.
But given how well he performed, setting world records in those five events, I hope his coach will prevail upon FINA to reject foolish and utterly unsustainable calls to put an asterisk next to the names of all swimmers who set world records at these Championships wearing the Arena bodysuit.
Related commentaries:
Phelps, 14-time Olympic champion, is a dope fiend
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