OWL-DRAGON

Wetsuits

This morning I swam for the first time using a wetsuit. I thought it would be a good idea to get use to the feel of the suit before I used it in the triathlon. I had read that a suit gives increased buoyancy but I was pleasantly surprised by how much easier it seemed to make swimming. My fifty yard laps were on average about 10 seconds faster. This greatly increased my confidence in taking on open water.

But that is not the point of this post. Last Sunday I watched this report on CBS’ Sunday Morning on the new swimsuits that are causing world records to crash.

Now I suppose this is analogous to when pole vaulters made the switch to fiberglass, but it seems to me that this changes the whole nature of the sport. You could get new world records by making the pool 10 centimeters shorter. Shouldn’t a line be drawn separating the records before these suits and after and not pretend that human performance changed.

Chad Brooks