Fast Suits Banned

There are several talks about the banning of the new tech. suits that significantly impacted these past Olympic games.  As we know, these suits are banned in the U.S. for the 12 and under age group swimmers in order to preserve the competitive nature of the sport and take away the financial burden that these suits would have on young swimmers and their families.

However, now Australia is looking to ban the suits all together for the same reasons.  That means that all age groups would not have access to the suits.  In my opinion, I don’t think it is a good idea to restrict the access to these suits when the swimmers have reached a certain level.  Maybe 13 is still a little bit too young to introduce these suits to the swimmers and maybe we should reconsider to move the age to 15.  However, that being said, younger swimmers are becoming faster and faster each and every year.  So, by the time that the 2012 Olympic Games come up we might be seeing several more 15 year olds at trials.

Again, this is just my opinion, but I think that Australia would be making a huge mistake if they were to remove the suits overall from all of their comptitions.

Olympic Numbers

Connecticut Swim Teams have several team sponsors, but are primarily aligned with either TYR Sports (like us – the Hamden Noth Haven YMCA Typhoons) or Speedo.  If you watched the 2008 Summer Olympic Games you probably noticed that a lot of the swimmers were wearing special suits.  Most of these suits were Speedo brand.  These figures were sent to me by a colleague with regard to percentage of people who wore the Speedo LZR suit:

Overall Medals:

  1. 29 out of 32 Gold Medals (91%)
  2. 23 out of 32 Silver Medals (73%)
  3. 32 out of 34 Bronze Medals (93%)

USA Medals

  1. Gold Medals: 12 out of 12 (100%)
  2. Silver Medals: 8 out of 9 (89%)
  3. Bronze Medals: 10 out of 10 (100%)

Records

  1. World Records: 23 of 25 (92%)
  2. Olympic Records: 43 of 53 (81%)
  3. American Records: 24 of 24 (100%)

Now, I am not saying that Speedo has made the “next gen” product, but those are some pretty impressive statistics above!  Personally, I understand that concept of the new suits, but it does not surpass nor overcome the amount of hard work and effort that these swimmers put in to these Olympic Games.  After all, all of the swimmers were suited up in these newer faster suits (whether they were Speedo, TYR, etc).

Check out our Hamden Swim Team!