The suit that's turned the swim world on its head
Never mind that backstroker Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe barely had time to wedge her body into the new, ultra-tightfitting swimsuit or to test the suit in warmups, let alone race conditions.
Coventry, a gold medalist in the 2004 Olympic Games, hit the water that day and smashed a world record that had stood for 16 years, swimming the 200-meter backstroke in 2:06.39, which was 0.23 second faster than the storied mark.
The new swimsuit? Speedo's LZR Racer.
That modest meet last month in Columbia, Mo., began an unprecedented -- and controversial -- six weeks that turned competitive swimming upside down: 14 world records set as of Wednesday, 13 in the LZR suit.
"There's going to be more fireworks," Speedo USA executive Stu Isaac said of the records being shattered. He suggested that more would fall at the ongoing Olympic trials in Sydney, Australia, and the U.S. trials in Omaha, starting in June.
But the onslaught of new world records has ignited debate over whether high-tech apparel provides an unfair advantage.
Even before the LZR debuted, there were signs of what might come, given how technology has ramped up the race to be faster in the water, revolutionizing the sport much as high-tech metal clubs changed golf.
Not only was this suit designed with help from NASA and its wind tunnels, but Speedo made sure that each step of the development process, including ultrasonically bonded seams -- no thread and needle here -- was approved by FINA, swimming's international governing body.
Then, at the product launch last month, Olympic star and Speedo pitchman Michael Phelps, who will attempt to win an unprecedented eight gold medals at the Olympics this summer in Beijing, said of wearing the suit: "When I hit the water, I feel like a rocket."
One rare complaint, however, surfaced Wednesday at the trials in Australia. Jess Schipper said that the LZR filled with water as she competed in the 200-meter butterfly final and caused her to fade down the stretch.
Still, with so many records falling so fast, three-time Olympic champion Pieter van den Hoogenband captured the essence of the controversy: "This [suit] allows far less talented swimmers to go fast," he told a French newspaper, adding that it made records meaningless.
But multiple-gold-medal-winner Gary Hall Jr., who also is a Speedo swimmer, cautioned against reading too much into the technology.
