Philip Gomes

Pulling on a new skin

I'm amazed to see swimmers at the Rome world championships celebrating world/personal records as if they were their own when many of those records can be directly attributed to technology and not advances in training or personal ability.

I'm certainly not a technological luddite, far from it, but this is different.

With the simple act of slipping on a new skin you become a human fish of a different kind. Buoyancy and shape is changed, manipulated in a way that is not natural, with the effect of immediately enhancing performance.

Am I glad to see the suits banned in 2010? No. You can't really go back, so if the sport is to go in this direction, then an asterix denoting a change of technology affecting performance needs to be added to the record books.

I've already added that asterix to Rome, regarding many of the results as irrelevant and not useful indicators of performance improvements.

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Knockout!

Pulling on a new skin