Tuesday, April 28, 2009

It was Fred Bousquet that set the WR in the 50 LCM Free not the 'Jaked!'


Fina approved the Jaked swimsuit just like they did the Speedo LZR, the Tracer Rise, and the blueseventy Nero. The Jaked appeared in Beijing but it took an incredibly talented swimmer to break that 50 Free WR this week and Fred Bousquet was that person not his suit.

Note that the upper tier swimmers who are criticizing rubberized suits in the press are seemingly sponsored by suit manaufacturers not producing a rubberized suit.

From the Brisbane Times:

The suit wars have led to the atmosphere on the pool deck at the French national titles becoming poisonous with even Bernard's coach Denis Auguin lamenting the situation.

"I read that (Frenchman) Amaury Leveaux had a suit psychosis panic attack with all the suits before the 100 final with all of these guys wearing all these suits ... it shouldn't be that," Sullivan told AAP.

"Fair enough people get nervous but it should not be because of what someone is wearing.

"I think it is pretty ridiculous that it has got to this point."

[Link]

Oh, by the way, Bernard is sponsored by Arena.

7 comments:

John Craig said...

Yes, it's true that Bousquet is an exceptional athlete, and yes, there is definitely some self-interest involved when swimmers who are sponsored by one suitmaker criticize the suits made by another manufacturer. But for the swimmers or coaches to say, "I threw the suit in the pool and it didn't swim by itself" is a little disingenous, a little akin to an East German from the 1970's saying, "I put the vial of steroids by the side of the pool and it didn't swim by itself." Of course the suit doesn't swim by itself, any more than the steroids do, but of course they both help. If they didn't, the swimmers wouldn't use them.

Full disclosure: I'm using a B70 myself these days, no it doesn't swim by itself, and yes it does help.

Mike Ball said...

Tony, the Arena X-Glide, the (Not approved by FINA. suit that Bernard used to 46.94, looks to be Jaked knock-off.

FYI, Bernard did not use the X-Glide in the final. He used last year's top-of-the-line Arena - the one developed in response to the LZR - and went 47.5.

maly said...

in the final of the 100 free , alain bernard also had a google incident , they filled up with water when he dived in so he swam blind .

Tony Austin said...

I just looked up my times so as to look at my improvement with and without a speedsuit. Though i am still dropping, In a 50-free it is only a few tenths.

The 100-free is to hard to ficure out. I dropped .9 off my non-speedsuit time from the year before but two weeks later; or last weekend, I dropped another .6 of a second off my 100-free mark.

Consequently I feel the suits are valuable but my ability is doing most of the work.

Steve said...

I think this is a terrible situation. The Jaked suit is obviously faster than the LZR, and Speedo doesn't have a response. Sullivan is signed to Speedo and can't wear another suit without breaking his contract. Thankfully Speedo's rivals caught up before Beijing and there was a level playing field at the Olympics, but that doesn't look like it will be the case at Rome.


Some proponents of these new suits may argue that swimmers shouldn't enter into exclusive contracts. Yet at the same time they argue that one of the advantages of all this new technology is that it's bringing in more sponsorship money so that people like Torres can support themselves.

It's certainly exciting to see all these new world records, but the situation that Leveaux has been put through is absolutely horrible.

french coach said...

Actually, this jaked could not be the same than the 2k8 approved version.

for the arena: Alain said immediately after the 100 final that he had water in is goggles.
That's just something he certainly said to explain the 0.5' time difference compared to the semi and give the illusion that the suit was not the primary factor. (Denis is coach is a realy cool and interesting person).

Amaury often says fake things too ^^. Tony, one day I will translate you one of his interviews.so funny xD (talking bad, kissing the reporter and stuff like that)

Tony Austin said...

All this wonderful French swimming has me yearning to learn French. My work would like it too since we do work for Orange France and SFR.

You call a person who knows two languages, bilingual. You call a person who only knows one, an American.