In just weeks, Australian has lost five world records to European swimmers!

From Nicole Jeffrey writing for the Australian:

Australia has lost five world records to European athletes in the past two weeks, none of whom was wearing a Speedo suit.

Rapidly evolving swimsuit technology is influencing results so much that sports newspaper L'Equipe listed the French team for the world titles by suit when it was announced this week.

Eleven of the 15 men and 14 of the 20 women in the team wore Jaked suits.

Three of the four men who did not - Bernard (Arena), Hugues Duboscq (Adidas) and Amaury Leveaux (Tyr) - had been pre-selected after winning Olympic medals last year.

In a complete reversal from the Beijing Games, when the Speedo LZR was regarded as the pace-setting suit, only five successful French swimmers wore Speedo.

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The Australian team is sponsored by Speedo but Australian Swim Team members can wear suits from a competing company as long as these suits are unbranded or do not display a logo or manufacturer name.

With all this in mind, which Australian athletes will be wearing unbranded suits versus the Speedo LZR? The subject of the article, Stephanie Rice, states that she does not have a suit sponsor. Obviously, Rice, was given remarkably good advice from her handlers to keep her suit options open and thereby allow her the opportunity to wear the fastest suit possible at any race she competes in.

Hence, we may see her in a Jaked come the 2009 Fina World Championships in Rome or a blueseventy Nero, or a TYR Titan, or perhaps a LZR in Rome.

Her logic seems so impregnable to me: Her swimming drives her business but her business does not drive, or is allowed to hurt, her swimming performance. This way her suit decisions remain flexible; (or fluid ;-), and she can feel absolutely in control of her suit decisions.

Next week is when the FINA releases their list of approved suits for 2010. With swimmers like, Eamon Sullivan, complaining that the aforementioned suits should be banned, has he not in turn promoted these suits as a superior alternative should they be allowed?