Britta Stefen's WR in the 100 free and her suit comment soon thereafter!

Britta Steffen set a new WR in the 100-LCM free in a time of 52.85 at German Nationals. (Congratulations, Britta, the SCAQ Blog likes you. :-)

Soon thereafter she commented that the suit material her new Adidas Hydrofoil suit was made of would destroy the sport.

She had surpassed Libby Trickett's former WR by 3/100ths-of-a-second which is a really a small margin. Actually, it practically a tie.

I was recently beat during a 200-SCY freestyle relay that I was leading off in by SCAQ teammate, Dan Leonard, who beat me by 3-100ths-of-second as well.

I looked over at him like a bad boy as our hands were reaching for the wall and he beat me by only half-a-finger length. So over a 100-LCM race, Steffen, was half-a-finger-length faster than Tricket or simply just .42-seconds faster than her WR in Beijing before Trickett snatched it.

I don't see that sort of a time drop as a sure sign that the sport of swimming is going up in flames.

Since FINA is being so incompetent, Perhaps the athletes at large should just vote instead of the know-bests at FINA?

Let's have age-group swimmers, college swimmers, and here is a thought, let's have women swimmers vote too since not one woman had a say in the speedsuit votes in the first place. (Masters get to wear whatever we want. ;-P )

Reference to Britta's WR and comment, CBSsports.ca: [Link]