First the bloggers, now the press is pointing fingers at Speedo! I guess I am not crazy.
Speedo should really do that interview for us and clarify how they do business. From CBS Sports:
"...Socialism is at work because FINA, the swimming governing body, has bowed to the sponsors who control swimming. Not contribute to swimming. Control it. Some of the equipment companies that make the biggest contributions to swimmers in particular and the sport at large, like Speedo, have had their trunks pulled down by lesser-known companies like Arena and Jaked. The irony is beautiful in that Speedo started this revolution, introducing the LZR that dominated at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, but now Speedo has been passed like its swimmers are wearing concrete flippers. And Speedo doesn't like it. Breaks my heart.
[...]
"... You can almost see Schubert's lower lip quiver. The United States might not have swum as well as usual in Rome, but we pouted our asses off. Bob Bowman, Phelps' coach, threatened to withdraw his swimmer from future international events if the swimsuit controversy wasn't addressed, which is hilarious given -- again -- that Phelps' revolutionary (at the time) LZR swimsuit in Beijing helped him win eight medals and set seven world records. ..."
[Link]
Gregg Doyel does make an error thinking Nike is still in the swimsuit business but overall his arguments are well stated.
4 comments:
I guess you can take off the Tin Foil swim cap... the Speedo conspiracy theory has gone mainstream! :)
Love it! - LOL
168 nations voted for textile only suits. 7 voted against. Speedo sponsors Australia, US, UK. What about the other 165 nations? It would be irresponsible and undemocratic for FINA to go against the almost unanimous wishes of the world's swimming federations.
FINA has stepped into the poop on this thing so many different ways...
They could have rescued the shiny suits had they stopped and rigorously define a technical standard. They had the opportunity at the time of the Dubai meeting to get ahead of this thing. They could have - right then - provided a technical standard. They dithered and now they look like asses.
To suggest, however, that Speedo is somehow behind all this ignores business reality. Speedo, I'm betting, stayed committed to the LZR because of inventory concerns and development costs. They'd sunk a lot of money into the LZR and they needed to recover it. Remember, last year - in the run-up to Beijing - Speedo was making LZR's for everyone. You don't stop production lines like that overnight.
And, frankly, I believe Speedo engaged some pretty high powered help to design the suit. That was bleeding edge technology and that doesn't come out of nowhere. I'm betting Speedo's development costs for the LZR are way, way higher than Jaked's or Arena's. (I'm betting Arena got killed on their Revolution and breaking even on the X-Glide. The X-Glide, I think, is a poke in the eye to Speedo.)
The problem with conspiracy theories is that all assume there's a master plan: Been my experience that there's never a master plan. People are too dumb and greedy. (And that's what makes it fun!)
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