Well the toothpaste is out of tube but Eamon Sullivan wants to put back in; or rather, pretend the toothpaste never came out.
From USA Today:
"I definitely think now that the polyurethane suits have gone, to keep the records would be incredibly stupid," Sullivan said. "That's the reason for going back to these old suits, the massive drop in times in one year."
Sullivan said swimmers may need a period of adjustment after becoming used to the faster suits.
"I think by London 2012 we should be back to the normal way of swimming and knowing where you stand ,and how you can swim and how fast you can swim on any given day," Sullivan said.
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Perhaps that is normal for you, Eamon! Normal for me was watching Ian Thorpe and Inge de Bruijin "stormin' it" in full body suits! That is when I got into swimming! That is what I am nostalgic for and I am so sorry you did not do well in the tech-suit era and I honestly mean that! Seriously, I do. I would probably still be able to wear a tech-suit next month if the brand you would chosen to swim in would have suited you better.
6 comments:
lol. love your little retort. made me giggle.
Thank you , I am very flattered but I did not mean to be funny. 0_o
So this is how the process goes and it always starts in Australia first: Athletes are given talking points about suits, suit records or "insert-swim-politics-here". Then a "journalist" somewhere in a commonwealth country publishes a prepared article stating how brilliant the Australians are.
Suddenly the Americans come in with a more measured harmonic of the above and they get their "poop" pushed through FINA.
The common thread that each of these two countries have is the same "screw Europe" agenda.
Wrong Tony. The suits were screwing everyone. They introduced unfairness to the sport. get over it. We live in Europe, swim masters here. just about no swimmers are feeling screwed right now. most are very happy that the suits are going
As you say Tony... if the records from 2008 and 2009 are disallowed, then we have to go all the way back to 1999. It's a slippery slope that seems to only have an advantage to the current crop of swimmers. Eamon should stick to cooking.
When I mentioned Europe, I was referring to the professionals and yes, I do think Europe got screwed over. As soon as Europeans started winning, the suit companies located therein started growing, and the now we suddenly have a duel in the pool versus Europe rather than Australia.
Tony, Europe has been winning for a while... Alexander Popov, Vladimir Salnikov, Otylia Jedrzejczak, Yana Klochkova, Fred deBurghgraeve, to name a very few non-Australian, non-USA Olympic Gold Medalist. And I'm not even talking about guys like Roland Mathes, Peter van den Hoogenband or any of the Russian women from the mid-70's. You can't mention the East Germans 'cos everyone knows those medals are tainted.
The rest of the world has been closing the gap to the Americans and the Aussies for years now and the pace has accelerated in the past decade. Two big reasons (Neither one suits.): Coaching, the world over, has become way, way better because the internet has dispersed knowledge so much more effectively - that's the big reason - and swimmers themselves have gone trans-border to pursue good training.
Bet you didn't know that Popov and his coach were based in Australia from around 1998 through 2002. And, Gennadi Touretski, Popov's coach, was also Michael Kilm's coach. And Auburn's sprint programme, run by an Aussie at a US university, trains Cielo, a Brazilian, Bosquet, a Frenchman, a couple Aussies and a Kiwi.
Suits were not banned because they were upsetting the old order. They were banned because they made mockery of the integrity of the sport.
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