New Swim Suits

I have followed this whole swimsuit issue quite closely.
Anyone involved in the sport quickly recognized that the suit made a
significant difference in a swimmers performance. It was obviously that someone
had not done their homework before adopting it as legal or as many suspect
there was some hanky panky in the higher levels of sport to get it adopted.
Most of the swim coaches I work with describe it as a wetsuit, an obvious aid
to buoyancy. It looked like the NCAA was not going to legalize it for use in
NCAA competition, a good move. Then I found out last week that under threat of
a lawsuit from one of the manufactures it is legal for use in NCAA competition.
Swimming is a sport under the gun with programs being dropped; now you are
talking about it costing more to outfit a swimmer than a football player, think
of the implications of that? I feel this is symptomatic of a bigger malaise
affecting sport. There is this obsession with chasing records instead of focus
on competition that is the essence of sport. Where can this go? What would
happen if we turned off the clock and just raced? Isn’t that the essence of
sport? To keep pushing the envelope, chasing records leads to the temptation to
dope. Where does it stop? Perhaps a Roman circus would be appropriate. We are
close to that now. When will we wake up?