The Jam Box

If you were only watching the clock at this weekend’s Charlotte UltraSwim meet, you’d swear that time was crawling by.

In a sport where it has long been a given that the best swimmers get faster every year, the waterfall is now running uphill. Most of the competitors at this year’s UltraSwim are swimming a second or two slower than their times in the same meet in the same pool in 2009.

It’s not the swimmers.

You may have missed this bulletin, but the technological arms race in swimming is over. FINA, the world governing body of the sport, decreed in 2009 that the high-tech bodysuits that contributed to more than 100 world records over the past two years would be banned in 2010.

That means the space-age suits – which sliced through the water more efficiently than human skin and also made it easier for swimmers to float – are no more.

And that’s a good thing.

Although I get a vicarious thrill from a world record being broken just like anyone else, the records were being cheapened by getting lowered so frequently. Last summer at the 2009 world championships in Rome – before the suits were banned – 43 world records were set. Who can keep up with that?

Think of the low-tech suits as swimming’s version of NASCAR’s restrictor plate.

The swimmers I’ve talked to here have mostly good things to say about the end of the space-age bodysuit era. The men here are mostly wearing waist-to-knee suits, known as jammers. Women can wear shoulder-to-knee suits.

“I think swimming is actually swimming again,” said Michael Phelps, the 14-time Olympic gold medalist who set numerous world records in the bodysuits. “Now it’s not who is wearing what suit and who has what material… It’s going to be more challenging to be able to swim that fast. We’ve got to be in better shape. Stronger. We’ll have to do a number of things to get back to those times, but I think the people who want to get back to those times will.”

Said Charlotte native Ricky Berens: “Personally I didn’t like the bodysuits much. They were a pain to get on and very uncomfortable. But they also made swimming easier. They held you up in the water. People could get away with less work. It made it easier to swim fast. Now you’re going to see a lot slower times, but you’re also going to see who the real swimmers are.”

Said Olympian Rebecca Soni: “I like where it has ended up. For a long time, when you talked about a meet, people would talk as much about what somebody wore as what time they swam.”

Said five-time Olympic gold medalist Aaron Peirsol: “Every sport has to deal with technological advances. You had the metal bats in baseball or the graphite racket in tennis.”

Freestyle specialist Cullen Jones – who lives in Charlotte and went to N.C. State – professed some nostalgia for the high-tech bodysuits.

“Wearing a full-body suit has always been my preference,” Jones said. “I would have loved to have continued to have worn them, but at the same time, I understand that it had become an arms race.”

There’s no need for swimming to go back to the Mark Spitz days (nylon briefs, no cap or goggles). Or, even further, to Johnny Weissmuller, a great swimmer of the 1920s before he turned into “Tarzan.” He actually wore a wool swimsuit with shoulder straps.

But the welcome return of the low-tech suits does mean that swimming now faces a couple of years that may be almost bereft of world records.

On a smaller scale, Phelps won the 200 freestyle at the 2009 UltraSwim in 1:46.02 in a full-body suit. He swam 1:47.73 in the same event Friday night in jammers – about 1.7 seconds slower – and won again, because everyone else is a bit slower, too. And that’s OK.

Now, at least, when a swimmer does set a world record, everyone will know that the swimmer did it, and not his suit.

Scott Fowler: 704-358-5140

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Records aren't their strong suit now