Swimming Bans High-Tech Suits, Ending an Era (Published 2009) (2024)

ROME — In an effort to clean up its sport, the international governing body of swimming will require its athletes to show more skin. By an overwhelming vote Friday at its general congress, FINA officials decided to ban the high-tech swimsuits that have been likened to doping on a hanger.

The ban does not start until 2010, but the polyurethane-based swimsuit era that the swimwear giant Speedo introduced in the lead-up to last year’s Beijing Olympics will effectively be ushered out, presumably with a bang, at the swimming world championships that start here Sunday.

In the 17 months since the LZR Racer hit the market and spawned a host of imitators, more than 130 world records have fallen, including seven (in eight events) by Michael Phelps during the Beijing Olympics.

Phelps, a 14-time Olympic gold medalist, applauded FINA’s proposal that racing suits be made of permeable materials and that there be limits to how much of a swimmer’s body could be covered. The motion must be approved by the FINA Bureau when it convenes Tuesday.

“I like it,” Phelps said. “I think it’s going to be good.”

In the Olympic individual events, only four world records remain from the pre-2008, pre-polyurethane era: the men’s 400- and 1,500-meter freestyles, and the women’s 100 breaststroke and 100 butterfly.

As setting world records became almost commonplace, the swimsuit controversy spread beyond issues of performance into the territory of morality.