Doping control: Interview with Prof Schumacher

Doping control: The biological passport and new strategies in doping control. An interview with Prof Yorck Olaf Schumacher

Last week, we brought you our "inaugural" interview, with Prof Bengt Kayser of Geneva. The idea behind these interviews is to introduce to you a range of different opinions on sports science and training matters, as part of our desire to add value to the sports news, and to translate sports science. Hopefully these interviews become a regular feature of the site!

Today we bring you, as promised, an interview with the University of Freiburg's Professor Yorck Olaf Schumacher, MD, who is a member of the independent expert commission that evaluates blood profiles for the biological passport. Prof Schumacher's track record and research outputs speaks volumes of his area of expertise - blood doping, and sporting performance. Prior to his specialization in blood doping and research, he was a team physician for German Olympic Games and World Championship teams, so has a long history of involvement with elite athletes.

His views on doping control, including new strategies, cost-benefit ratios, performance profiling (which we featured in our previous post) and the overall status of doping control at the moment, can be found below!

Sports Scientists:
You've been very involved in the science against doping in sport - first with your research on blood doping and its detection, then with your work which has helped the UCI develop the biological passport concept. Can you describe the biological passport concept in a nutshell? What is it and how does it work?

Prof Schumacher:
The blood passport is a long standing concept that was developed many years ago, when it became visible that "traditional" doping tests that rely on the detection of "foreign" substances in the human body, would not be able to detect the use of many new drugs that are abused due to the fact that they are similar to endogenous substances produced naturally in the body. EPO was the first major example: For a long time, exogenous EPO was undetectable in urine, because it has more or less the same structure than the endogenous substance. However, its abuse altered different biological markers in the blood, such as haemoglobin concentration or haematocrit (those are the best known) in a very distinct manner.

From this knowledge, it became apparent that one of the key issues in the future of anti doping was not the detection of a forbidden substance itself, but its effects. Its a bit of a shift of paradigm. Before, you had to find a substance in an athlete. With the biological passport, we try to uncover distinct patterns of the effect of a substance. This technique has been in use in forensic science for a long time: You do not have to find the murderer with the knife in his hand stabbing his victim, but it is sufficient to assemble pieces of evidence from different areas (knife, whereabouts of the suspect, motivation, blood traces etc.) that demonstrate beyond a certain level of doubt that the suspect has committed the murder.

In the biological passport, we try to identify suspect constellations of biological markers that can not be caused or explained by other means than doping. This applies to markers of the haematological system, but extends to endocrinology and other organs.

SS: It seems that the fight against doping has had to really "raise its game" and it is becoming a very expensive, very time-consuming and very invasive exercise. Given the suggestion by numerous commenters in recent years that doping should be legalized, or at the very least controlled, do you think the "ends justify the means", and is it worth it?

YOS: It is definitely worth it. Sports has certain rules and the anti-doping rules are a fundamental part of them. These rules need to be respected and the fact that they cannot be fully controlled is not a reason to abolish them. One of the comments on your site used the speeding control as a comparison: There are certainly many people that drive above the speed limits on highways, as you can never control it 100%. Still, nobody thinks of abolishing speeding fines, traffic police etc. We just have to face it: We will never be able to fully eliminate doping from sports. The human kind has always tried to make given tasks easier, that is probably the key to the successful development of the human race in the course of evolution of the species, so to speak.

But I am convinced that by the appropriate measures, we can reduce doping to a level, where it won’t influence the results of a competition on a large scale anymore and give the gifted, clean athlete a fair chance to win over his less gifted, but doped opponent. The major point is the balance of risks. If the consequences that the athlete has to face in case of a positive drug test are heavy (long ban, financial disadvantages) and outweigh the benefits, the number of dopers will certainly drop.

The argument that it is very expensive is only true at first sight: The most expensive anti doping programs at present are in the range of single digit million US $ (UCI: approx. $8 million US). If you compare this amount from an economical point of view to the part of the budget used in any larger company for the "controlling" (which, in business terms, would be somehow comparable to the anti-doping or anti "cheating" branch), it turns out that this part ranges around 5-10% of the total budget, thus more than any anti-doping budget. Any governments deploy considerable amounts for the control and respect of their laws.

Additionally, the part of the budget for anti doping in sports in any given larger federation is usually much smaller than the yearly income of its best payed athlete (see the salaries of any sports star in a major sport). So there seems to some kind of imbalance, that needs some correction in the long term, if elite sports wants to preserve its credibility. From this perspective, the amount of funds devoted to anti-doping in sports is very low.

From an ethical perspective, I think that the athletes will realize in the near future that anti doping is necessary for them to give a credibility to their performance and not an annoyance. They will see the advantage in adopting a clear, transparent strategy to explain their performance. Cooperation with anti-doping measures, which, to a certain extend are certainly in conflict with human rights (whereabout system) might therefore be an option for them.

SS: The public perception is that dopers are always a step ahead of the testers - what will it take to turn that around? It can't simply be a question of money? Or is it?

YOS: This is not correct anymore. Some substances have been virtually eliminated from sports due to the efforts in Anti Doping (stimulants). The adoption of different testing strategies (out of competition testing) has massively influenced the abuse of anabolic steroids, so there is some impact. Some substances were detectable even before they were marketed (CERA, Aranesp) and this will certainly be the case for many new developments of the pharmaceutical companies (Hematide, Aicar etc.).

The next issue is the correct timing of testing, as athletes will use small doses of detectable substances that are rapidly cleared from the organism. Testing has to be done at the right time to detect them. So we are catching up in many areas and are surely ahead in some. The longitudinal monitoring such as the biological passport gives us valuable information in this context as we can see shifts in doping techniques and adapt detection strategies.

I think a major issue to improve the fight against doping is the adequate spending of resources. The analytical "weapons" to detect many substances are available, we just have to use them correctly. And at this point, there is, in my opinion, the largest margin of improvement: Considering the overall costs of a conventional anti doping test (about 1000 USD, including logistics), we have to, for each test, ask the questions: Who is going to be tested? (type of sport) When is he tested? (time of the season, time of the day..) What are we going to look for (substances..)? Where is the sample going to be analyzed? In fact, every single test should be somehow "targeted".

The problem is, that in most federations, there is no expertise to perform these tasks and tests are performed more or less at random, thus losing a lot of sensitivity. We therefore need new structures, some kind of independent organization with a similar role as the laboratory has in the analytical field for traditional doping tests. Such an organization could take over the management of the requirements and tasks indicated above and present the advantage to centralize independently the competences necessary for a skilled scheduling and interpretation of anti doping measures.

SS: Do you foresee a day when life-time bans are brought in a means to deter doping? Would that be feasible or enforceable?

YOS: I do think that there must be more options to differentiate between sanctions for doping offenses. At the moment, these are quite limited. In fact, it is easily understandable that somebody who used blood transfusions or EPO, doping techniques that need long term preparation, is to be treated differently from somebody who used a drug for a certain condition prescribed by his physician ignoring its not allowed. For severe offenses, the ban should be long enough to severely affect the career of the athlete, to shift the risk-benefit balance. In my personal opinion, 4 years for an offense such as EPO or blood doping would be justified. But I guess there are many legal issues that need to be considered in this context that I am not competent to comment on, life time bans included.

SS: A really interesting avenue of doping 'control', which you've published on, is performance analysis, to try to detect when human performance suddenly becomes "unrealistic". However, as we've seen on the site recently, there are a lot of assumptions and 'confounding variables' that make conclusions difficult. In your opinion, what value does performance analysis actually add? Do you see a day when performance analysis is accurate enough to be a reliable weapon in the anti-doping battle?

YOS: Every sport scientist knows that it is nowadays possible to evaluate or predict performance in certain disciplines quite accurately (see the posts that you have published on your site during the Tour de france). Cycling is just one example. The potential confounders in these calculations apply to all investigated athletes too and are therefore mere systematic mistakes which usually do not change the key message of such calculations: Is the performance credible in view of what we know from other athletes and the history of the respective sporting discipline or the individual development over time of the athlete in question? or isn’t it?

If the latter applies, then its worth to look at the athlete with some scrutiny or target him in doping control. So its about spending resources more effectively. I am confident that we already have a good pool of data to identify athletes that perform above credibility. It´s about putting performances into perspective, individually in a longitudinal setting and cross sectionally, by comparison with peers.

As an example, you can follow the progression of an athlete over the different categories from a young age onwards. Some athletes have been better than their competitors through their entire career, from a junior age on. This gives somehow credibility to their performance. Others rise from nowhere, which might raise some questions.

However, as I wrote in the article, performance alone will/ should never be used as proof of doping alone as, after all, competitive sport is about the best performance. And this performance might be achieved by exceptional talent, superior training etc

SS: Final question - more your personal opinion. Given that you've worked in doping control and spent much of your research pursuing methods to detect doping, are you able to watch and appreciate human performances with maximum appreciation, or do you find that your skepticism detracts from the enjoyment of sport?

YOS: I certainly can. Not every good performance is doping. I have seen many athletes excelling at Olympic level where I am quite certain that they never used performance enhancing drugs. It´s possible, even against cheats! Definitely not for everyone, and not every day. But with the right talent, the right training and on the right day. Unfortunately, many careers of talented athletes have been cut short or shattered because of the presence of doping among their opponents. I have personally witnessed some tragic cases in the 1990s. There are many examples... And that is the sad thing about the whole story in certain sports: Its the victories, the careers and sometimes the lives that have been stolen from those who didn't dope.
_____________________________________________________

SS:
An enormous thanks to Professor Schumacher for the time taken to answer the questions in such depth and with such consideration. Prof Schumacher has been one of our most valued readers for his contributions to the content of the site, and we are very grateful to him for sharing his views!

Just to end off, here are a few of Prof Schumacher and his colleagues' recent publications, selected because I'm sure many of you will find them particularly interesting!

Ross

• Power output during the Tour de France
• Cadence-power relationship on decisive mountain climbs in the Tour de France
  
• Cycling power output on flat and mountain stages in the Giro d'Italia: Case study
• Success in elite cycling: Analysis of race results
• Hemoglobin mass after 21 days of altitude training
• Performance profiling: a role for sports science in the fight against doping? (this is the article we used in our recent post on performance profiling)

Performance analysis: A weapon against doping?

Performance analysis and doping: A new weapon, and some striking patterns

Those who followed our coverage of the Tour de France will recall the in-depth discussion around the analysis of the climb of the Verbier, which was ignited when a French scientist, Antoine Vayer, estimated Alberto Contador's power output to be around 445W, and then projected that Contador would have to have a VO2max of about 99ml/kg/min in order to achieve that performance. I must just add that given that Contador was about a minute ahead of maybe 8 or 9 riders that day, pretty much all of them would have had to have impossibly high VO2max values, not just him.

This projection is made on the basis that a rider producing a power output X is actually consuming energy Y (depending on efficiency), and we can calculate roughly how much oxygen is required to produce that energy. It requires a few assumptions, of course, but is an important principle, which is what I'd like to pick up on in today's post. (Just as an aside, Frederic Portoleau, a colleague of Vayer's has since taken the time to compare Vayer's method of estimating VO2max to the actual, measured data from Nicki Sorensen's SRM. The result? The actual SRM value was 357W, Vayer's estimation was 365W, which is only 2.5% higher. So the response by many of dismissing as ludicrous Vayer's estimations (and hence the implications) seems premature. It was high, and certain other assumptions need to be looked at to confirm the validity of the predicted VO2max, but it seems estimation is not "ridiculous" as was suggested)

Performance analysis in the fight against doping - two categories

This kind of analysis forms part of what is now being proposed as a potential quiver in the bow in the battle against doping. The premise is pretty simple: Physiology sets the limits for performance, and for how performance changes over time. That is, every single performance is underscored by a set of measurable physiological determinants, and so there are two categories of performance analysis that can be used to "flag" suspicious performances:
1. Detecting performances lacking physiological "credibility"
2. Historical analysis to detect the rate of performance change in individuals

To give you an absurd example of the first category - if you measure my VO2max as 65 ml/kg/min, and my oxygen consumption as 60ml/kg/min while running at a speed of 6 minutes per mile (3:43/km), then there is absolutely zero chance that I can run competitively against world class athletes who race at 3:00/km for a marathon. Why not? My physiology is inferior, and for me to run 3:00/km will push me well above a maximum exercise intensity, and I will be unable to hold that intensity for the required 2 hours.

If I was to achieve this performance, say three months later, it could be flagged as lacking credibility, and you would have to ask how it was possible? The answer is that either:

1. I have discovered some other way to improve performance beyond what your physiological measurements predicted (that is, doping), or;
2. Three months of training have seen me improve my ability to the point where my VO2max is now 80ml/kg/min, and I'm using 60ml/kg/min running at 3:10/km. If you put me in the lab again, I'd produce these numbers and you would say my performance is credible, apart from the fact that I've achieved such enormous gains in so short a time. This kind of improvement, in such a short time, would be a strong indicator of doping (note that it's not a guarantee)
   

Therefore, if we know what physiological "boundaries" exist, we can track performance to discover exactly what the physiological implications are when a performance is achieved. A cyclist averages 6.5 W/kg on a climb lasting 30 minutes - is this physiologically credible? If we know the cyclist's measured parameters, then we are in a position to judge this more objectively. Being in this position allows more informed decisions around drug testing, targeting of tests to improve the likelihood of catching cheats.

Performance tracking - rates of change

The other part is to examine how performance changes over time. Once again, the premise is the same - physiology sets the limits for how rapidly people improve. That is not to say that everyone should improve at the same rate - please, don't read this and shout out "discrimination" against those "outliers" who produce brilliant performances, seemingly from nowhere. That happens, yes, but if you are sensible about how you track performance over time, then you can work out ways to minimize the chance of these once-off athletes affecting your result.

For example, you might look at the best performance, AND the average of the next ten or twenty performances. By taking an average, you are trying to manage the impact of one individual on your ability to interpret the data. If the same trend exists for the top 20, then you have a much stronger reason to suggest that something else is in play.

But, let's not speak in metaphors here - below are three graphs that do exactly this, and then you'll see how the principle might be applied. These three are redrawn from a paper by Prof Yorck Olaf Schumacher, one of the leading anti-doping experts in sport, and a man who has worked extensively with Olympic athletes, and now anti-doping agencies. The paper, "Performance Profiling: A Role for Sport Science in the Fight Against Doping?" was published earlier this year in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance. If you'd like a copy, as always, just let us know!

Women's discus - introduction of out-of-competition testing

First of all, take a look at the best performance (red line) and the average of the top 20 performances (blue line) in the women's discus event since 1960.
It should be immediately obvious that between 1960 and the late-1980s, the event was in a state of "lift-off". Not only was the best performance improving almost every year, but the average of the best 20 performances was going the same way. Then, in 1988, out-of-competition doping controls were introduced, and so the use of steroids may have declined thereafter, explaining why the event today is on par with where it was in the early 1980s - it has gone backwards, performance wise, and many will say it is now closer to where it should be physiologically. This graph gives you a striking illustration of how doping, and its partial removal (presumably) affect the "limitations" to performance.

Men's distance running

Next, look at the best time and average of the best 20 times for the men's 5,000m and 10,000m events:

I don't think I have to point out the striking change in performance, particularly in the 5,000m event, after the commercial introduction of EPO in about 1990. I'm particularly interested in how the average of the top 20 times each year changes, because the red line, which represents the best performance, and thus only one athlete, might be misleading. But the blue line, that average, very definitely heads downwards, after a period where it had begun to level off. For the top 20 athletes to all improve in a season is suggestive of a systemic change, possibly in training, possibly nutrition, possibly equipment (imagine what swimming's graphs will look like one day!), possibly increased exposure of athletes. Or, quite possibly, doping, and the co-incidental timing of EPO becoming commercially available and this drop-off is quite difficult to ignore.

NOT proof of doping, but a flag for intelligent testing

Is this an indication of EPO use among elite distance runners? We don't know. It could be. But there are many other reasons that may explain why the records fell suddenly. This is the challenge with performance analysis. Please read this before sending in the hate mail and criticizing my cynicism, because I must emphasize that this kind of analysis does NOT prove doping! As Schumacher states in the paper, there are many other factors that could explain why performance suddenly improves, so one must be careful not to infer doping without acknowledging a wide range of potential contributing factors.

A limit to performance? Cycling may be an easier ask...

Therefore, this graph, or any other, does not constitute proof that athletes doped. What is does do is help us to understand performance better - is it possible that we can draw a dotted line on the graph to indicate where performance ends and doping MIGHT begin? Probably not (at least for now), but that is where this is headed. For cycling, I believe it is easier, and when you look at the climbing power outputs of Tour de France champions (shown again below), and then ask what the implications of riding at 6 W/kg are for the physiology, then I believe it is feasible to say that riding at a relative power output above about 6 W/kg for longer than 30 minutes raises doubts over physiological credibility (particularly when this is repeated day after day). This cycling case is intriguing, and warrants a post all of its own, which I will do when there is more time, perhaps after the IAAF World Champs.


The practical use of this information

The other application of this historical profiling is to highlight how certain athletes can be identified on the basis of performances that stand out, and then more intelligent testing can be done to confirm or refute the notion that doping is involved. One of the problems in the above graphs is that they represent a combination of many athletes each year, and the appropriate use of this kind of testing requires that an individual be tracked from year to year. I will say, for example, that in defence of the men's 5000m runners, that many young African athletes arrive in Europe for the very first time, having never set foot out of their village, and run sub-13 minutes. You'd have a difficult time convincing me that these young athletes (often juniors) are doping to break 13 minutes, and therefore I would propose that they are capable of 12:50 or faster.

Also, I know many of the coaches and scientists who work with the atheltes out of Nairobi, and I do believe in their integrity and approach to doping - they are adamantly against it. So there are clean athletes among those "20 best performances each year", I have no doubt. But equally, I'm sure there are some "dirty" performances as well - only testing will prove which is which, and that is why intelligent testing is required, and performance analysis might help us understand what we are seeing a little better.

To conclude - intelligent testing is the aim

I have little doubt that the most emotive retort to this argument that "exceptional performances" should be targeted on the basis that they may lack physiological credibility is that we are too cynical and don't "believe" - this approach was once famously used on the Champs Elysees to criticize those who had doubted a champion's credibility. We "don't believe in dreams", would be the charge...Unfortunately, it is partly true, and the climate within most sports almost compels us to react with suspicion when great performances are noted. In the words of Bengt Kayser, "open your ears and eyes and think" when it comes to doping and doping controls!

However, those who are clean would welcome this approach, because as long as it is done sensibly, it vindicates them and then everyone is a winner. It does not mean every great athlete is a doper, or should be targeted simply because they perform exceptionally, but rather that analysing great performances gives us every opportunity to test sensibly, and that benefits everyone.

I leave you with a quote, straight out of the paper in IJSPP by Prof Schumacher:

"A new approach could involve monitoring the rate of improvements in competition performance of an athlete from an early age, in combination with monitoring of blood values or steroid profiles once an appropriate level of competition is reached. Although sudden increases of performance can be induced by many reasons other than doping (improved training strategies, nutrition, growth in young athletes, etc), such observations are nevertheless worthwhile to trigger target testing of the athlete. In connection with data from blood and/or urine profiling, such “performance profiling” might improve the identification of suspicious athletes’ behaviors. In a similar context, mathematical analyses of winning patterns of gamblers are used with success to identify cheaters in casinos."

We'll be discussing this over the next week for sure, beginning with our interview tomorrow, as promised, so join us then!

Ross

The week ahead - forthcoming attractions

Forthcoming attractions as we build up to IAAF World Champs

Tour de France...check. World swimming champs...check. So that's two out of three down, and one to go in the year's big "multi-day" sports events - the IAAF World Championships.

It's been pretty intense for the last few weeks - thanks for all the comments and discussion. I don't think we've ever had such a "comment-heavy" period as the month of July! An even bigger thanks to everyone for making donations - they're very highly appreciated, way more than swimming world records were in Rome last week!

Some great match-ups from Berlin - preliminary thoughts

There is still much to be said, though, starting next weekend when the IAAF World Championships take place in Berlin, Germany. The athletics season really built up nicely during July, and there are some great match-ups on the cards in Berlin: Gay vs Bolt probably tops the bill for spectator value, but there's also Wariner vs Merritt, and some wide-open 800m races to look forward to.

In the women's 800m, a South African (gasp, where did she come from?) athlete, Caster Semenya, heads into Berlin off the back of a 1:56 time in Mauritius, the fastest in the world this year. She takes on last year's revelation, Pamela Jelimo, who started 2009 absolutely disastrously (running nearly 10 seconds off her best from 2008), but has improved gradually throughout the season and might (just) come into shape in Berlin. They both take on 2007s revelation, Janeth Jepkosgei, also of Kenya, who dominated in 2007 and who is the defending champion (it seems a lifetime ago). It is peculiar that the event has thrown up a surprise athlete in each of the last three years. Then there is a host of other women, including Maggie Vessey of the USA to watch - the event has rarely been so open.

The men's 800m is just as open, any one of perhaps eight guys capable of a win, and those two races will (at least for me) provide the most intrigue.

The men's steeplechase will be fascinating, with Mahiedine Mekhissi-Bennabad of France taking on the Kenyans. You may be thinking that this is another hyped up effort to create intrigue around an event that has been utterly dominated by Kenya, but Mekhissi is the real deal - the Olympic silver medallist, which says a lot, and then about a month ago, he took on Ezekiel Kemboi in Paris and dusted him to the tune of about 20m in the final 200m of the race, while celebrating before the final barrier about 80m out! The Kenyans will have to be sharp, especially if the pace is slow, and so that should be a great race.

But, enough projecting, there is plenty of time to tackle those events in much more detail, and so do join us for our athletics analysis towards the end of next week and throughout the World Champs. Sadly, athletics doesn't have power output estimates and VAMs, and it doesn't have clothing that enhances performance, but there'll be something to discuss and analyse, I'm sure!

In the meantime...interview number 2

Until then, there are a few interesting things on the way - building from our interview with Prof Bengt Kayser last week, we've lined up Interview Number 2 for you next week, also on the subject of doping - this time with Prof Yorck Olaf-Schumacher, who is heavily involved in research on blood doping and is one of the members of the independent commission of experts who evaluate the biological passports of the UCI. Join us early next week for that!

The interview post idea is something we'd like to start doing more regularly, to bring you insights and opinions from others in the field of sports science, sports coaching or even athletes, so the next few months might see a good few of those.

So do join us for the month of athletics in August!

Ross

Swimming records: Final recap of Rome

A final word on the record record-fest in the swimming pools of Rome

There may have been spread-betting prior to swimming's World Championships in Rome, but you'd have been hard-pressed to get anyone to agree that there could possibly be 43 world records in the pool in Rome. The previous record was 29, back in 1976, when drugs were alleged to be giving the swimmers a boost. Beijing saw 25 world records fall, while the previous World Championships in Melbourne in 1997 saw 15 world records.

So 43 world records represents something of an explosion - not entirely unexpected, of course, but nevertheless, the sport has surely never seen such a dramatic leap forward.

The current age of swimming world records - a summary of Rome

On the men's side, 14 events were swum faster than ever before, while on the women's side, only 3 records survived (out of 20 each). The table below is a final summary of the Championships, showing the age of the records in days (measured from today, 4 August). The average age of men's records - 198 days, compared to only 79 days for women's records. However, that men's figure is inflated by what is now the oldest record in swimming by a considerable margin - Grant Hackett's 1500m record.

His time is in fact only one of two across either men's or women's events that dates back to before the Beijing Olympic Games. The big problem for FINA is that if they ban the suits from 2010, this table will start ageing pretty quickly, and very few records will be set. While those in swimming may not care, the excitement generated among casual observers by the record-spree would soon die down, and there is a concern that the sport will suddenly stagnate. Effectively, the egg has been scrambled, and putting it back into the shell now is, well, impossible.


The great debate

The huge debate around the suits has been a source of fascinating reading for me in the last week. I could almost save myself the time of writing this post and simply refer you to the discussion and comments section from our last post, where you have made some telling points and great arguments. It's well worth a read for those who don't usually go through the comments - there are some informed opinions from both sides of the debate. I do apologize for not responding to each, but work has prevented me from doing them justice! Your opinions have come through loud and clear though, thank you!

Me? I'm undecided. I admit that my position on the suits has perhaps softened in the last few weeks - initially, I would have called simply for a ban, as FINA have promised to do from 2010 onwards, but the more I've thought about it, and the more I've read the reasoned responses from those who are advocating that technology happens to be part of sport, the more I question that myself!

The world record issue - one for the purists, but not disasterous

Certainly, the purist in me desires to see world records set by great performances, with the knowledge that I really have seen the greatest swimmer in history swim faster than any other human being ever has. It's difficult to think that when a world record is broken in a semi-final, then the next semi-final, and again in the final! And when the top 5 swimmers all go under the world record time, it's hard to believe you're witnessing a momentous occasion! (and this happened far too regularly!)

I can however acknowledge the argument that says that great swimmers will be remembered for their performances in spite of the transient nature of world records. So Ian Thorpe and Alex Popov's names no longer occupy a place on "current world records". Does it diminish their achievements? Hardly. The question of whether the person replacing them is as great a champion is another issue altogether, of course...

Equality of competition

The other problem is the equality of competition. It seems that for a while yet, some suits will remain better than others. Did we see gold medals being given to the world's best swimmers in Rome? In some cases, yes, definitely. In others, maybe not. Regardless, it hardly seems fair that the winner will either be doubted on the basis of which suit they wore, or the loser will be denied victory for the same reason! This disparity is a problem that I don't think many people would argue is bad for the credibility of the sport. Swimming has always been man vs man (or woman), and suits that overcome natural differences in performance ability change that dynamic.

Then again, the counterpoint is that over time, the technology will even out, and by the end of 2009, all the major manufacturers will have adopted the same designs. That assumes, of course, that FINA actually puts into place proper boundaries with respect to materials and design. If that were to happen, we'd pretty soon be back on an even playing field and it would be man vs man once again. The only difference is that they'd all be swimming much faster than "man from 2007"!

Prohibitive cost for juniors

Then the final argument, which we aired in our previous post on swimming, is that position occupied by parents and coaches, that the legalization of super suits will make swimming prohibitively expensive. At $800 a suit, and with the lifespan of a suit being only a dozen swims (if that, take a look at the picture at the bottom (pardon the pun) of the post), it would elevate swimming into that category of sport that requires substantial money just to compete in. Those involved in swimming, with the most to lose (or spend) are most vocal against this possibility.

This is a valid concern, of course, and parents are coaches are concerned. However, it's not too difficult to ban the suits at junior level, and have a different set of restrictions in the professional ranks. So while I empathize with the current predicament, this too is not an insurmountable problem.

Final verdict?

So, a debate with a point and counterpoint at every turn. FINA has promised to ban the suits from 2010. There are of course implications. As mentioned above, they would effectively be "freezing" many of the records for the forseeable future. Does that matter? If the 2011 World Championships produce five world records instead of 43, will they be undervalued and dismissed as boring? Last year's Beijing Olympics saw three track records broken in men's events. It was hardly boring. If the IAAF World Championships produce more than three world records, they'll go down as fanastic. It's pretty common for only three or four world records to fall each year in athletics. I don't believe this is too big a concern, except perhaps for the neutral observer who thrives on the hype.

The other argument, of course, as pointed out by Vava in the comments, is that each world record (and they would fall eventually - people who are saying they'll last decades are exaggerating) will be even more exciting and spectacular - this can only be a good thing compared to the routine nature of world records in the last 12 months.

I do believe that in terms of commercial rights and sponsorship, for both FINA and the swimmers, the ban on super suits will harm the swimming market. I realise that the manufacturers will still sponsor swimmers because they wish to encourage aspirant children to pick their brand to swim in. However, the standardization of technology and suit design will effectively force on the manufacturer a situation where their only means to differentiate themselves will be on the basis of colour! Given that everyone in the sport will know that one suit is identical to the next, it's difficult to see more than a couple of manufacturers surviving - swimming would be narrowed down and only those with the best production/supply chain or economies of scale would be able to survive. They would, of course, and may even thrive, but the market would effectively close.

Finally, what is most interesting to me is that everyone, from the winners, to the losers are saying the same thing about the suits - ban them. From Michael Phelps, a winner in five events but loser in one (200m freestyle), to the man who beat him, Paul Biedermann, are saying that they look forward to the day when we go back to basic swimsuits. I'm often reminded that my opinion is that of an outsider, someone who follows the sport with a keen interest, but without a vested interest. I can only take particular note of what those with an interest are saying, and to a man and woman, they seem to be asking for the ban.

Therefore, concerns about commercial aspects, sponsor relationships and world record stagnation aside, I do think that the ban is the best option. How much easier would this have been to solve had FINA, back in 2008, created clear guidelines for swimsuits, as everyone was calling for? The whole world saw the problem when Speedo launched the LZR, but unclear boundaries, FINA's inaction, and the natural evolution in technology have scrambled the egg, and getting it back into the shell will prove a slightly more difficult proposition!

Ross

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