The swimsuit’s role in creating champions

IS IT THE suit, or the swimmer?

This is the question that is being asked of Michael Phelps and other world-class swimmers today. Precisely how much of their speed in the water is due to their own innate abilities as opposed to the more streamlined swimsuits currently in vogue is a question that vexes the swimming community. After all, Phelps seemed once invincible in his Speedo LZR, last year’s hot swim racing fashion. But all of a sudden German swimmer Paul Biedermann, in his new, high-tech Arena X-Glide suit, has left Phelps behind.

The ethics of these uber suits is currently the only topic of debate in the swimming world. But, unlike the suits, the debate is not brand new. In fact, in 1926 when Trudy Ederle became the first woman, and only sixth person, to swim the English Channel, beating the existing men’s record by nearly two hours, her success was due, in part, to her innovative swimsuit.

The first swimmers wore nothing, and this was more or less the norm until the 19th century when English men’s swimming clubs began holding competitions that sometimes included female spectators. As a result, to protect the virtue of these spectators, male swimmers wore one-piece singlets, usually made of wool or flannel, and later of silk. These “unitards’’ originally stretched from the ankle to the wrist but evolved over time to expose most of the legs and arms.

It was different for women. Repressive morality forced women to wear cumbersome swimming skirts or gowns with bloomers and stockings that covered nearly the entire body and made the act of swimming nearly impossible. Not until the Women’s Swimming Association was created in New York in 1917 and began sponsoring women’s swimming meets did it become acceptable for female athletes to abandon these skirts and wear less-restrictive unitards that began above the knee and left the arms completely exposed.

Ederle wore such a suit in 1925 when she first tried and failed to swim the English Channel. During the journey, which ended halfway across due to both bad weather and the ill effects of something she had consumed, her suit had proven to be problematic. The woolen singlet had caused significant chafing around her arms and over the course of her swim had lost its shape. The neckline had gaped open like the mouth of a basking shark, creating considerable drag as she swam through the water using the American crawl.

As she trained in France for a second attempt during the summer of 1926, Ederle and her sister Meg began experimenting with Ederle’s suit. This time it was made of silk, which helped with the chafing, but during training Ederle discovered that the scoop neck still slowed her down.

So the two took matters into their own hands. They removed a skirt from the original suit and, with additional material Meg bought in Paris, fashioned a two-piece suit consisting of a brassiere that opened and closed in the front, and a bottom, akin to a pair of tight-fitting briefs.

The result worked beautifully. The two-piece suit gave her more freedom of movement. The tight-fitting top caused comparatively little drag, did not chafe her skin, and the clasps on the brassiere even allowed Ederle to make adjustments in the event the material stretched.

Although they did not realize it, some two decades before Louis Reard and Jacques Heim received credit for inventing the bikini, the Ederle sisters already had. Unfortunately, neither sister realized they had created not only something brand new but something with much commercial potential. They never thought to trademark or patent the design and lost the opportunity to earn millions of dollars.

No matter. On Aug. 6, 1926 Ederle entered the English Channel on the French shore and emerged 14 hours and 31 minutes later at Kingsdown Beach in England, the first woman to conquer the Channel, evidence of success for both the suit and the swimmer. Although she may have missed out on a fortune on her swimsuit, she still won something far more important: the right for women everywhere to compete as athletes.

Glenn Stout is the author of “Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World,’’ published last week by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Golden Phelps eyes road to London

ROME — Olympic great Michael Phelps found all the motivation he needed to launch out on the long road to the 2012 Games at the swimming World Championships.
A defeat, and a dazzling victory over Milorad Cavic in the 100m butterfly will give Phelps plenty to focus on as he plots his next Olympic exploits.
He became the first man to break the 50-second barrier with a time of 49.82, reaffirming his superiority over the Serb after beating him by just one-hundredth of a second at the Beijing Games.
"The coolest thing is being able to have races like this, because it brings the best out of everyone," Phelps said of the tension-filled rematch.
"That's what sport is about, you have to go to the next level when racing these kind of people."
Phelps also won gold in the 200m butterfly, finally posting a world record that lived up to his lofty expectations in the event. Three relay golds took his total to five to balance his defeat by German Paul Biederman in the 200m freestyle.
"Michael's back in the game, which is good for us," said Phelps's personal coach, Bob Bowman, who was also head coach of the US men's team.
"I know for Michael you can expect anything, so I'm never really surprised," Bowman said. "He can always pull out something like the 100 fly when he really needs it."
In the wake of his glorious campaign in Beijing, where he earned a record eight gold medals to take his total to 14, Phelps took six months off.
He'd barely gotten back in the water when he found himself tabloid fodder - a London paper publishing a picture of him holding a marijuana pipe at a party.
A sprinkling of his sponsors tut-tutted, the USA Swimming federation slapped his wrist with a three-month ban, and the welter of negative publicity had Phelps saying he wasn't sure he wanted to swim on through the London Games.
Nor has all gone smoothly in the pool, as he tried, and finally rejected, a new freestyle stroke designed to help him become a player in the 100m free.
Phelps's personal uncertainties all played out against the backdrop of a costume controversy splitting the sport.
The debate over the super-fast polyurethane swimsuits gained a new intensity when Biedermann seized Phelps's 200m free world record while wearing one of the speedy models - which are headed to the scrapheap next year.
Biedermann ended Phelps's run of 10 straight individual victories in world and Olympic competition - a record stretching back to 2005 and including five individual golds at the 2007 World Championships and five in Beijing.
His last major defeat had been at the hands of compatriot Ian Crocker in the 100m butterfly final at the 2005 worlds.
"We're going to go back and work on the 200 free, that's a big motivator for him if he wants to race this kid," Bowman said.
And if Biedermann's victory inspired any doubts about Phelps's abilities, his scintillating victory over Cavic silenced them.
"When I was contemplating coming back, I remember watching some of the videos. I thought about the excitement I have when watching a race and after a race and the emotions that were going through my head.
"I wanted to get back to that, and this meet has brought me back to that. I think it's going to help me over the next few years," he said.
Bowman wasn't surprised to see his swimmer rise to the occasion against Cavic, who had needled Phelps over the swimsuit issue, snatched the American's recently achieved 100m fly world record in the semi-finals and told anyone who would listen that he still believed he had deserved gold in Beijing.
"He loves the big races, loves the energy," Bowman said. "He sort of thrives on that, while some other swimmers don't."
And Bowman was delighted to see what he'll have to work with as Phelps gets down to the serious build-up to London.
"It's very gratifying considering the year we've had and to know we're at that level starting the next season," Bowman said.
Cavic said the American remained the toughest man in the pool.
"Michael Phelps is Michael Phelps," Cavic said. "He does what he does - and he did."

Phelps nets USA TODAY weekly award with butterfly world title

Michael Phelps' week at the FINA world swimming championships in Rome had highs and lows, just like his last 12 months. Phelps, who won eight gold medals just under a year ago at the Beijing Olympics and then came back to earth when controversial photos of him with a marijuana bong surfaced, experienced a disappointment early in the Italian meet and then was the picture of intense celebration when he won the 100-meter butterfly with a world record time on Saturday.

Phelps lost his first major international race since 2005, the 200-meter freestyle, to unheralded German Paul Biedermann earlier in the week and then roared back to claim five gold medals by the end of the meet. For his efforts, especially in his grudge-match butterfly win over Serbian Milorad Cavic on Saturday, Phelps earns this week's USA TODAY Olympic Athlete wof the Week award.

Phelps stuns Serbian to regain world record

(CNN) -- Michael Phelps wrested back his world 100-meter butterfly record after another titanic showdown with Milorad Cavic at the world swimming championships in Rome on Saturday evening.

Olympic champion Phelps, who saw his Serbian rival beat his leading mark in Friday's semifinals with a time of 50.01 seconds, came home to win in a stunning 49.82.

Cavic, who controversially finished second behind the American in a photo-finish in Beijing last year, also went below the previous best as he was runner-up in 49.95.

It was Phelps' second world record of the meeting, and his fourth gold medal -- despite racing without the revolutionary polyurethane swimsuits that have allowed 39 records to tumble this week.

Cavic, who did wear one of the new-generation suits -- which will not be allowed next year -- finished ahead of Spain's Rafael Munoz (50.41).

Phelps came from seventh to triumph in China as he claimed a record eight gold medals, but this time overhauled Cavic from fourth place at the 50m mark.

"You can tell after my celebration that it satisfied me a little bit," Phelps told reporters. "It doesn't matter about the suit, it's about how you train.

"I set it up perfectly, it was exactly what I wanted to do. I had to be out in that first 50m within striking distance and I went out in 23.3 seconds. That's the fastest I've been out in, I haven't been within half a second of that. It's really gratifying."

In other men's action on the penultimate day of the championships, Brazil's Cesar Cielo clinched a sprint double when he won the 50m freestyle title, becoming the third man to win that event as well as the 100m at the same meeting.

He headed off world record-holder Frederick Bousquet in second and another Frenchman, third-placed Amaury Leveaux.

Britain's Liam Tancock set a new world record in the men's 50m backstroke, clocking 24.08 seconds in the first heat of the semifinals.

In women's events, Zimbabwe's Kirsty Coventry notched a third straight 200m backstroke title in a world-record time of two minutes and 4.81 seconds, beating the 2:05.24 she set in winning Olympic gold last year.

She headed off Russia's Anastasia Zueva ( 2:04.94) and American Elizabeth Beisel (2:06.39).

China set a world record in winning the 4x100m medley relay, clocking 3:52.19 to finish ahead of Australia (3:52.58) and Germany (3:55.79).

Olympic champion and world record-holder Rebecca Adlington could finish only fourth in the 800m freestyle, which was won by Denmark's Lotte Friis from Britain's Joanne Jackson and third-placed Italian Alessia Filippi

Cavic says he regrets pre-race trash talk with Phelps over suits

ROME — Milorad Cavic didn't have any regrets about his tactics after losing to Michael Phelps again Saturday. It was his pre-race trash talk that he appeared most sorry about.
After morning heats Friday, Cavic lambasted Phelps for sticking with his Speedo swimsuit, offering to buy his rival one of the new, supposedly faster suits from Arena or Jaked. Cavic intimated that Phelps was compromising his chances of winning to maintain his lucrative contract with his sponsor.
"When I race Michael Phelps, I want him at his best. Because only when he's at his best could I ever feel like I've gotten the race I wanted," said Cavic, who wears Arena.
"Of course, winning is pretty important to me. But I want the atmosphere, I want the experience to be everything that it was tonight. There are no regrets. I did my best. He did something huge - huge. My only regret is I let the media make what it makes of it all."
In almost an exact replay of last year's Beijing Olympics, Phelps beat Cavic with a furious finish in the 100-metre butterfly, breaking the world record set by the Serb in Friday night's semifinals.
Phelps clocked 49.82 seconds, Cavic touched in 49.95 and Rafael Munoz of Spain was third in 50.41.
Cavic was nearly seven-tenths ahead of Phelps at the 50-metre mark, but he couldn't hold on to the lead on the second lap.
"It was an incredible race. We all went a lot faster than we expected," Cavic said. "Tactically, I didn't do anything wrong. I think I had a much better finish than usual ... But I knew that if I was going to win this race, I needed a big enough lead in front of Michael, and at the 50-metre mark I turned and saw that he was much closer than I would have expected.
"I had no idea if I was going too slow or if he was going too fast, but he was too close for my comfort and at the end I knew it was going to be very, very tight. Given that he was so close to me at the 50-metre mark, I was very, very strong toward the end. But Michael Phelps is Michael Phelps and he does what he does and he did."
At last year's Beijing Olympics, Cavic came closer to beating Phelps than anyone else.
The American-born Serb lost by a mere hundredth of a second, a finish so close that the Serbs filed a protest and swimming's governing body had to review the tape down to the 10-thousandth of a second.
After the Olympics, Cavic ended a seven-year spell working with coach Mike Bottom in California, deciding he wanted to move to Serbia. But the roof of his training pool in Serbia caved in and he ended up training with Italian coach Andrea Di Nino in San Marino.
In a gesture toward his coach - and perhaps in a move to win over the crowd - Cavic waved a banner for the local football team, AS Roma, when he was introduced before the race.
"It was a gift to me," Di Nino said. "I'm from Rome and I'm a Roma fan."
While the 100 fly didn't plan out as he hoped for, Cavic will still leave Rome with his first gold medal at a world championship. On Monday, Cavic won the 50 fly, a non-Olympic event that Phelps does not swim.
"He's happy. He got one gold and one silver medal, but he still wants to improve," Di Nino said. "And it's just between him and Phelps. Munoz was six-tenths behind.
"It was a great race, between two champions," the coach added. "Michael Phelps is the Michael Jordan of swimming. Losing to Michael Phelps is an honour, and Phelps knows he can't rest on his laurels in the coming years. Cavic is right there."
But Cavic might not get the chance to race Phelps again until the 2011 worlds in Shanghai. Di Nino doesn't want to wait that long.
"We're ready. It's Phelps that doesn't race during the season. Cavic races World Cup. But it's like boxing - whoever has the title decides on the rematch," Di Nino said. "We hope it's before Shanghai."

For the record

You need have just passing interest in swimming to know the significance of this comment. “I did my best,” said Milorad Cavic on Saturday, “he did something huge,” after Michael Phelps beat him to gold in the 100m butterfly at the world championships in Rome. He clocked 49.82 seconds, snipping 0.19 seconds off the record Cavic had set the day earlier. The Cavic-Phelps rivalry is one of the biggest in sport today, and the Serb had been smarting since Phelps took the gold from him last year at the Beijing Olympics. Cavic continued to put it down to faulty timing (the difference was 0.01 seconds), and taunted Phelps last week that he’d buy him a superior swimsuit. 
That suit reference was handy, because at a time when swimming gear is threatening to become the bigger story than the races themselves, Phelps’s performance and the drama of the rivalry have returned sport to the big question: is Phelps the greatest sportsperson of our time? At the 2008 Olympics, he made good on his candidacy to that claim by taking eight golds. By the time he was done at Beijing he said he’d used up every bit of reserve, and would soon go back to training to shoot for new, bigger challenges. At Rome, he has shown what that could be. 
The greatest sportspersons win that reputation by doing two things: performing better and more variedly than anyone of their time or before, and by raising the profile of their discipline. On each count, Phelps clears the bar. At a time when technology and performance are being carefully untangled in determining what’s legit in swimming, Phelps is making a dramatic case for himself and his ambition.

Michael Phelps accomplishes goals in and out of the pool

Phelps spoke of wanting to elevate the sport during non-Olympic years, keeping swimming afloat once the last anthem was played. Elbow room on the ESPN crawl and highlight shows in 2009 and 2010?

You almost felt like saying: Good luck with that.

It seemed a far more difficult prospect than winning the eight gold medals he took home from Beijing a little less than a year ago.

Years from now, Phelps' greatest accomplishment at the World Swimming Championships may not have been that barrier-breaking, epic victory against Milorad Cavic of Serbia in the 100-meter butterfly, one of his five gold-medal results in Rome. (The last one came Sunday in a world-record performance in the 400-meter medley relay with teammates Aaron Peirsol, Eric Shanteau and David Walters in 3 minutes 27.28 seconds.) How about putting swimming on the front pages and national sports shows three years before the London Olympics?

"He had something he wanted to do. Like this," said Phelps' longtime coach, Bob Bowman, gesturing to the packed house of a pool at the Foro Italico complex. "To have this live on NBC, that's exactly what he wanted to do."

That, in part, was why Phelps decided to go forward when he could have packed away his Speedo LZR Racer after the Beijing Olympics. There was a matter of unfinished business to consider when he mulled a possible retirement after the publication of the bong photo in a British tabloid in January.

"It's a start," said Phelps, who had two individual golds, one silver medal in the 200 freestyle and three gold medals in relays. "For me, I just have more things I wanted to do. That's why I wanted to come back. I don't care if anyone says it's a bad idea or not. It's something that I wanted, and that's why I'm doing it."

Granted, the elevation of swimming in Rome came from something of a perfect storm -- his first international meet after the tabloid controversy, polyurethane bodysuit chaos and perfect foils in the pool for Phelps, one new (Paul Biedermann of Germany) and one old (Cavic).

And the world records. Always the records. Who can forget the excess of speed?

"I'm sure it made it more fun with all the records," USA Swimming's Mark Schubert said. "But I'm sure glad to see it going back to normal."

There were 43 world records in the eight-day meet, four more coming on the final day. Many of the records, mostly fueled by the performance-enhancing buoyant bodysuits (which will be banned in 2010) will stand for a "long time," as veteran Dara Torres put it.

Coaches will have to lower the bar of expectation, at least in terms of time, when the new suits are no longer allowed in January. But maybe it won't be as difficult as it may appear.

"In some strange way, it kind of opened the door," said Peirsol, who lowered his world mark in the 200 backstroke here. "You almost stopped creating a barrier for yourself. You go beyond what you thought you could do."

That held true for Phelps in Rome. His mental toughness carried him, compensating for the six months of training missed after Beijing. He wasn't happy with his splits in the first two relay wins or his performance in the loss to Biedermann in the 200 freestyle but got better as the meet went along.

"Last night's victory in the 100 fly, that kind of says it all about Michael," Schubert said. "That was a such classic race. Both guys went extremely fast, under the world record.

"I think Michael would be the first one to tell you that his preparation wasn't the same as it was in Beijing. His mental toughness is just . . . you really can't compare it to anybody."

Schubert is wondering how Phelps and others will adapt once the the suits, including the LZR Racer, are banned.

"The only thing I'm a little concerned with is going to be our whole mental switch with the times, because Michael is very time-driven and records have been important to him," he said. "But it's going to be important that he do that mental switch.

"To me, the race with Cavic was all about racing, and he is all about racing."

There's always that quote to get Phelps to find that extra gear. Phelps is also motivated by "small things," using them to pull himself out of bed and plunge into a pool and train.

"I never want to look back at my career and ever have a what-if, what if I did something different?" he said. "After London, if I can look back and say that, then I consider my career a success."