Article: Polyurethane Problems

 Polyurethane Swimsuits Banned

by Salvatore Brown

     In high school my best friend was a swimmer. I didn’t swim, and I rarely ever went to watch him do it, but apparently he was damn good at it. He was a purist as well, obsessed with the sport and its reliance on individual excellence and self-motivation. But it’s not a hard sport to be a purist about. A swimming team isn’t really a team, but a group of athletes all trying to best each other; the sport has no touchdowns or home runs, only records to be broken. And among the best, the records to be broken are often one’s own. There are no highlight reels, and it is, in my opinion, dreadfully boring to watch—unless numbers on the trophy plaque are being changed. I rarely went to watch my best friend swim because I knew he could always just tell me his achievements afterwards, with little loss on my part.

“I broke my p.r. by two seconds last meet.”

“That’s great, Mike, a real achievement. Keep at it.”

     I had no idea what that meant, no understanding of the grueling hours of pool work it meant he had subjected himself to in the weeks previous. In the swimming world, dispensing with two full seconds from a personal record is no small feat. Swimming was a sport in which my friend could measure his motivation in half-seconds—every extra bead of sweat in practice, though it would disappear into the chlorine, meant another miniature milestone in numbers and decimal points.

     This is why Mike hates polyurethane. Mark Spitz didn’t wear polyurethane, he wore a moustache. But when swimmers started wearing suits coated in the stuff because it sealed out water and was effortlessly aerodynamic, the sport witnessed the advent of a veritable arms-race among swimwear brands. My friend Mike hated Olympic golden-boy Michael Phelps for his 50% polyurethane “Speedo LZR Racer,” which, at the time of the Beijing Olympics, was the fastest damn swimsuit a country could buy for its prize athlete. There are countless, record-shearing benefits to these new-age tech-suits; one glaring one—polyurethane floats. On top of that, Phelps’ Speedo LZR was designed by NASA scientists and was the first suit without a single stitch, bonded completely together by glue. Polyurethane opponents complain that such suits actually trap air near to the body, adding invaluable amounts of buoyancy to the swimmer. But the introduction of the Speedo LZR was 17 months before the 2009 World Aquatics Championships in Rome, and technology moves awfully fast; breathtakingly so when coupled with a bit of capitalism and international publicity. Many of the swimmers in Rome wore suits coated in 100% polyurethane. In the 8 days of competition, no less than 43 all-time world records were broken. That’s 43 World Records.

     But Michael Phelps is no phony. He lost to German Paul Biedermann in the 200 freestyle in Rome, despite the fact that Biedermann had finished four seconds shy of Phelps’ time in the Olympics-- Biedermann’s suit was 100% polyurethane, the best and newest on the market. In light of this, or perhaps in defiance, Phelps went on to vanquish the polyurethane-clad Serbian Milorad Cavic in the 100-meter butterfly wearing a suit of plain fabric. The World Swimming Federation, NIFA, seems to have finally gotten the point. Months of debate over the issue have yielded a ban on polyurethane suits which starts in January 2010. And the slew of technologically-enhanced new world records born out of the polyurethane craze? NIFA declares that they are to be branded shamefully with… an asterisk in all official documents.