No Way To Track Records

SwimNews.com is one the Internet's premier swimming news websites out in cyberspace and I check in on the site with regularity and generally applaude their coverage of swimming but I must take issue with how they choose to look at records at this point in time.

It seems as if SwimNews is focused on delineating current performances away from the "Shiny Suit Era". As if the swims during the so-called "Shiny Suit Era" are somehow tainted or worthy of footnote.

This just in... The "shiny suits" happened, the times counted and should count. Sure, the sport has returned to a textile era (for now) but to make every swim during the shiny suit era out to be a less then genuine performance is slanted journalism. I don't know if SwimNews supports the movement within the sport to divide Record performances into two categories - shiny suit and textile, but there are certainly many people within the sport who would like to see that cateogrization.

I am not one of those people.

The core principle of swimming is the objective measurement of performances over a fixed distance and performed in certain technique parameters. You swim a distance and a stroke(s) and you end up with an objective measurement (time) and thus records can be quantified. This is a great system that has worked for a long time and should be allowed to continue to work without bringing in added criteria such as the equipment worn while achieving the time, the result is just too much confusion and a scramble of meaningless numbers and records.

Need proof? If you were to have 2 sets of records and 2 sets of record holders you end up with a similar problem to the sport of boxing where there are multiple "Champions" at the same weight class and the result is that only those who are the deepest fans and figures of boxing can actually tell who the real Champions are and thus the casual fan is incapable of grasping who truly is the best and if the casual fan can not understand who the best is then they are more likely to just turn the channel and let swimming slip deeper into irrelevance.

The solution... Just embrace the shiny suit era, embrace the records, and let the textile performances use the next two years leading up to the London Olympics so hopefully the stars of swimming will then be ready to start re-writing the record book again just as they were in 2009. Phelps will still be around in 2012 so the casual fans will be tuning in to see him and hopefully meet other swimming stars as well.

Keep it simple, stop analyzing too many "record" numbers by categorizing the performances by equipment criteria.