Swimming - now a joke

[Jono]

It makes the records redundant though, that's the point. Is Ian Thorpe going to come out of retirement to swim in the new suit and reclaim his record that was only beaten recently because of the suits?

Sure, but equally batsman of bygone eras can claim the only reason so many batsman are averaging higher, scoring more than 300 nowadays, and the "highest test score" record has been broken 3 times in the last 20 years, is because of bat technology and uncovered pitches being a thing of the past.

Your criticism of FINA to allow the suits (forget the ban for now) is comparable to the ICC and other boards bringing in ropes, allowing better bats, pitches to be covered etc.

How about records made when there were timeless tests? Should they be removed?

 

[Son Of Coco]

Sure, but equally batsman of bygone eras can claim the only reason so many batsman are averaging higher, scoring more than 300 nowadays, and the "highest test score" record has been broken 3 times in the last 20 years, is because of bat technology and uncovered pitches being a thing of the past.

Your criticism of FINA to allow the suits (forget the ban for now) is comparable to the ICC and other boards bringing in ropes, allowing better bats, pitches to be covered etc.

How about records made when there were timeless tests? Should they be removed?

It's not the same though. It would be if cricket brought these things in recently and every record was smashed within a couple of years. 3 times in 20 years doesn't exactly seem to be an astonishing rate of improvement for mine.

And while flat pitches do see batsmen scoring more I think this is taken into account when comparing batsmen across eras. There are long-standing records in cricket that will never be broken (like Bradman's) and I doubt there'll ever be anything introduced to the game that makes that easy for anyone to achieve. If it is achieved it'll be through someone coming through who is equally brilliant. Not through a rocket-powered bat and an invisible shield around the stumps I can't think of anything that has been introduced in cricket that has turned a good batsman into a great one.

And while it's convenient to ignore the ban, FINA have acknowledged the suits provide an unfair advantage by banning them. There's no reason to keep the records when something has been deemed to provide too much assistance to the swimmer.