Human Nature: Science, Technology, and Life.

The Swimsuit Arms Race

It looks like those high-tech swimsuits that have been breaking world records for the last couple of years might finally be banned.

Is that a good thing?

FINA, the world's swimming competition authority, has just begun to issue rulings on which suits can or can't be worn in races. The criteria are thickness, buoyancy, and permeability. Let's consider the arguments for regulation, as put forth this week in Agence France Presse and the New York Times.

Reason No. 1: They tilt the playing field. This is the standard metaphor for fairness in sports. Swimsuit regulation should put all athletes "on a level playing field," says one top racer.

This argument makes sense only because the new suits are expensive, costing hundreds of dollars. If the prices came down to where everyone could afford them, I don't see a problem. Nobody bans composite tennis racquets just because they're better than aluminum.

Reason No. 2: They cancel out talent gaps. The suits are "enabling athletes of lesser ability to compete on equal terms with the best-conditioned, hardest-working athletes in the sport. That is why the mandate for change was clear," a FINA executive tells the Times. A top swimmer complains: "A lot of old records that were really, really good are being taken down by people you never heard of."

This argument sounds confused. Why is it wrong to let swimmers of "lesser ability" compete "on equal terms"? Isn't that a way of leveling the playing field? Are the traditional top swimmers the "hardest-working" ones? Or are they just genetically lucky? And aren't the swimmers "you never heard of" the ones least likely to have the money for fancy suits? What's so righteous about freezing them out?

Reason No. 3: They change the sport. They "make a muscled and stocky body as streamlined as a long and lean one," the Times observes. "With the body riding high on the water like a racing hull, it changes a swimmer's relationship with the water, influencing everything from how vigorously the swimmer has to kick to the rhythm of the stroke."

So what? Metal and composite racquets did the same thing to tennis. Pads have changed who can play football. Equipment alters the body requirements for sports all the time. Often, in retrospect, we like the change, in part because it opens the game to a wider range of people.

Reason No. 4: They're consuming the sport. "In 2008, an unprecedented 108 world records were set, the majority by athletes wearing the [LZR] suit made by Speedo," the Times notes. This year, "18 world records have been broken by swimmers wearing suits with fewer panels and seams and more polyurethane" than the LZR. Last year, Speedo was the big story, but by the latest count, "22 manufacturers ... have entered the swimsuit race."

To me, this is the most powerful argument for cracking down. It's no longer a question of helping everyone buy the 2008 LZR, as I naively proposed last year. As the Associated Press notes, that suit has already "been outstripped by polyurethane models." The decisive race today isn't between the swimmers; it's between those 22 manufacturers. When the engineers are overshadowing the swimmers, the sport isn't just changing. It's disappearing.

"It's the athlete that is making the difference. The suit is not breaking the records," one swimmer tells AFP. But that's not true. The new suits are turning the same athletes from losers into winners:

[Rafael] Muñoz, a 21-year-old Spaniard, did not advance past the preliminary heats in the 100 butterfly at the Olympics in August, but this year ... [h]e has lowered his time from Beijing more than two seconds, to 50.46, which is two-hundredths faster than what Michael Phelps swam in winning the gold. Then there is the 24-year-old Brazilian Henrique Barbosa, who finished seventh in his preliminary heat in the Olympics in the 100-meter breaststroke in 1:01.11. Nine months later, with his hulking 6-foot-4 frame wedged into one of the new suits, he posted the fastest time in the world this year, a 59.03.

This is a controlled experiment: The same athletes, with less than a year to improve their conditioning, are cutting their times precipitously, thanks to innovations in suit technology.

If you want to pick a good suit and put everybody in it, fine. But we can't have an ongoing arms race among manufacturers that determines all the records and who sets them.

Following Suit

Maybe you can ban steroids in sports because they're medically dangerous. And maybe you can ban carbon-fiber prosthetic legs because they're newfangled. But what about swimsuits? What do you do when a technology that's been around for ages—sleeker, tighter suits—becomes decisive? What can you say when the only objection to such technology is that most people can't afford it?

That's the situation today in collegiate and high-school swimming, according to Amy Shipley's enlightening report in Sunday's Washington Post. Swimmers wearing Speedo's LZR suits set 71 of the 77 new aquatic racing world records at, or just before, this year's Olympics. Now collegiate swimming programs are buying LZRs, and their competitors feel obliged to, um, follow suit. The trend extends to the high-school level, where the suits are showing up at state championship meets. Problem: LZRs cost around $500 retail. At best, with discounts, they go for about half that. And because of the fancy fabric, they wear out after just a few meets. Bottom line: Swimmers who can afford these suits will beat equally talented swimmers who can't.

Athletic federations are divided over what to do. Two months ago, USA Swimming prohibited kids under 13 from competing in the suits. The NCAA imposed a moratorium on the suits but then withdrew it.

In general, I don't like sports equipment bans based on sheer cost. Composite tennis racquets were pricey when they first came out. Should they have been prohibited? What about golf clubs or bike frames? Innovative materials are usually expensive at the outset. The way they become cheaper is by gaining notice, spreading to a broader market, and being produced more efficiently in subsequent iterations. If you ban them, you block this process.

In the swimsuit case, it looks to me as though a logical compromise is already unfolding. What makes the suit prohibitively expensive isn't just the outlay, but the fact that it wears out so fast. The crucial number is the per-meet cost. And that number can be sharply reduced by using the suits only at championship events late in the season. This is exactly what some college programs are already doing. You don't need a Ferrari to pick up your groceries. Swim your regular meets in cheaper suits, and save your LZRs for the big events.

This policy coincides with Speedo's discount strategy. The company says it offers LZR discounts to sponsoring colleges. At conference championships, the discount is 40 percent. At the NCAA championships, it's 65 percent. The higher you go in competition, the more the suit matters, and the more worthwhile it is for the company to put you in its suit.

Don't ban the LZR. The unfairness at issue is cost, and cost is adjustable. Let's see how the players adjust before the supervisors go in with a heavy hand.

White-Collar Steroids

Are people in your office using performance-enhancing drugs?

I'm not talking about steroids. I'm talking about brain enhancers, such as Ritalin for concentration and Provigil for sleep reduction. Two months ago, I wrote about a Nature survey in which 20 percent of a self-selected sample of scientists, academics, and journalists admitted using such drugs "for non-medical reasons to improve my concentration, focus and memory." In absolute terms, it's hard to argue against these neuroenhancers. But in relative terms, freedom of enhancement can become coercive. If your officemates are outworking you by popping pills, can you afford not to join them?

We know this is a problem in sports. Has it become a problem in the white-collar workplace? Neil Munro examines this question in a recent issue of National Journal. The answer seems to be: We don't yet know, but signs point to trouble ahead.

Munro goes through what little we know. First, there's the non-random Nature poll. Then there's a survey at one college in which one of every six students admitted to taking prescription drugs as a study aid. Munro also cites the recent doubling of adult prescriptions for Adderall and Ritalin, implying that the increase is too big and fast to be purely therapeutic. But the really interesting comment comes from Zack Lynch, the executive director of the Neurotechnology Industry Organization:

If you're GE Capital and you have offices in 154 financial centers around the planet, and these [brain-drug] tools are available in Dubai, and your workers there are trading more effectively, 5 to 10 percent better—they'll have a neuro-competitive advantage over workers where these tools are not legalized.

Neuro-competitive advantage. There's the leverage point for pushing brain boosters into the workplace. The good news is, these pills might make you more productive. The bad news is, if you don't take them, some guy in Dubai will, and he'll eat your job. Lynch flatly tells Munro that if the United States restricts performance-enhancing office drugs, "companies will shift their work offshore."

I don't want to make this scenario sound like it'll be here tomorrow. The brain is notoriously finicky, so there are a lot of obstacles and side effects to work out. But the same is true of performance-enhancing drugs in sports, and that hasn't stopped them from becoming a coercive presence.

Munro points out that neuroenhancement is a big emerging market and that one firm has already been caught exploiting it:

Cephalon, a large biopharmaceutical company, agreed to pay a $425 million settlement to the federal government last year after the firm's sales force was accused of marketing its Provigil anti-sleep drug for purposes other than those for which it has been approved. Provigil was approved for treating narcolepsy, but it was used as a stimulant by some of the scientists who responded to the Nature poll.

Next time you're chatting with your colleagues around the water cooler, ask what they're taking with their water.