I may as well enlighten you @SheffSwim.
This forum is not publicly or commercially funded; it’s funded and administered by a fairly small group of individuals. Most of the people you communicate with here have made discretionary contributions.
I hope that provides some context for you.
Without wanting to go off on too much of a tangent, could someone please advise on how to contribute.
Tagged you in the thread.
FTFY 
We will have to agree to disagree on this H.
I think it’s appalling that one swimmer could beat another by, apparently, up to two seconds over just 100m, just because they have an expensive race swim suit. I do find it genuinely depressing that is just accepted.
Your point about so much else to do with sport is expensive so it’s just another thing is true, but nothing can be done about the fact one swimmer may live along way from the pool or not have access to as much training time as another, but something can be done about swim suits giving one swimmer and unfair advantage over another. I accept the 150mm max height rule could not apply to women, something else would be req there.
Bearing in mind that judges are quite prepared to DQ swimmers for technical stroke infringements which do not actually give that much of an advantage (and certainly don’t give any where near 2 sec per 100m advantage !) and they are often subjective, so I do not see why it would it would be impractical for them to have a ruler and apply a totally objective measurement : more that 15cm, you’re DQed if you wear that.
Here I do agree with you. I do wonder if much of it is psychological.
I play that game a bit, my lad trains in shorter trunks than he races in, in fact he’s the only one ion his club who does so (all the others have trunks down to their knees). But when he wears his longer (though still cheap ! ) “race” costume it, hopefully, has a positive effect on his psyche.
I think 2 seconds over 100m is a lot.
I took up swimming when I was 25 and was desperate to swim 100m in under a minute (I didn’t realise at the time that with no swimming background that was BIG ask…). My PB was 1.04 but that was “soft”, 1.03 would have been more like it, so 2 seconds off that and I’d almost have been there…
Of everything you’ve posted this might be one of the most baffling, given how much you’ve railed against nearly any form of non-critical legislation. Not to say the view is wrong on its own, FINA clearly agreed to ban the suits of 2008/09 for partly this reason. It’s just very odd coming from you.
So you are willing to purchase an advantage as long as it is not a 2 second advantage. Interesting.
But it’s about even chances in sport, not about freedom to live ones life as one would choose.
I have often wondered what is the “purest” sport, i.e. the one anyone could do with the least access to facilities or money, and have concluded it’s running, particularly distance running.
At the other end of the scale is motor racing, where one needs a huge wedge and/or luck to even get into it, and once there you need a good car or you’re no where.
The “race cossie” cost no more than any other, in fact it was one of the cheapest and almost certainly cheaper than the cossies most of his fellow club members use in training.
£20 (incl carriage):
Doesn’t that mean having to shell out even more wonga (for a new larger suit) as they grow !
Only if the person’s genes are suited to it…and so i am not sure that there is a ‘pure’ sport. That said, it is probably the most accessible.
You miss the point of your own making. You are using your advantage of being able to afford two swim suits for your son which is an unfair advantage over someone who cannot afford such an opportunity.
I think cognitive dissonance has already been diagnosed.
I feel very sorry for him actually because he is working harder then he’s ever worked (still not really hard, consistently hard, though ! ) yet he’s making little progress. That’s not how it’s supposed to work : you work harder you get faster… Two of his best PBs (40.9 for 50 fly and 43.2 for 50 back which were pretty good for a - small - 10 year old when he did them) haven’t come down for nearly a year.
I do not understand it, I put it down to him growing.
It’s all a bit frustrating, kids he used to be the same speed as or faster than are now comfortably faster than him, but I just tell him to keep swimming and it’ll come. I reckon he’ll knock loads off relatively quickly when his body matures.
He’s just starting to come out of his dip I think as he has just knocked 1 sec off his 100 free PB, which was a good PB (many of his other PBs are “soft”).
At the end of the day, as a parent, I am just as keen on the social side of swimming / the swimming club, I emphasise that even more now !
That’s probably a better word for it. What that means is that the worlds best runner probably is the world’s best runner, he or she hasn’t got there because they were lucky or rich.
His “race” cossie cost more or less the same as his training cossie, and swimmers need more than one cossie…
Which is accessible to all those who can afford two swim suits…
Probably needed to be both…
