KEY POINTS:
Australia's Olympic champion Kieren Perkins fears the new space age $800 swimsuit will create an unhealthy division in swimming as world records continue to tumble.
Swimmers wearing the new LZR Racer suits have broken 12 of 13 world records to fall since it was launched six weeks ago, prompting the sport's world governing body Fina to hold discussions with the manufacturers Speedo about its legality.
The suits, tested in New Zealand, retail at £320 ($794), leading Perkins to suggest swimmers from less privileged backgrounds will struggle even more.
"I don't have an issue with technology playing a part in the advancement of swimming, but I just think that we are going down a slippery slope when you create a haves and have nots society in the sport," Perkins said.
"Swimming has always been fairly pure in the sense that it was one human being against another.
"But when you create a situation where some people have a technological superiority through equipment against others, I think that goes against a little bit of what makes our sport wonderful."
Perkins said it would also be noticeable at school level because some children's parents would be able to afford the suits and some would not.
Fina executive director Cornel Marculescu said one issue that needed reviewing was the thickness of the seamless suit, with concerns emerging that it aided buoyancy.
"We have to review this. But there is no scientific test to say if a suit supports performance," Marculescu said.
"The No 1 priority is that all suits are made available to everyone at the moment of launch. Any innovation should be available to everybody."
Some of New Zealand's leading swimmers, including Moss Burmester and Dean Kent, who modelled the suits at last month's Sydney launch, will get their chance with the new technology at the Olympic trials which started yesterday in Auckland.
The suit was tested over 400 hours at Otago University, where a flume was used to analyse water resistance.
New Zealand squad member Melissa Ingram was among those who took part in the testing process.
Speedo claimed to have scanned the bodies of 400 elite swimmers and tested more than 100 fabrics and designs, which also took place at Australia's Institute of Sport and Nasa's Langley Research Centre in the United States.
David Pease, a biomechanics lecturer who was involved in the testing in Dunedin, said the swimsuits met all regulations which was why Fina had agreed to allow them.
"We did a lot of testing on measuring the buoyancy because that's one of the criteria for any suit that Fina okays," Pease said.
"It can't provide any buoyancy, so we made very sure that was the case."
Kent last month said the major innovations were the 100 per cent bonded seams, the streamlined panelling which reduced "skin friction drag", and the extra compression around the abdominal area to hold the swimmer in a better position and delay fatigue.
"It ticked every box for me and I can't wait to see how much time I can take off my PBs [personal bests]," he said at the launch.
Swimming New Zealand has a sponsorship deal with rival company Arena but chief executive Mike Byrne said that did not mean its swimmers would be barred from using the Speedo suits for the Beijing Olympics in August.
- NZPA
