“Deep down inside, I can’t be mad,” said Phelps, who took six months off after Beijing. Biedermann covered the final 50 in 25.70 to Phelps’s 26.51. Because he appeared to have to work harder than Biedermann on the first 100 to keep his body high in the water, Phelps had no energy in the end to match his opponent’s finishing kick. Phelps, a 14-time Olympic champion, was clad in last year’s cutting-edge suit, the Speedo LZR Racer, which is buoyant but not boatlike. But Cornel Marculescu, the executive director of FINA, said Tuesday that the ban could take effect as late as next spring while the organization tried to decide which textiles to allow.īy the end of the night, Phelps’s coach, Bob Bowman, had seen and heard enough about floating deadlines. Last week, the target date was announced as Jan. Last winter, swimming purists wanted FINA to ban the suits before these championships. The headlines are always who’s wearing what suit.”Īn hour before the final, officials with FINA, the sport’s international governing body, held a news conference to announce that last week’s vote to ban the polyurethane suits was ratified, but the date it will take effect remains as much a moving line as the red one on the television that signifies a world-record pace. “It’s changed the sport completely,” Phelps said.
It took Phelps five years to make the same four-second time drop that Biedermann accomplished in 11 months while wearing the Arena X-Glide, one of the polyurethane suits that turn the swimmers’ bodies into sleek kayaks. In Beijing, Biedermann finished fifth in 1:46.00. If at times he felt defensive, there was a reason. He couldn’t help feeling a little self-conscious, too.
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