What should be done about those swimsuits?

Recently, "super" swimsuits were used in international swim meets, and world records tumbled. Many competitors and swim coaches complained about an "unfair advantage".

We posed the question "what should be done about these swimsuits?" at our philosophy cafe session on 19 August 2009. This is a brief report of our discussion.

Why are these swimsuits considered as an "unfair advantage"?

Because it enabled its wearers to obliterate the competition.

But everyone is free to wear one of these suits. It is not unfair.

Not true, some swimmers are bound by sponsorship contracts to use only their sponsors' suits -- which happen to be not "super".

Well, they entered into these sponsorship contracts of their own free will, and they are free to change sponsor once their contracts expire.

Let's approach this from the other direction: what is fair competition?

A fair competition is where the winner is the one who is physically superior to all the others; not where the winner is the one using the best equipment.

All sports use equipment, and not all equipment are equal.

Surely it is possible to standardise the equipment, so that the competition is fair.

No, specifying using only one brand of equipment is not fair to other equipment makers.

We can rotate equipment makers among the various sports meets.

This will make records set specific to those equipment makers. We will have "100m freestyle Brand A", "100m freestyle Brand B" -- which is ridiculous.

We can equalise the competition by returning to the original Olympic format, where all competitors are nude.

This is even more absurd. Competing in the nude is today a non-starter, never mind how it was in ancient Greece. Furthermore, while this is physically possible in swimming, it is even conceptually impossible in sports where equipment is required eg. in archery.

We can specify the features of the equipment used. For example, in swimming, we can specify the swimsuit material, the buoyancy level, the drag, the coverage of the body etc. This will equalise the competition.

Discussion ends here. It has been a good discussion.

The next philosophy cafe session is on 16 September 2009. The venue: Nook (cafe), 15 Chu Lin Road, 8-10pm. Free parking and admission. Personal expense for food and drink. Prior to the event, I will post on this blog possible topics for discussion at the philosophy cafe session. I hope to see you there.