Once more with Hi-Tech swimsuits.

There has been a lot of ink spilled on this issue of late—most missing the point.

The way I see it, there are two more or less separate problems within the present controversy: the swimsuit, and what to do with the records.

The first one is relatively easy. The original and still the only purpose of swimsuit was to cover the swimmers’ private parts with as little drag as possible. So, as I will indicate, FINA must reset the clock.

The second one is trickier. If FINA were to do nothing, the use of improved swimsuits would keep on improving and so would records. Even FINA is unwilling to do that. Hooray! No matter what FINA does, any measure will of necessity doom future swimmers’ ability to set new world records. That is a given. So having mortgaged the future, FINA may as well do the only honorable thing, set the rules back all the way to the Mark Spitz era, records be damned. They all are already.

Maybe future generation of statisticians can figure out when the first non-Mark-Spitz-like swim gear appeared and can apply an asterisk to the thousands of records set since.

But that should come later.

The purpose of the sport is to see who can swim fastest, unaided by fancy suits. That can be assured with a ruling today. Why wait one day?