Steffen says suit made her swim like a speedboat
26/06/2009
German Olympic champion for women's 100-metre freestyle, Britta Steffen, broke the world record on June 25, achieving a time of 52.85 seconds, but suggested a new adidas swimsuit may have given her too much help.
The swimmer beat the previous record, set by Australia's Libby Trickett in March 2008, by three-hundredths of a second.
Immediately afterwards, Ms Steffen told swimming media that the new suit, known in the sport as the Hydrofoil, was unlike anything she had worn before. She said: "'I felt like a speedboat in water and never in my life would I have believed that a human could glide like that. You don't die in the last metres and you feel no pain. Under normal circumstances, this suit should be forbidden, and I expect that by 2010 it will be."
The sport's governing body, FINA, is still wrestling with the advances in swimsuits that sports apparel manufacturers have introduced in recent years. On June 22, it withheld its approval of 11 world records because of the technology in the suits that swimmers were wearing when they achieved the results.
With a world championship event taking place in Rome next month, FINA has said it will wait until the end of 2009 before taking further decisions on banning materials.
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