Some Go Along With Cover-Up

Kaitlin Sandeno is a 17-year-old swimmer from El Toro High who won the 400-meter individual medley, finished second in the 200 butterfly and third in the 800 freestyle at the recent U.S. Spring Nationals.

Sandeno has worn a revolutionary new full-body swimsuit, a suit that has been compared to sharkskin, a suit that makes swimmers feel as if they are floating above the water and not fighting their way through it. Dutch swimmer Inga de Bruijn has set four world records in the last month wearing the suit. American Tom Malchow has set a world record wearing the suit.

“I think it’s cheating,” Sandeno says. “The suit feels like cheating. But I’ll wear it if I make the Olympics. I think I’ll have to.”

Swimming should be about which person has trained the best, has worked the hardest, is the best athlete capable of swimming the best time. Now there is a bathing suit that can, according to the research, cut seconds off times when tenths of a second often determine winners.

What’s next? Motors on their feet? Webbing between toes?

Some elite swimmers and their coaches aren’t so sure this suit is a good thing. Trendy, yes. Telegenic, probably. A good way for swimsuit companies to make money, absolutely. But good for the sport? “I’m not so sure,” Sandeno says.

The suit will be on display this week at the Janet Evans Invitational, Thursday through Sunday at USC. Speedo, which will outfit about 70% of the competitors at the U.S. Olympic trials next month in Indianapolis, has been providing the suit, which it calls “Fastskin,” at big meets this summer.

World record-holders Lenny Krayzelburg and Malchow of the U.S. and South Africa’s Penny Heyns will swim in the Janet Evans meet and probably wear the suit.

The suit comes in various full-body types. One covers a swimmer, male or female, from neck to ankle; another is a tank-top version; another, for men, goes from waist to ankle. Speedo experts wanted the suit to mimic a shark’s skin. According to Speedo research, a shark’s skin has something called dermal denticles. These look like tiny hydrofoils with V-shaped ridges. When the shark moves, the ridges help decrease turbulence and drag on the body and direct the flow of water over the body.

“You feel like you’re gliding through the water,” Sandeno says. “But it still seems like cheating. They’re trying to give us things to make us go faster and that’s not what swimming is supposed to be about. A bathing suit is just something to put on, you know? I never thought of a bathing suit as something you put on to make you go faster.”

Besides Speedo, Adidas, Nike and Huntington Beach-based TYR Sport have versions of the full-body suit.

While FINA, the international governing body for swimming, approved the suit for competition last year, USA Swimming announced last month that the suit would be banned from the Olympic trials because all 1,300 competitors would not have access to the suit.

TYR Sport has filed a protest with USA Swimming and the U.S. Olympic Committee over the ban and may take legal action if the USOC does not rescind the ban by today.

Local swimmers aren’t worried about lawsuits. But they do wonder what this suit means for the sport.

“With the big deal being made about the suit, I’m afraid swimmers won’t get the credit they deserve,” says Dave Salo, coach of the Irvine Novaquatics, where teenage phenom Aaron Peirsol, who owns the fifth-fastest time in U.S. history in the 200 backstroke, is training.

Salo is also concerned about the way the suit is designed.

“It was conceived with a model of a body type of a mature man, a man like [Lenny] Krayzelburg,” Salo says. “It wasn’t designed for a 16-year-old like Aaron, who is skinny and not as muscular.”

Peirsol has tried the suit and doesn’t mind it, but wonders why someone needed to invent it.

“I guess it’s fair,” Peirsol says, “if everybody can have one and I guess it makes you faster. I think it will be too bad if everybody thinks it’s the suit which is making us faster. I guess I’ll wear it if I make the Olympics because everybody else will but I wish they’d waited until after the Olympics to decide about this suit.”

Bill Rose, the coach of the Mission Viejo Nadadores, says that “in my mind, the suit is unfair.”

The FINA rule book says: “No swimmer shall be permitted to use or wear any device that may aid . . . speed, buoyancy or endurance during a competition.” “Right there, to me that says the suit is unfair,” Rose says.

Chad Carvin, a 26-year-old from Laguna Hills who swims for the Nadadores and is an Olympic hopeful in the 400 and 200 freestyle, says, “I would prefer if they said, all right, let’s use only the normal Speedo, the normal brief for the guys. I would prefer that. But it doesn’t look like that’s possible so I will have to put myself in the best position if I make the Olympics and I’ll probably use some version of the Fastskin.”

The suit is expensive, about $240 to $300, and it will last for only two or three competitions. Peirsol wonders what will happen to his sport when, as he says, “little 10-year-old age groupers are telling their parents they have to have one of these suits because they see them on TV during the Olympics. Heck, I didn’t start shaving and tapering until I was 14, 15. I see 10-year-olds doing that now.”

Byron Davis, who finished fourth at the 1996 Olympic trials in the 100 butterfly and who is training with the Novaquatics while trying to become the first African American U.S. Olympic swimmer, loves the suit, thinks it looks cool and will attract, not discourage, kids.

“I know teenage boys who are embarrassed to wear little briefs and quit swimming,” Davis says. “Other sports improve equipment. Why shouldn’t swimming?”

And that’s the question. Is the swimsuit equipment the same as a tennis racket or golf club or the pole in the pole vault? “I don’t think we want to go there,” Salo says.

But it may be too late.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com

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Less Skin Is In

The recent introduction of full-length bodysuits to competitive swimming is being led by four manufacturers --*Adidas, Nike, Speedo and TYR Sport. Each company has a slightly different explanation of how its high-tech suits improve performance. Two common principles involve muscle compression and drag reduction. Here’s a closer looak at the technology that goes into the suits.