Judgement day has come for the swimsuit industry. FINA has made a ruling on legal and illegal swimsuits. See the FINA ruling below:

The FINA Commission in charge of the swimwear approval, formed by representatives of the FINA Executive, FINA Technical Swimming Committee, FINA Coaches Commission, FINA Athletes Commission, and FINA Legal Councillor had a meeting on May 18, 2009 in Lausanne (SUI) and after reviewing 348 swimsuits from 21 manufacturers forwarded its proposal to the FINA Executive, who decided the following:

–    202 swimsuits approved;

–    10 swimsuits rejected for not passing the tests of buoyancy and/or thickness;

–    136 swimsuits to be modified in accordance with “Dubai Charter” rule 3.1 c), as they don’t fulfil the requirement stating that “swimsuit material shall not be constructed to or include elements/systems which create air/water trapping effects during use”. The manufacturers have now a deadline of maximum 30 days (until June 19, 2009) to resubmit the same swimsuit for FINA approval, with the corresponding corrections (“Dubai Charter” rule 4.3 d).

The complete list of approved swimsuits (valid until December 31, 2009) can be found on the FINA official website at http://www.fina.org

Meeting FINA/Swimming Coaches
On May 19, 2009 FINA and a group of swimming coaches coming from 18 countries met at the EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) in Lausanne (SUI), where Prof Jan-Anders Manson, Director of the Laboratory of Polymer and Composite Technology, presented the procedures of the testing process defined on the FINA swimwear approval regulations.

The exchange of opinions was very constructive and the direction to be taken on the swimwear approval process is certainly better understood.