The twain shall never meet. Triathletes clad in neoprene and marathon swimmers lathered in Vaseline or lanolin are like night and day, black and white, liberal and conservative.
They are complete opposites enjoying their lifestyle in the same open bodies of water. Occasionally, they cross and look each other askew.
That is, could a triathlete or adventure swimmer do an open water swim without a wetsuit? The answer is, often, “Yes, but why?” For them, wetsuits are readily available and rules allow their use.
For traditional open water swimmers who have the opportunity to wear a wetsuit, the answer is always, “Yes, but why?” For them, the beauty and challenge of open water swimming demands acclimatization to water temperatures, conditions and its marine elements.
For the neoprene crowd, there are no rules against wetsuit use. Similarly, for the traditional crowd, there are rules governing wetsuit use.
For the wetsuiters, they cannot imagine not benefiting from the comfort, buoyancy and warmth of technology. For the traditionalists, they cannot imagine benefiting from the comfort, buoyancy and warmth of synthetic rubber.
For many (1.9 million in the United States alone), wearing a wetsuit is the only reasonable option: fully acceptable by them, the media and their fellow competitors. For others (including the approximately few thousand marathon swimmers), swimming without a wetsuit is the only acceptable option. Equivalent to riding a moped in the Tour de France or swimming in a pool race with fins, wearing wetsuit is heresy that goes against the very core of the sport.
So the questions on both sides of the aisle are the same: Yes, but why?
These two different perspectives will not never merge, ever. Its enthusiasts in either camps will never agree, ever.
But they are all end their swims with smiles and are part of the open water swimming ecosystem.
Lower photo of Linda Kaiser by Sergio Goes.
Copyright © 2011 by Open Water Source