"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
The above quote is pretty well known, but at the world championships in Rome, Italy, history pretty much doesn't exist.
With three days of swimming remaining at the championships, 29 world records have been set, and you can pretty much guarantee it's not because these swimmers are that much better than their contemporaries.
Instead, they're just wearing a sweet new outfit.
Unlike baseball, the record books aren't being rewritten because of drugs, although who really knows. No, these records are being set via a new, high-tech swimsuit which are 100 percent polyurethane.
The records began to fall during the last world championships in 2007, with 15 being broken, followed by 25 new records at last summer's Beijing Oly-mpics.
With records falling left and right, the swimming governing body FINA is set to ban the suits in 2010, but by that time, all the records will be owned by swimmers competing in this week's meet.
"I think FINA is proving its incompetence at a dramatic and fantastic level," Austria's Markus Rogan said in the Los Angeles Times this week. "They're showing they're completely in-competent in terms of management. It's like they decided to play soccer one year with a rugby ball and then with a soccer ball."
In even more analogies, which I love, I'd say it's like letting Major League Baseball players use aluminum bats or NBA teams using a WNBA-sized basketball. With those adjustments, you can guarantee Barry Bonds' 73 home run record would fall quickly and Wilt Chamberlain's 100 points in a game record may be in jeopardy.
One of the biggest stories out of the championships was Michael Phelps losing in the 200 freestyle to Germany's Paul Biedermann.
Phelps was the storyline at the Beijing Olympics, winning eight gold medals, and the setback this week was his first loss since 2005.
Undoubtedly, Biedermann was propelled to the win thanks to his Arena-made suit, which is a generation more advanced than Phelps' Speedo LZR Racer.
"The suits make a difference," Biedermann said in an ESPN article. "I hope there will be a time when I can beat Michael Phelps without these suits."
It was the LZR Racer that was rocking the boat at last year's Olympic qualifier, as well as the Olympics, but the new suits made by Arena, as well as Jaked, are even faster.
In an attempt to stay loyal to Speedo, a company that's sponsored him for years and also gave him a $1 million bonus after last year's Olympics, Phelps has stuck with the LZR, while everyone else is using the Arena or Jaked brand.
Good idea?
Uh, hard to tell.
It reminds me of the folk hero John Henry racing against the steam-powered hammer. In the story, Henry actually wins, he only had to die doing it.
While others are embracing the new technology, Phelps is doing the hard-headed thing of hoping his God-given talents can outperform man-crafted technology.
In all the movies we've seen, this means Phelps should defeat Milorad Cavic today in the 100 butterfly in Rome.
But this ain't a movie, and I don't hear any 1980s "fire-you-up" kind of Rocky or Karate Kid music playing in the background. (Come on, do you really think Daniel Larusso would have really beaten Johnny Lawrence in the All Valley Karate Tournament? Come on, Lawrence was a Cobra Kai dojo!)
In reality, Cavic will be wearing his Arena X-Glide suit today, while Phelps will be in his Speedo LZR.
"If Mike wants an Arena, he just has to ask," Cavic said this week, apparently egging on the rivalry, in the ESPN story. "If he wants a Jaked and they don't want to give it to him free, I'll buy it for him. He has options."
Making the rivalry even more interesting will be that it was Cavic who was beat out at the wall in the 100 fly at the Olympics. The finish was so close that it came down to high-resolution photographs to determine a winner, and Cavic is still in denial about the loss.
Still, no matter if Phelps, or anyone else, decides to wear the new suits in order to win, it's the history of the sport that is hurting.
Sure, there's probably no other time I'll be writing a column about swimming, but to completely erase all the predecessors from the record books in what seems like one fell swoop, seems a bit much.
"We've lost all the history of the sport," Phelps' coach Bob Bowman said this week to the Associated Press.
And if there's no history, then I guess there can't be any mistakes to repeat.
But for right now, in the present, letting technology instead of talent rue the day, seems like a pretty big mistake.
