My father used to reminisce about skipping school as a kid and heading to the Bronx Zoo all day. Growing up in the Bronx's Parkchester neighborhood, he'd hang around the monkey cages and read Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Tarzan." That may be why, decades later when the Olympics rolled around we all sat in front of the TV to watching the swimming, he always referred to Johnny Weissmuller.

 
Dad was born in 1941, so he was an impressionable 6-year-old when Weissmuller starred in "Tarzan and the Huntress" and "Tarzan and the Mermaids."

 

As my father also knew, in the 1920s, years before Weissmuller emerged as Tarzan on the silver screen (perfecting the all-time greatest Tarzan yell, by the way), he was arguably the world's greatest swimmer. He won five Olympic gold medals and one bronze medal, as well as 52 U.S. National Championships races, setting 67 world records on the way.

 

Naturally, those world records have since been shattered, but I'm a firm believer in judging athletes within their own eras - even baseball players, whose sport lends itself best to inter-generational comparison.

 

Now, this sports technology blog's topics will range widely - from software that helps baseball teams sell tickets to how the iPhone could help umpires make critical in-game decisions. We at TMC mainly cover the communications and technology spaces.

 

Yet, strictly speaking, "sports technology" refers to technology that improves athletic performance, whether that involves training regimens, nutrition, equipment or - in the case of swimmers - futuristic swim suits.

 

Last summer, for example, many of us watched as Michael Phelps won eight gold medals in a single Olympics games, in Beijing, breaking Mark Spitz's 36-year-old record of seven from the 1972 Munich games. And some of us puzzled over why Phelps - and many other swimmers - were wearing what appeared to be full-body wet suits. 
 

This is a chlorinated pool, after all, not the Long Island Sound, where nitrogen spilling off of people's lawns into the water - and record water temperature highs - are combining to create such dangerous hypoxic conditions that bottom-feeders such as clams and lobsters are suffocating.

 

Today, we hear that high-tech swimsuits are causing a major controversy in the swimming world, to the point where the body that governs international competitive swimming - FINA (motto: "Water Is Our World") - is trying to figure out how much of a role new water-resistant, buoyant suits have played as 126 new records have been set in the past 16 months.

 

This is different from chemical aides - such as the steroids that clearly helped baseball sluggers and pitchers reach super-human heights over the past 20 years.

 

But, according to Graham Dunbar, a sports writer with the Associated Press, FINA executive director Cornel Marculescu said the governing body hasn't yet decided which suits competitors will be able to wear when the world championships commence in Rome this summer.

 

"We need to control this technology," Marculescu reportedly said. "We need to do it by scientific proof. There is no scientific evidence today to say one swimsuit is better than another swimsuit."

 

And it appears that FINA believes some swimsuits give competitors an unfair advantage. According to Dunbar, the group last month rejected 10 designs outright and asked manufacturers of 136 suits to modify their models before June 19.

 

"Those decisions and the testing process were immediately challenged by some manufacturers who said their products were permeable when stretched for use in the pool even if they were made of water-resistant material," Dunbar said.

 

Part of me wants to take a step back here to marvel how even swimmers - and this is a very recent phenomenon, despite the odd bong hit - now can make so much money that they're scrapping for competitive advantages just as professional athletes do.

 

But, as I say, that is much of what sports technology involves. In this case, FINA appears to be feeling its way toward a standard in an industry that's budding along with the marketing dollars that swimmers are seeking to put their hands on.

 

For example, one French swimmer, Frederick Bousquet, set a world record in international swimming's fastest, most thrilling event last month: the 50-meter freestyle.

 

During his swim (an unreal 20.94 seconds) he wore a polyurethane suit that had been approved by FINA last year for use at the Beijing Olympics. But last week, FINA rejected that suit, and Marculescu now says he isn't sure whether the Frenchman's time will be recognized as a world record by FINA.

 

Sort of like swimming's version of Roger Maris' "*61."

 

We're still two months away from the world championships, so FINA has some time to make a ruling.

 

In the meantime, I'm ready to put the swimsuit controversy in a category of "Too Bad Sports Marketing Got This Big." Maybe those guys who put together baseball's "When It Was a Game" series can try their hands at swimming.

 

And they can start with Johnny Weissmuller.