SNZ Events
Epic Swim
High Performance
SNZ Events
Epic Swim
High Performance
The Swimming New Zealand Technical Advisory Committee has made an important decision regarding the use of Arena POWERSKIN Carbon-Pro racing suits that have been removed from the FINA approved swimsuit list. The committee has decided to allow swimmers competing in New Zealand to race in the banned suits until the 20th of July. This will allow swimmers and Arena enough time to obtain and supply replacement suits. Following this date New Zealand swimmers will not be allowed to compete in the banned race suits in New Zealand. Arena has issued the following information regarding the POWERSKIN Carbon-Pro:
In February FINA requested compliance information regarding one of the Arena POWERSKIN Carbon-Pro racing suits (woman full body open back – FINA approval code AR220993), purchased during routine testing.
A change in the manufacturing process, following a significant surge of market demand, has caused an unintended - and unexpected - reduction of the permeability to air of some of the racing suits produced between the end of 2012 and the beginning of 2013.
Only part of the production is affected by the anomaly, which has absolutely no impact either on the safety or on the performance of the products that are potentially non-compliant.
Nevertheless, as it would be impractical to test all POWERSKIN Carbon-Pro racing suits on the market, Arena wants to ensure that not even one non-compliant suit will be used in any FINA official competition.
Arena, therefore, advised FINA of its decision to withdraw the approval codes of concerned POWERSKIN Carbon-Pro models: AR220993 – woman full body open back AR220994 – woman full body closed back AR141364 – man jammer
Consequently, as of May 7 onwards, all POWERSKIN Carbon-Pro suits to be used in FINA sanctioned events will have the following approval codes: AR221039 – woman full body open back AR221028 – woman full body closed back AR141028 – man jammer
A complete list of all Arena racing suits approved by FINA can be found at www.fina.org.
Arena has already started delivering the new version of POWERSKIN Carbon-Pro suits (Mark 2) to Teams and Individual Swimmers, in view of forthcoming FINA events.
Additional details about this matter, including remedies offered by Arena to all swimmers going to compete in FINA sanctioned events, are available at arenapowerskin.com.
If your suit has been affected by this, please go to the Arena Support page, where you can arrange for a replacement suit to be delivered.
The Technical Advisory Committee also decided to implement the new FINA swimming rules from the 7th of October onwards. The new rules will be decided at the FINA Swimming Congress which takes place during the World Championships in Barcelona in July. The new set of FINA rules are voted on, published, and come into effect sixty days after the completion of the congress, but this is only one week prior to the New Zealand Short Course Championships.
Therefore the committee has decided on the 7th of October to enforce the new rules in New Zealand. There will be a seminar for technical officials and coaches during the NZ Short Course Championships to explain the rule changes. Information regarding the rule changes will also be posted in the Short Course Championships event information on the Swimming New Zealand website closer to the championships.
For further information or queries please contact:
Kent Stead
Events Manager
(04) 560 0346
021 278 0432
kent@swimmingnz.org.nz
