[Byron]

Thanks for enlightening me on the Rome Championships and I can see that it would be more accurate to say that a series of events produced absurd situations in what was acceptable within the rules and these problems were at last seriously addressed by FINA and new rules published in 2010, to be effective from 2011.

CD rightly makes a point above about a FINA turnabout and the wardrobe malfunction of Flavia Soccari (see above) happened to a Jaked Jo1 suit in July 2009. That was a banned suit by virtue of its polyurethane content giving an unfair buoyancy advantage but had its ban lifted after a
successful protest by Jaked in June 2009.

I think there is a one-word answer to CD - money.
Formula 1 and Premier League Football have long been recipients of considerable amounts of sponsorship donations, advertising revenues,
tv broadcasting rights, etc. but swimming has been a minnow in the big pool of such sports promotion activities. The comparison of brand exposure is obvious - for example, twenty two men in shirts emblazoned with logos will be running on a pitch for 1 1/2 hours in front of maybe 80-90 thousand spectatators (not to mention millions watching at home and added markings on the pitch surface - and even Wimbledon allows a Mercedes Benz symbol at the nets).
By its very nature swimming cannot match the scale of these revenue opportunities but the costs of staging international events and the building of new state-of-the-art pools will continue to rise and require funding from whatever sources might be available.