I know this is a long reach, but I think it would be neat if the entire UK swim team shaved their heads so as to not require swim caps in solidarity, much like the US mens volleyball team did in the 1992 Summer Olympics.
Edits: Made events more clear with links.
The performance impacts are unknown. Fluid dynamics are counterintuitive at times.
However - if that was where their head was at, they would have just said so. We must conclude that that wasn’t what they had in mind.
It’s entirely possible that this is marketing. Either get them approved, and make money off the Olympics story, or fall back and make money off of the notoriety.
You also have opened the door to the possibility of flaying the skin off of swimmers, as it is simply “attached”.
Hair is a stratified squamous keratinized epithelium made of multi-layered flat cells whose rope-like filaments provide structure and strength to the hair shaft.
Now you are just being perverse. But no kink-shaming, eh? 
Carpet Swimming.
I still have burn scars from this noble teenage sport…
What about the non Anglo white people whose hair is anything other than a type 1 or possibly 2?
Wypipo is a global problem…
It was probably not their “intention” but it doesn’t make it any less racist. There is a long history of normalizing whiteness as the default and trying to make non-white characteristics seem unnatural. Here is an excellent book on consumerism and such on a global scale… some of the articles are about race, which you might find enlightening:
It literally says in the article that it’s because Black hair isn’t “natural”…
The body said the caps did not fit “the natural form of the head”
Yes. This is a racist decision, when you say that people of color’s natural hair is not natural. Whether or not the brand is a sponsor is immaterial when they say dumb racist shit like this.
But you’re white, so your hair behaves the way hair “should” behave… /s
I suppose ISF expected to be shmeared.
My post didn’t say there wasn’t a racist component to it, but rather that greed may be an additional factor.
Fair enough… Sorry to mischaracterize your comment then.
I would argue that racism is the driving factor here and that the greed derives from the racism. Deciding that non-white heads are not natural and stating that as their primary motive for making this decision is telling.
Right. I don’t think jlw meant that to be taken literally.
I think he used this particular writing technique in order to suggest that although the committee most likely didn’t intend to show off their racism, the result was that they did show it off to the whole world:
Swimming is used here to modify Aquatic, not the other way around. Swimming is a sub-sport of Aquatic sports.
Aquatic sports in the Olympics and other international competitions, including the disciplines of swimming, diving, synchronized swimming, water polo, and open water swimming
They are apparently “reviewing” their stance…
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Because they are so committed to inclusivity that it merely takes global uproar to get them to notice they might be being just a little bit racist.
And the good news is that they intend their review of these caps to be part of a wider review, so I’m sure we can expect to see the outcome of the review very shortly…
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to their “best knowledge the athletes competing at the international events never used, neither require … caps of such size and configuration”.
IOW, they haven’t bothered to ask anyone.
The head or the hair?
I hear there are excellent sporting opportunities for those without heads who can still get about.
Equestrianism for example.
Nah - corpses have no balance nor grip.
