FINAlly. After months and hemming and hawing, swimming's world governing body voted to ban the high-tech swimsuits that have changed the complexion of the sport over the past 12 months. Polyurethane-based suits will be outlawed beginning next year.

Surprisingly, FINA also voted to restrict the length of suits for men (to immediately above the knee) and women (shoulder to knee).

It's a thrilling resolution to swimming traditionalists who have lamented the suits' role in rewriting the record books. The sport had become overshadowed by the advances in suits, with each major competition providing a new platform for manufacturers to debut their space-age designs. The arms race threatened to take over the sport, making a mockery of world records and causing races to be less about the swimmer and more about the swimsuit.

It was especially crucial to ban the suits now, when they were still in their relative infancy. With every month that passed, FINA would have had a tougher time banning a suit that would have, over time, become as normal as a cap and goggles. The momentum behind sticking with the suits was building and it would have been tough to stop had it progressed much further. Now, FINA is able to re-take control of its sport. It's like if baseball had starting testing for steroids in 1998.

Next week's world championships will be the final major competition in which the suits will be worn. Some of the world records that will be set could stand for years, but that's a necessary evil. (FINA chose to keep all world records set with the suits.) At some point, those records will fall. Remember, Ben Johnson's steroid-aided 9.79 in the 1988 Olympics seemed like it'd never be beat, but Usain Bolt went a full tenth-of-a-second faster in 2008.

This decision trickles down to junior swimmers and it is, arguably, bigger news on that level. Too often in the past two years races on a local level were decided by whose parents could afford to buy a LZR. Those suits didn't make bad swimmers good, but they did make good swimmers great.

The governing bodies of lower-profile sports like swimming, golf and tennis feel beholden to the companies that make apparel and supplies because, most often, those are the companies that are sponsoring events and paying for advertisements. It's an inherent conflict of interest for the USGA to make decisions on whether a golf ball is fit for play, when the golf ball makers are the ones pumping money into the sport. Tennis and golf, in particular, have been transformed by advances in racquet and club technology, respectively. There are some rules in place to restrict technology, but nothing that has approached the scale of FINA's ban.

For FINA to stand up to suit-makers, after many poured millions into development of the high-tech garments, is a bold, decisive move that saves the sport and brings attention back to where it should be: in the pool.