The latest on the Water Rover controvesy

I posted a thread on this on ST. While I was at the ZOOT camp. I heard from a pro who raced Oceanside that the Wtaer Rover issue cam up again and there is a possibility it might be banned Sept 1st for North American IM events. The thread generated this response from De Soto as to the current situation and procedures:


Hey Bryan, Chuck Cates here with De Soto. This is the latest:

Ironman is wetsuit legal
Written by: Dan Empfield
Date: Tue Feb 09 2010 After a flurry of hand-ringing posts on the Slowtwitch reader forum in response to new rules posted on the Oceanside 70.3 website, Ironman has dropped its prohibition of wetsuits and swimskins that appeared overnight on the Ironman California portal.
Wetsuits that exceed 5mm in thickness will be legal at Ironman events that are wetsuit-legal, as will so-called fastskins or swimskins at all Ironman events.
Ironman's Steve Meckfessel stressed that there is no ban in place on either style of garment, and, no date when any such ban is currently contemplated. Any rule changes will depend on the discussions on rule dispensations between Ironman and USA Triathlon.
At the start of the day today, the Ironman California website had updated its rules to contain these two new swim-specific directives:
Swim Course Rules and Instructions 7. Wetsuits must be 5mm thick or less.
Concerns were several. Most obvious were dozens or hundreds of competitors registered at wetsuit-legal Ironman events that had invested six-hundred dollars or more in De Soto's Water Rover, a wetsuit that featured panels exceeding the 5mm max rule thickness.
The other concern, voiced by two executives at USAT, is whether Ironman had followed its own stated policy—and USAT's requirement—to apply for and be granted a dispensation from USAT's rules. USA Triathlon has no rule prohibiting wetsuit thickness or against the use of swimskins in swim events, so, for Ironman to ban such apparel should require a dispensation.
Ironman has not yet submitted any of its rule dispensation requests for 2010 to USAT, but, Meckfessel maintains that most or all dispensation topics have been discussed for months, going back to the Clearwater event in November, and Ironman and USAT have a verbal understanding on many or most of the rule variances. The submission of this list of dispensations to USAT by Ironman is imminent.
Might this prohibition on these two garment classes return? Perhaps, depending on what dispensations have been requested of USAT. In any case, neither class of garment will be prohibited until, at the earliest, September 1 of 2010, the commencement of Ironman's qualifying season, according to Meckfessel.
Asked if January 1, 2011 is another, potential, and logical, date of implementation, Meckfessel agreed.
The decision to allow both wetsuits and swimskins gives Ironman an opportunity to fine tune the crafting of these new rules, assuming such dispensations are granted. Is a 5mm wetsuit one that has any panel exceeding 5mm? Or rubber coverage that, on average, does not exceed 5mm? What about 5mm seams? Or rubber that is 5mm nominally but, during the bun-slicing process at a rubber manufacturer, has panels that vary from 4.8 to 5.5mm?