Last but not least (in my opinion anyway), here is beautiful Thomas Rupprath smiling for the cameras away from the pool. How far we have come….

Some unpublished (here) odds and ends of Thomas Rupprath in and around the pool and posing for publicity shots.

I’ve been planning for some time to start a new recurring series here at WetSpeedos, called Swimming is the New Fashion.

Consider this post #1 of many under that heading.

This is an odd photo shoot featuring Thomas Rupprath and other German swimmers and water polo players. I think I found it on one of the French gay boy fashion blogs awhile ago, but it illustrates my point precisely: swimmers, divers and water polo players (to a lesser degree) are becoming celebrities in a way they haven’t been before. Why? Because they’re sexy — and because we all wish we could be them.

Aquamen especially get to flaunt their shiny muscled wet body parts in the skimpiest possible, impossibly tight — and even sheer — attire in front of millions of cheering fans worldwide, and do it legitimately without anyone tsk, tsking that “they might as well be naked!”

Michael Phelps is now aggressively stripping down to his speedos in TV ads every chance he gets, it seems. And as I’ve recently posted, Ryan Lochte is modeling, and Ian Thorpe has his own underwear line. Et cetera, et cetera. To catch this wave, fashion mags are following suit with competition swimming themes everywhere.

Thus, Swimming is the New Fashion. More to come.

Three previous posts about Thomas Rupprath — from December 2007 and February 2008 — featured images of Thomas Rupprath in silver Speedo (TM) fullsuits. Here are all of them together, beginning with some new ones, and working backward as they were posted here previously.

Handsome German swimmer Thomas Rupprath was one of the first swim stars I posted about, way back in December 2007.

I haven’t posted anything about him since February last year, but today I received a forward from someone close who gets mailings from a Yahoo athlete group. In it there were several excellent pix of Rupprath I’d never seen before.

So, to start off 2009, it seems appropriate to look back, and look forward.

Let’s start with some new pix of Thomas R. in a red Speedo (TM) full suit, looking mighty fine.