tech suits!!

Question
Hello Mr.Watson, I am working on an I-Search project for school and I wanted to know if tech suits are good or bad for the sport of swimming. I also wanted to know how much of a disadvantage it gives to the others who do not have the tech suit, and which strokes do tech suits help the most in? Thank you for your time

Answer
Hello,

Whether tech suits are good or bad is debatable, what is required is that everyone gets to use the same type to level the playing field so to speak. Competitive advantages tend to slant the advantage to the person or team with the best access to the best technology.

So firstly I will explain what tech suits do. They do make for faster swim times due to a number of reasons, and not all suits do all these things, which again leads to unfair advantages again.

The first thing a tech suit can do is provide extra buoyancy. This helps the swimmier in 2 ways, firstly the body is held up in the water with some assistance so the swimmier can direct their power to pulling faster in the water. The 2nd point is that the swimmer is deemed to be lighter in the water and therefore has less weight to pull thru the water and can go faster than they normally would.

Secondly the suit is tight on the body and helps the swimmer remove lactic acid quicker by forcing the muscles to contract more and also helps general blood supply throughout the body.

Thirdly there is less drag. The outside of the suit is smoother than skin and some suits help to channel water past the body more efficiently than human skin. and also much less drag than conventional nylon suits, and slao less body panels and joins/stitching.

So all these properties help to make very small increases in efficiency, which over 100 meters make a difference of up to a second, which is huge in swimming strokes.

For instance there were more world records broken in the world championships last year than in the Olympics in 2008, and most by those using some of swimsuits with technology. But again some teams did not have the money to buy the best suits. The company jaked ( Italian) has less panels than a conventional nylon suit so less drag. But they are very expensive( $500-00 and up). Also more importantly some countries have sponsors for a particular brand, so if they don't have the SPEEDO LZR or a JAKED suit they will be at a disadvantage!! Crazy!! Many countries feared the worst as they had the wrong suits due to deals struck with certain sponsors. Speedo and Jaked had the best suits at the Olympics; Germany had Addidas suits which were not as good. !

The problem was that FINA (swimming body) did not set up rules for who could wear what. And now there is a possibility of world records being removed. FINA should have set a standard for 1 suit type only.

FINA officials decided to ban the high-tech swimsuits that have been likened to doping on a hanger. The ban does not start until 2010, but the polyurethane-based swimsuit era that the swimwear giant Speedo introduced in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics will effectively be ushered out.

In the 17 months since the LZR Racer hit the market and spawned a host of imitators, more than 130 world records have fallen, including seven (in eight events) by Michael Phelps during the Beijing Olympics.

Check this NY times article out as well

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/sports/25swim.html

And these articles:-

http://reachforthewall.com/2009/09/19/usa-swimming-bans-suits-oct-1/

http://www.swimnetwork.com/News/Swimming/Blogs/Archive/Phillip-Whitten/2009/10/W...



Thanks