It
was just last night that I noticed that no Olympic swimmers are wearing
the hi-tech full-body LZR suits that were all over the Beijing Olympics
in 2008. It turns out those were banned by Olympic officials.
The new rules, in effect since 2010, permit only
“jammers,” suits from the kneecap to navel for men, and from the knee to
shoulder for women. The fabric must be air permeable, and a suit may
not have any fastening devices such as a zipper, a response to companies
that began creating wetsuit-like neoprene suits after the 2008
Olympics.
The swimsuit company Speedo took that as a challenge.
At Aqualab, researchers took four years and spent 55,000
man-hours to produce what Speedo calls the Fastskin 3 system. The
internal team of 19 supplemented by outside experts talked to
hydrodynamic experts, aircraft engineers and nano textile producers.
They called on experts in kinesiology, biomechanics, fluid dynamics and
even a sports psychologist, who suggested a blue-gray tinge on goggle
lenses to instill a sense of calm and focus. They tried the “Six
Thinking Hats” method of brainstorming, a green hat for creative ways to
attack a problem, a black one to look at the feasibility of those
ideas. They “reverse brainstormed,” picturing how to make a swimmer go
as slow as possible with oversized goggles and a suit compressing the
body so parts stuck out, creating drag. The crazier the idea, the
better.
The result is the swimsuit you see Michael Phelps wearing here. Read
about how it was developed and what makes it so special at Smithsonian.
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