Swimming Blogs - Chris DeSantis

I’m taking a break from my regularly scheduled post about the 1980 Olympics to answer a floswim user submitted question. The user wanted to know more about the LZR racer, for better or for worse. It’s a story that has been covered extensively by the swimming media, so I won’t rehash too much of what’s already been written. If you want to catch up, read the following links. I’ll be following each link with some context and commentary.

http://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/lane9/news/17027.asp - An article written by Swimming World’s John Lohn about the debut of the suit. Lohn highlights the Speedo marketing blitz and accompanying facts, including Speedo claims such as:

“The placement of the LZR panels reduce skin friction drag by 24%”

“Testing also indicated that the athletes experience a 4% improvement in sprinting, starts and turns”

“The LZR RACER has 10% less passive drag”

Two things strike me about the information presented. I am no technical expert when it comes to suits and I would guess very few people are. I have absolutely no idea what skin friction drag or passive drag is. Although, I do know from swimming that drag is bad and that I don’t want it. I also have no idea how you can quantify the improvement in sprinting, starts, and turns by virtue of a suit.

Furthermore, its pretty amazing for our sport that the suit has a star studded world-wide debut. I have the benefit of a swimming career that carried me from the lycra suit era into the fastskin. As far as I can recall, Speedo’s 1992 debut of the S2000, the suit that started their movement past lycra, was greeted with little fanfare. In sixteen years the market for a competitive swim meet has definitely grown concurrently with the sport.

A week later the suit would debut at the Missouri Grand Prix. A slew of longstanding records fell to swimmers. Here’s a good article concerning that record breaking streak:

http://www.swimnews.com/News/displayStory.jhtml?id=5884

Overall, since the debut of the suit, 11 world records have been set, all wearing the LZR racer. That information comes via Craig Lord, who is keeping a running total at SwimNews. The latest list can be found at:

http://www.swimnews.com/News/displayStory.jhtml?action=get&id=5939

Craig has been at the forefront of covering and discussing the impact of the LZR racer, so I won’t plagiarize him by presenting too many of his points. As the world record blitz continued via Alain Bernard at the most recent European Championships in Eindhoven, the press surrounding the LZR Racer turned sour. Again, read Craig Lord’s articles:


http://www.swimnews.com/News/displayStory.jhtml?action=get&id=5952

http://www.swimnews.com/News/displayStory.jhtml?id=5948

From reading these articles you should be able to tell that not everyone is pleased by the amazing results that have been seen in the suit. At the core of the argument are two central points. One has been dogging technical suits since we moved beyond the lycra suit era. That is the issue of buoyancy. It is expressly against FINA rules for any suit to provide flotation of any kind. I can say from personal experience that when I put the original fast skin legs on, I felt like my legs were flying out of the water. I can only imagine what a LZR Racer feels like. However, it seems that the phenomenon I am describing is not flotation, since FINA has approved all the suits.

The second argument hanging over the suits is one of access. This has several layers. On the one hand, there is concern that certain countries will not have access to the suits and that therefore will be at a disadvantage at the Beijing games. Typically the national swimming federations negotiate sponsorship directly with a suit manufacturer that supplies the suit for such competitions. Somewhere, a Speedo marketing director is probably grinning widely after discovering that swimmers think Speedo’s suit is such an advantage that they will be at a significant disadvantage if they don’t have it. On a smaller, national level, there is concern about access at Olympic trials. To this point, the only swimmers competing in the suit in advance of trials have been high level Speedo sponsored athletes. What then, of the amateur swimmers still competing for their high school or college teams. Will they be put at a strong disadvantage for making the team by virtue of not being professional? Lastly, the price tag has raised red flags across the web. People are concerned about the cost of a suit being prohibitive in what has already been classified as a “country club” sport. USA swimming has been nominally fighting to improve access to the sport among lower income and minorities. When the cost to be competitive rises to $550 just for a suit, are we as sport destroying any efforts to expand access? These are all valid questions that have been raised by numerous voices.

What’s my two cents? Despite whatever percentage reductions in drag occur or whatever world records are set, your training and preparation is still overwhelmingly responsible for how you will perform. As Garrett posted earlier this year, there’s no such thing as a magic suit.

If you have any other questions you’d like me to dig into, please send them via floswimmr and I’d be happy to answer them. Later this week, check back for the rest of my post on the 1980 Olympics.