Word: tyr
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...this Olympics, TYR had to alter its design focus. Four years ago, the company had developed a suit called the Aqua Shift, using a technology borrowed from airplanes and Formula One car racing, but never before used on a swimsuit. It used a system of turbulators, or tripwires, that wrap around the chest and back and disrupt, or trip, the flow of water down the body. This was significant because in previous attempts to reduce drag, the water would run quickly down the body and then form an eddy that would literally pull the swimmer backwards. So, in effect...
...Aqua Shift worked well. Too well, in fact. After the 2004 Olympics the governing body for international swimming, FINA, decided that tripwire technology was too extreme and, according to TYR, banned any form of protuberances from swimsuits...
After having battled with FINA over this and other technologies, the TYR team decided to take a more holistic approach to the suit for 2008. While it spent plenty of time in the lab developing fabric and design structure, TYR focused most of its efforts on the swimmers and in the pool. Eric Shanteau, a member of the American Olympic team, swam seven personal best times at trials in a suit that he helped design. (Yes, he's the guy who went to Beijing despite a diagnosis of testicular cancer.) Shanteau, for example, had about an inch and a half...
...Like TYR, Speedo also received feedback from swimmers, including Australia's Grant Hackett, Americans Natalie Coughlin, Ryan Lochte and, of course, Mr. Phelps. These swimmers helped tweak the feel of the suit, as well as submitting themselves to full body scans and hand measurements (400 in total) to help create a digital framework for the design...
...wear the LZR or TYR and feel as fast as a dolphin - and don't discount the psychological effect of wearing something high tech. But you are still not likely to catch Phelps, who, it must be said, only wears the bottom half of his new Speedo wonder suit for most races. For any swimmer, it is the more important half to be wearing...