Here is a link to the Science of Sport blog who has taken a long hard look at the LZR and has a back-and-forth debate about it with a Prof Raul Arellano, who is based at the University of Granada in Spain:"... It would seem that the claims of Speedo/NASA indicate that with the new suits this boundary layer between the body/suit and the water is definitely modified. Whether FINA consider this unfair or not will be the deciding factor in the debate. ..." "..."
The problem with the new swimsuits is that they improve the body shape much more than skin friction. And this improvement is very individual... the percentage improvement depends on the person's body shape. I have observed a master swimmer with a lot of fat around her abdominals reduce her time in 100m butterfly by 6 seconds to break the Master's world record. The changes in the body shape underwater using a smaller size full body swimsuit were clearly evident (the fat position was fixed and the perimeter reduced).
Read it here, lots of fun opinionated speculation and observation: [Link]
Tomorrow at Swimming World, this topic will be fully discussed on the Morning Swim Show.
But the plot thickens. From The Age.au: "... During the suit's development, Speedo's research arm, Aqualab, hired wind tunnels at space agency NASA to test more than 60 types of fabrics for drag and stability. The suits were tested for months at the Australian Institute of Sport, in addition to the more than 1000 flume tests using mannequins and swimmers in Dunedin. ..."
FINA executive director Cornel Marculescu said officials would meet Speedo representatives at next month's world short-course championships in Manchester: "There are concerns about suits being like triathlon suits, which are thicker. There are buoyancy issues. We have to review this. ..." [Link]
No comments:
Post a Comment