Mark Spitz's on Speedsuits

On Friday's; I swim with Dean, he is a writer for Reuters. Dean is witty, charming, a snappy dresser and has a commonwealth accent I can never place. He has a good breaststroke too but he won't race. I may try and rope him into a relay.

Recently he did a very thorough interview with Mark Spitz for 'Reuters' and he is letting me post it.

Snippet from Dean's MySpace page:

DEAN: WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE SPEEDO LZR BODYSUIT THAT'S BREAKING ALL THESE WORLD RECORDS?

Mark Spitz: I had long hair, I didn't wear goggles, I had a little suit that was nylon that wasn't even clingy and yet I broke world records. If you really thought that that swimsuit really made you faster then I'm buying Tiger Woods' golf clubs because I think I can be competitive.

The reality is, it's not the swimsuit that's taking the swimmer across the pool fast, it's the guy in the swimsuit stroking that suit fast. What they don't tell you is that you need to go about 6 miles per hour to break the actual drag co-efficient and that means you have to swim a 50 freestyle. Those are the only people that can actually swim fast enough to get anything out of that suit. Any thing more than that in distance, the suit starts to become smaller. If you look at Michael Phelps when he swam the 400 individual medley, he basically wore a suit from his waist to his knees. So he's not wearing that full-length bodysuit in some of those events because of the drag factor.

So it's a marketing tool. At about $700 a copy -- and they basically give them away and they only last for about 2 hours and I think you rip about one out of every 4 you're trying to get on -- it's not something that I think an age group swimmer's parents are going to be too happy about buying ... It's a psych. If everybody was wearing those suits, I'd want one too ... It's all psychological at that point. ..."

(And I just made a promise this morning I would leave the subject of speedsuits alone too. Sigh! Note that the above is Mark Spitz's opinion so don't shoot the messenger.)

'Reuters' Ken Wills "test dives" the Speedo LZR

Ken Wills was an age group swimmer in his youth and he got to try the LZR on and swim different strokes: "... I did seem to slide through the water further and faster on the dive -- or was I being influenced by the upbeat 30-minute background presentation by Speedo officials?

Particularly on the butterfly and breast strokes the sensation was, well, buoyant.

But that wasn't really what I was feeling, insisted Jason Rance, worldwide head of Speedo International's Sports Aqualab.

"In terms of buoyancy, we tested it to make sure there is no buoyancy advantage," he said. "The suit's stabilizer helps keep the body position right so you feel you're riding higher in the water." [Link]

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My opinion is that if you feel more buoyant and are riding higher on the water, then you are more buoyant. I think the public relations people don't like that word buoyant even though it is demonstrable that they are. They don't like it because FINA doesn't like it nor want it as an option.

Did you know that if you wear a sppedsuit at the Alcatraz Sharkfest, they put you in the wetsuit division?

Image comes from Science Daily with an article attached about the suit design: [Link]