by When the Olympic medals are handed out to the world’s greatest swimmers at La Defense Arena in Paris this summer, an entire team of female scientists based in Britain will be taking more than a passing interest.
Where athletics now has a “super shoe”, swimming has its latest “super suit” and a brand new design – complete with a fabric coating inspired by space exploration – will be used for the first time at next month’s World Aquatic Championships once. .
Team GB swimmers are among those who have used the Speedo Fastskin suit, which retails from £235 to £460 and, in their former “polyurethane” suit, was worn by 94 per cent of gold medalists at the Beijing Olympics 2008. .
That material was eventually banned, but Speedo’s UK-based Aqualab has been rapidly advancing technology and, applying the same hydrodynamic principles, almost two-thirds of gold medals have been recovered in Tokyo suits Fastskin. That included perhaps the three biggest stars – Adam Peaty, Caeleb Dressel and Emma McKeon – although more than half of the world records from 2019 have been set in the suits.
The science has been further advanced with the arrival of the LZR Pure Intent 2.0 and LZR Pure Valor 2.0 versions, which have added a water-repellent outer layer.
These coatings, manufactured by the Dutch company Lamoral, which specializes in materials that protect satellites in the harshest space conditions, were designed to ensure that pool water cannot penetrate the suit. That should add to the feeling of weightlessness and buoyancy.
The swimming world is now awaiting the first global results in Doha, where the World Championships will take place from February 2.
Aqualab’s head of innovation is Coora Lavezzo, a physics and civil engineering graduate from the University of Birmingham, with no previous swimming background. Her team of eight women are based variously in London, Speedo’s offices in Nottingham and a material testing facility at the Berghaus base in Sunderland, owned by Speedo’s parent company, Pentland.
The experts behind the creation of the suits range from anatomists, designers and pattern engineers to material scientists, civil engineers, former swimmers and current Olympic champions.
“So much of what we look at is about hydrodynamics,” says Lavezzo. “We study drag and how it can be overcome. We also look at buoyancy in water. Swimmers often talk about the feeling of riding high in the water.”
The innovation process combines the results of numerous scientific trials, often with mannequins, in facilities across the UK and US, before producing a prototype that is fed back to the world’s best swimmers.
“Sometimes it’s about how the swimmer feels as much as what the details are saying. If they feel good through the water, they will perform very well,” says Lavezzo.
Great Britain’s Olympic and double world freestyle champion Matt Richards was among those who tried on suits on the journey to the finished product.
The biggest change concerns what is known as the hydrophobicity of the suits, with Lamoral and Speedo settling on a new outer coating chosen after trials of more than 50 chemical recipes.
Bringing in an all-female design team was not intended but there were unexpected potential benefits. Lavezzo says: “Our female athletes can have a conversation that maybe hasn’t happened in the past… about how the suit fits and feels on the body and some of the challenges that female athletes face, great thing.
“Yes [engineering] a very male dominated industry. We are very privileged to have a team of great thinkers… who bring together creativity as well as science and engineering. They have a great ability to question everything, which is what we need in an innovation space.”
One big difference since the world swimming governing body introduced new rules in 2010 is that the full-body suits are now only worn by women, while the men wear the knee-length “jammers” from the waist down.
Lavezzo emphasizes gender differences in the middle of triumph and says that it would be “interesting to look at those rules related to the life cycle of men. [body] coverage”, arguing that there is still huge room for innovation, especially regarding the possible use of “on-board trackers” or products that can be personalized for specific athletes or conditions.
So what do the swimmers think? Australia’s McKeon, the five-time Olympic champion, emphasizes how the suit “slips” and feels like the water isn’t sticking to the suit. Richards, Olympic champion in Tokyo and double world champion last year, emphasizes its durability, and therefore its benefit to emerging swimmers.
“For a normal person doing their 50’s, they wouldn’t need it, but if they put one of these suits on, it would be an empire,” he told TWS.
“They will definitely be faster than before and more comfortable. I think it will be very interesting to see how many adopt these. I think a lot of the medals won and the podiums will be made up of the new Speedo suits.”
