Because competition swimming is all about time, the athlete’s form, body position, and style are crucial in being the best. What helps these athletes’s is the newest technology that the 21st century has to offer. Even though much of the new FastSkins are still under experimentation with fabric, style, and durability, it seems to have some significant impact on the world of competitive swimming. In the picture to the left, Ian Thorpe is acting as a subject for the new Adidas Bodysuit in January 29, 2003. The testing was held in the wind tunnel of the automotive company, Audi. The white cloudy line above Thorpe’s body is the wind path formed by Thorpe’s body positioning. As an onlooker of this picture can tell, the air flow is almost in a straight line. Technology has helped swimming by the physics behind the reasoning of the experiments. If you look at certain objects that swim, fly or even drive, they all have streamlined, clean edged attributes. Technical adavances has helped make swimming be just like that. And that is how techonology has impacted swimming in such a huge way.

Just because a bodysuit is efficient on land, is does not necessarily mean that it will be as efficient in the water. To increase the bodysuits potential experimenters/makers began think outside of the box. They started to think like fish. The scales of a fish, or the skin of a shark make the water creature move through the water efficiently. Most of the material used for these suits have either microbeads, flow-panels, scale like perforations, or are of thin silky/rubbery material, much like dolphin or shark skin. These aid in the reduction of wave pressure and drag. Drag is reduced by these suits due to the coverage of the body. Drag can come from arm hair, leg hair, ripples in a swim cap, the shape of your body, postion of the head, streamline, etc. These bathing suits create a more streamlined body position. The scales, panels, microbeads and blades on a suit push the water away from that area of your body, like the rear or the chest. The reaction from the new suits increases your speed by decreasing your body drag. Because of these new suits, the official race times have decreased by little, but enough that the makers,companies, and USA Swimming and the International Swimming Federation believe in these suits.

Technology in swimming is dedicated to the efficiency of the swimmer on the water based upon the type of swimwear being worn. As technology advanced so has the advancements of others sports as well, but swimming was the main concern due to the outrageous idea of covering the whole body in nylon/lycra or polyester. To prove this idea was practical, the makers, like TYR, Speeodo, Finis all partnered up with physists, fabric companies, etc., to create a prototype and purpose of the new bathing suits. By using the techonolgy we have today, like the wind tunnels that Audi supplied for the Adidas suit or the resistance machine (flumes) used by the International Center for Aquatics Research, we can change how swimming is viewed.