When the difference between missing out on an Olympic medal and the podium comes down to hundredths of a second, every little detail counts on race day: flawless execution, the elimination of unnecessary drag, and of course the racing suit.
The suits, known as technical suits, can affect everything from how a swimmer moves in the water to how they feel mentally prepared in the final minutes before stepping onto the starting line.
“The first time I put on the technical suit, I felt like I was Superman underwater,” said Ryan Murphy, a three-time Olympian now headed to Paris. “It was like I was flying.”
Speedo is a world leader in developing technical suits for elite swimmers, always with the Olympics in mind. From creating the first swimsuit made from a material other than wool in 1928 to debuting the Fastskin suit at the 2000 Olympic Games, the 110-year-old innovative team is dedicated to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in swimming.
Alongside Speedo, TYR and Arena are other popular technical suit brands commonly seen at top-level competitions, including the Olympics.
“Performance success is up to the athlete,” Speedo’s senior vice president Simon Brecon told For The Win. “Our job is simply to help them get on that path.”
At the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Speedo swimmers will compete in two new high-tech suits: Fastskin LZR Intent 2.0 and Fastskin LZR Valor 2.0. Designed with input from elite swimmers and inspired by sharks (yes, really!), the suits allow swimmers to choose the most comfortable (while still fitting close to the skin) and buoyant option depending on the event. The more coverage the suit provides, the more efficient it will be.
Team USA Olympic swimmers Kieran Smith, Regan Smith, Caleb Dressel and Ryan Murphy (speed)
“As a sprinter, I want compression,” said Abby Weitzer, a lifelong Speedo swimmer and competitor in her third Olympic Games.
“What I like most about this suit is that when I dive (wearing a closed-back Intent), I feel like my body is stable and my body position and lines are maintained.”
Speedo’s 2024 Olympic swimsuit features sharks and space exploration
There are clear differences between a regular training suit and a technical suit: Murphy estimates that wearing a technical suit allows an athlete to skate farther from the wall than in a regular training suit, shaving off about one second for every 50 meters.
Speedo’s high-tech suit’s goal is to reduce friction and improve hydrodynamics in the water: its team of designers, scientists, material specialists, clothing engineers and researchers hope to lock the swimmer’s body into a sleek shape, float them in the water and feel like a second skin.
US Olympic swimmer Ryan Murphy (Speed)
Speedo actually takes textile and design inspiration from one of the most fearsome sea creatures: sharks.
Speedo’s head of innovation, Kula Lavezzo, said researchers led by the company’s London-based central innovation team, AquaLab, are looking at how sharks and other creatures move through the water. For example, the Fastskin LZR Intent mimics shark skin with textured panels optimized for maximum efficiency in the water.
“When you look at sharks, you notice that their scales, or denticles, are different all over the shark’s body,” Lavezzo said, “so they’re big in some areas and really small in others, depending on the curves of the shark. … We’re taking that idea and trying to apply it to the human body.”
But this isn’t a new concept for Speedo: The first Fastskin suit, which debuted at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, was a full-body suit inspired by shark skin to reduce drag.
Lavezzo says Speedo’s latest innovation for its Intent and Valor suits is a “custom coating” inspired by the development of protective coatings for space exploration. She and her team combed through 50 different Lamoral Space Tech coating recipes to find the one that would best repel water for the 2024 Olympic suits.
U.S. Olympic swimmer Caleb Dressel (speed)
“When you see the athletes splashing and coming out of the water, the water is rolling down and sparkling,” Lavezzo said. “And that’s just because of the water repellent we use.”
But designers, researchers and engineers can’t work in isolation, so they enlist athletes early in the development process: They share designs, samples and as many prototype suits as possible with swimmers and ask for their feedback.
“It’s usually how I feel. [about] “I’m constantly checking to see if my body is positioned properly in the water, or if the compression is too much or too little,” Weitzer says. “They’re constantly changing the seams. They’re constantly changing the fabrics and how they’re put together, so if I feel like I’m not getting enough compression in a certain spot, or my body position is off, I definitely let them know.”
Speedo tests competitive swimsuits with elite swimmers (Speedo)
The Future of Speedo’s Technical Suits in a Post-Technical Doping World
Innovation in technical suit design can produce truly amazing results. Michael Phelps famously wore an LZR Racer suit to win a record-breaking eight Olympic gold medals in 2008. The suit uses polyurethane panels that are impermeable to water and trap air for increased buoyancy.
The suit has exploded in popularity, with competitors trying to replicate it using neoprene, Brecon said.
Michael Phelps competes in the semi-finals of the men’s 100m butterfly swim at the National Aquatics Center during the Beijing Olympic Games on August 15, 2008. (FRANCOIS-XAVIER MARIT/AFP/Getty Images)
But the “supersuit era” has caught the attention of swimming’s international governing body, World Aquatics, over concerns that it is akin to technological doping, leading to new rules such as a ban on full-body suits and suits having to be made entirely from fabric, with no plastic or rubber panels.
Speedo works closely with World Aquatics to ensure new designs don’t violate rules, Brecon said, but they also lobby on occasion.
“Right now in our sport, technology has outpaced the guidelines to a certain extent so we need to look at that balance,” he said.
Lavezzo and his AquaLab team have been working on developing a suit for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics for about a year, and are already looking ahead to the 2032 Brisbane Olympics.
U.S. Olympic swimmer Abby Weitzil (Speedo)
Future developments could include suits for different body types, as well as suits specific to a particular sport or swimming style, Lavezzo said. One existing suit specifically features a power band to assist the hamstrings as the power dynamics change in the backstroke.
The suits could also provide swimmers with real-time biometric data, something that swimming, unlike many sports, doesn’t currently allow. Perhaps Speedo can convince World Aquatics to move the goalposts.
“The layman’s example I give, and my innovation team laughs about it, is basically the Black Panther, the suit that gives energy back,” Brecon says. “So how do you actually take the energy and give it back to the muscle groups? How do you isolate the muscle groups to drive the power? [where] Depending on your stroke, is it necessary?
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