Faster than nature
This month's Olympic Games will showcase technology that makes athletes go faster and stay cooler.
Running shoes that deflect heat and sweat. Swimsuits that imitate the flow dynamics of shark skin or airplanes. "Cool" woolen clothing that can keep athletes comfortable between events in 100-degree heat. The Olympic Games in Athens promise to spotlight not only superb athletes, but also the latest sports science and technology.
The ancient Greeks, who used science to help organize their world, would probably approve. And while the debate continues about whether the impact of "smarter" body wear can be measured in gold medals, athletes and sporting-goods makers agree that if using such items makes athletes feel more comfortable and confident, it can help them achieve peak performance.
Olympic contenders already have been testing experimental versions of high-tech suits and shoes, especially in high-speed events like sprinting and freestyle swimming.
"I think technology is helping improve swimming times, but ultimately it's about the swimmer and what you feel best wearing," says Martina Moravcova, a silver medalist in 2000, who in Athens will wear a shoulder-to-ankle suit by Tyr Sport of Huntington Beach, Calif. "You can't judge if you are one-tenth of a second faster or slower, but you do feel much slicker than if your body wasn't covered."
The "long-john" swimsuits have become popular since Australian medalist Ian Thorpe made a big splash with his full-body Adidas JetConcept suit during the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
Mr. Thorpe, who won three gold and two silver medals in Sydney, reportedly was able to convince Games officials that the suit was not merely swimwear, but a crucial piece of equipment because of its hydrodynamic qualities.
Most freestyle swimmers are expected to wear some version of them in Athens, says Mary Wagner, spokeswoman for USA Swimming, the national body for competitive swimming based in Colorado Springs, Colo. "These suits aren't magic bullets," adds Steve Furniss, an Olympic medalist in 1972 and cofounder of Tyr. "But they can increase performance through lower drag coefficients."
To more effectively reduce drag, water must be kept attached to the body surface for as long as possible. When water hits the shoulders of a swimmer, it normally separates from the body, causing pressure drag, often the strongest type of drag. But placing ridges around the body in strategic places causes the swimsuit essentially to alter the water flow and keep it along the length of the body longer. While the ridges do increase friction drag a bit, they reduce pressure drag more than enough to compensate.
Tyr has applied research from the University of Buffalo to design its new Aqua Shift swimsuit, which it claims reduces drag by 10 percent by incorporating ridges called turbulators that look like hollow pipes. Adidas uses riblets over the back and buttocks to mimic the aerodynamics of an airplane, and Speedo's new Fastskin II suit mimics the tiny toothlike scales in shark skin, called dermal denticles, that are slanted toward the tail of the shark and help force water flow around its body, thus reducing friction.
Speedo's suit was designed by aerospace engineer Barry Bixler using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software to simulate and test the suit's reduction of drag. CFD also has been used in other sports like the javelin.
