Some quick numbers on the new suits

good to see more cooler heads on this board rather than the suit-hypers. the only truly scientific study I've seen (although he wasn't able to do any controlled experiments) actually discussed the possibility of bodysuits impacting performance to the swimmers' detriment. the use of neutrally buoyant material(or temporarily buoyant until saturation) in the new suits was postulated to impact performance to a degree, however. it probably is good for a tenth per 50 or 100. not the degree of improvement people were are thinking (2%=half a second off a 50), but for an improvement over shaved skin, that's actually pretty impressive. what is most interesting is that I am not seeing many blue70's at the meet. considering that it seems to provide more buoyancy than the lzr, it's puzzling that i am not seeing anyone wearing them. i think a big part of suit choice is psychological-everyone seems to be taking speedo's handouts, so people don't want to go against what everyone in the crowd is doing.

I don't think you can assert they are overpriced. You can assert they are expensive but Speedo shouldn't be expected to sell them at a loss. Part of me wonders if the cost isn't a significant part of the controversy. If this suit was $50 would folks complain so much? yeah, speedo has to make up a ton on development and marketing costs. no one seems to complain about computers being overpriced, but the production costs, at least on the parts that I am involved in designing, are less than a tenth of what you all pay for. why? because companies have to pay all of us engineers salaries over the years it takes to develop the products, and then all of the marketing campaigns to convince you to buy the product. i'm sure that the lzr must cost less than 50 dollars to produce (20 dollars wouldn't surprise me, these are made in china right??) but they have to pay all of their athletes, engineers, as well as market the product and provide 2500 free suits to athletes at trials! so they have to make this all back somehow. and if the market will bear the cost, that's what the price is. it's like intel producing 1000 chips on the same wafer, and the ones on the outside run at 2 ghz so they get sold for a couple hundred, and the ones at the center that cost the same to produce but can run slightly faster get marked up to $1000 when they first come out. and people pay those prices when they come out. why? i do a lot of high performance computing, but i don't need to pay 80% more for a 5% speed improvement, especially when the price will come down a lot in a couple months. similarly, i don't need to spend 10-20x the price for a lzr compared to my speedo when it will likely only improve my speed by a couple tenths. but phelps? sure! and if i was competing at a higher level and had the disposable income, sure i might consider it. what is most surprising to me is that you see so many kids at high school championships in the fs-pro bodysuits at like 300 a pop. a complete waste of their parents' money, especially when you consider jimmy broke the high school record wearing a speedo brief.

Um, Hoff's American Record was set wearing a LZR back in May. Tonight's swim by Ziegler was a personal best. My point is simply that when records aren't broken the suit suddenly disappears as a variable from everyone's arguments. Classic sampling bias: only looking at data that may support your hypothesis. So Ziegler went a personal best at the olympic trials in an event for which she's been training several years. And the suit gets the credit?

All the things you guys are describing show the improvements made in the last 20 years. More pros - better training - longevity of swimmers - and so on. And again this time around we would have seen another small improvement in times --- but please somebody explain the 200 Free improvements for men and women. They dropped more in the last 4 years than all 20 years before combined. I am not backing off anything - there is a massive drop of about 2% - just check all the events.

One has to wonder if the new suits, like many other pieces of equipment, require some experience to gain full benefit from. Perhaps putting on a new type of suit for the first time for your big race is not the way to get the best advantage. There were some articles in the Australian press indicating that Eamon Sullivan for example had a learning process and made adjustments and improved with each race in the suit. Chris is the stats expert and perhaps he'll chip in on this but I don't think it is valid to say that because some people have bad swims in an LZR that the LZR cannot be partially responsible for other people having good swims.

Chris is the stats expert and perhaps he'll chip in on this but I don't think it is valid to say that because some people have bad swims in an LZR that the LZR cannot be partially responsible for other people having good swims. Yes! Logic, statistics, and empirical methods. That's right, examples of bad swims in LZRs do not alone refute the hypothesis that LZRs could have a statistically significant positive impact on swim times. But these examples do illustrate that other factors are at play (e.g., conditioning, athlete's mental state, 10K screaming fans, a deeper pool than in 2004). These factors are in play in "good" swims as well as in "bad" swims. Also recognize that unless you control for these other variables at play you can't attribute a "1-2% improvement" to any one of them. The "Whitten/Lord Study" as it's now being called (like it's a seminal paper on hydrodynamics) is well-intentioned but is ultimately anecdotal.

It would be interesting to run the number on the trials where the LZR (or others) were not allowed. Canada, this well known model of fairness, is one. Germany, I believe, did the same, with morning finals on top of it if memory serves. the test will be % improvement with LZR being used vs no LZR. Of course, the swimmers who were not able to don the magic suit were psychologically weakened ... As an aside, the Canadian medley team swam with LZR after the trials, were the times statistically better ?

So many changes in the swim stroke. So much changes in conditioning. The 200 is fast becoming the same as a 100. Better starts, better turns, better streamline makes for faster times.

It would be interesting to run the number on the trials where the LZR (or others) were not allowed. Canada, this well known model of fairness, is one. Germany, I believe, did the same, with morning finals on top of it if memory serves. the test will be % improvement with LZR being used vs no LZR. Of course, the swimmers who were not able to don the magic suit were psychologically weakened ... As an aside, the Canadian medley team swam with LZR after the trials, were the times statistically better ? They did demolish the Canadian record, even though Hayden didn't swim the free leg due to back problems.

Here is a comparison of what it took in the last 6 US Olympic Trials to make the top 8 in the 100 and 200 Free (Men): why pick those ? Because I was a 200 Free swimmer and I know the difference between a 1:49.9 and a 1:47. Also, Freestyle has had no change in rules and things have pretty much stayed the same except for some underwater kicking off the wall (which has not been revolutionized in the last 4 years). 1984 50.83 and 1:51.26 1988 50.5 and 1:50.7 (those are approx) 1992 50.53 and 1:50.60 1996 50.31 and 1:50.80 2000 49.96 and 1:50.23 2004 49.7 and 1:49.83 2008 not sure yet, but it will be under 49 AND 1:46.94 So in 20 years the time for the 200 drops 1.4 seconds and then in 4 years it drops more than twice as much ? We must have had a miracle in nutrition and training methods. Maybe it's the water or they are just more motivated ? I don't know the exact difference of the suits - but it is BIG. I don't know why some people only wear the legskins - maybe it's the problems in terms of water coming in for some swimmers - but I think we won't see many legskins in Beijing.