A friend of mine who just competed in the Kona Ironman sent me the following blurb:For immediate Release- 10/11-2008
Kailua –Kona, Hawaii (from San Diego based XTERRA WETSUITS)
For the second year in a row, The Velocity Speedsuit by XTERRA WETSUITS posted the fastest swim time of the day at the Ford Ironman World Championships.
In 2007, Mark Van Akkeren posted the fastest swim split with a time of 49:50 wearing a Velocity Speedsuit. This year, Noa Sakamoto posted the fastest swim split with a time of 47:01 wearing a new version of the XTERRA WETSUITS - Velocity Speedsuit.
John Flanagan, (also wearing a XTERRA WETSUITS- Velocity Speedsuit) was only 1 second behind Noa posting a time of 47:02. The XTERRA WETSUITS- Velocity Speedsuit was victorious by more than one minute and 30 seconds faster than the next swimmer Andy Potts.
The Velocity Speedsuit is considered to be the fastest Speedsuit in the water. On 09/09/08, the Velocity won a gold medal in the European Open Water 10K Championship. The new technology behind the Velocity Speedsuit continues to dominate anything that involves water.
Website for this suit is here. It is approved by FINA for OW competitions and I can only assume that applies to pool races as well (but perhaps I'm mistaken).
My friend said that about 80% of the people competed in one of the new FINA-approved "speedsuits" (I guess this is what the OW purists refer to as "real swimmers swimming naked" but I digress...) and that the B70 was far and away the most popular.
So my question is this: if the Xterra suit is similar, and its swimmers posted the fastest times (which may only mean they are better at choosing who to sponsor), why is it that the B70 gets all the love in pool swimming? Is it because of Roque Santos? (If so I hope they are paying him a lot.)
I'm not trying to muddy the waters here...I don't think any of these suits has a HUGE effect, and I certainly don't think there is a big difference between them in performance -- if you are going to wear one, factors such as price, comfort, durability should be more important, IMO.
I am just curious about how this happened. Why not Xterra? (Other than the fact that there is no getting around the fact that THIS IS A WETSUIT.)
