Speaking as an AG athlete, and with no offense intended, I generally give ZERO credence to the recommendations of pro athletes who are sponsored by the company/product they are touting. Note that Zone 3 isn't making the claim...she is. If the company was claiming it, at best I would call it 'puffery'. When the athlete says something like that, I would simply call it BS.

Having actually tested it (as well), I'll agree that the total benefit of a wetsuit vs a properly fitted swimskin is around 6 seconds / 100 for someone who is capable of - I don't know - at least a 56 minute IM swim.


So I am with you. Is it possible that one wet-suit is 6 seconds per 100 yards faster than another...hmmm... I think that could only be true if there is more to the story (Like the other one didn't fit)

I don't believe most things a pro athlete says. When money is on the line, people will say whatever.

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Yeah they're always on the best bike ever.

Zone 3 seem to have a good rep over here especially on the price / performance balance of their mid range suits.

But 6 seconds per 100 over the best of the rest ... ? Damn, we will have threads on hidden wetsuit motors next ... lol

WD :-)

Yeah, that is pretty hard to imagine. I am a MOP swimmer. My 100 yd intervals are around 1:35 in a 25 yard pool, and my 1000 yd intervals are around 1:43 on a good day. A wet suit gets me about 12s per 100 on the long intervals in the pool. Therefore, I imagine that a solid swimmer would be way faster than me as a baseline and therefore less to gain from wet suit optimization. I find it very hard to fathom that anyone's wet suit could get me 18s per 100.

Hello Thomas Gerlach and All,

Where's Monty?

He did a bunch of wetsuit tests .... I value his opinion ...

A swim or triathlon star's product one off endorsement will help sell the product and help support athletic endeavors .... but consumers do take those endorsements with a bit of salt .... and usually like to see some sort of testing protocol .... like Monty's.

And where is the instrumented flume with a Michael Phelps manikin ..... so swim gear can be branded and white papered with data .... so we do not have to rely only on hearsay advertising?



http://www.scienceinthenews.org.uk/contents/?article=8

What is the surface treatment of the aforementioned wetsuit?

Excerpt:

One area of sport where technology is making a difference is swimming. Modern swimsuits have a design based on the structure of sharkskin. Careful studies in test pools showed that sharks can slip though the water with about 10 per cent less energy expenditure than a fish with a perfectly smooth skin. These tests have allowed manufactures to design swimsuits made of artificial sharkskin. The sportswear company, Speedo, have developed a material called ‘Fastskin’.
Success in the Pool
Michael Phelps wore the new suit at the 2004 Athens Olympics and went on to win six gold and two bronze medals, making him the first swimmer in history to win eight medals at one Olympic Games.
At the same Games, 18 out of 26 Olympic records were broken by athletes wearing Speedo swimsuits. In all, swimmers wearing Speedos won 18 gold, 18 silver and 14 bronze medals.

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Cheers, Neal

+1 mph Faster

She says, "in some instances". I suppose those instances are probably where the wetsuit was so big or so restrictive that they actually made her slower than without a wetsuit.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
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Yes, I realize she says "in some instances". I would find it very hard, given two properly fitting wetsuits to see a difference of more than 1 sec per 100 at max and even that is likely a stretch. In reality, someone out there will be influenced by this and actually thins their wetsuit is 6 seconds faster than their old wetsuit. It makes me think back to Dan's piece last month and sometimes I feel this sort of "always must have the very latest and greatest" causes people not to want to do the sport. I know some people like that aspect of the sport, but I really think it works against the long-term sustainability of the sport.

It actually makes me think there is room for a bare-bones division beyond just a a City bike division. You can bring cap, googles, running shoes, and maybe a helmet (as opposed to race providing it)

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It can be true that some wetsuits are 6 seconds per 100m faster than others, but that would be when comparing top suits to pretty average, inflexible ones....
If you take the top end suits, make sure they are fitted correctly, and test correctly, there would only be 1-2 seconds between them per 100.

The quote sounds like it was written for her.

I think you need a wetsuit with super buoyant legs :) I just remembered I need to break out my calipers 😂

Did we talk Water Rover? I know I talked about it with Frank. I actually had a water rover and it was a dog, I got way too hot in it and it wasn't super flexible. Never got to race in it before it got banned.

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Hello Thomas Gerlach and All,

Thomas wrote: "You can bring cap, googles, running shoes, and maybe a helmet (as opposed to race providing it) " ....... and perhaps a Speedo or the like? ...... or not? .....

http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...ost=2019545#p2019545

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Cheers, Neal

+1 mph Faster

Xterra Vendetta :) It's supposedly legal but, man, does it look borderline lol.

Speed gains from wetsuits are mostly about fit. It's imperative if you are going to take this product category seriously, to find the best fitting wetsuit you can - that is the one that will be fastest for you.

Wetsuit companies can claim all kinds of stuff - just like bike, wheel and helmet companies can.

For the average triathlete this is all about fit.

Part of the challenge he is that "Best Fit", will be a bit more uncomfortable when you have the wetsuit on and you are NOT swimming. This is why, left up to their own devices most triathletes will be a wetsuit that is perhaps too big for them, because they are buying on comfort! It's all a bit counter-intuitive and going a bit away from common-sense. However, the very few, on-body swim tests have proven this to be true. But a further "however" here is Swimmer-A can take 5 wetsuits, swim in all 5, rank those five based on speed, then Swimmer-B do the same hopefully controlled testing and get a different order and ranking. Confused yet? Are you still with me?

I is and is not like testing and results for bikes. It's NOT like bikes because you can put a bike (without a rider on board) and get some hard numbers from the wind-tunnel. Based on that you can say, that this bike IS faster than this other bike. However, ounce you put the rider on board and they start riding - all those numbers go out the window. It's the bike and rider together that matter!

Ditto with the wetsuit.

So based on all of the above, with apologies with the confusing information, the BEST approach is to shop for a wet suit based on fit. Make sure you have expert wetsuit fitting help when shopping for a wetsuit (hard to find), and buy the one that fits a bit uncomfortably tight when you are standing around in it. That may be the one that's as close to optimal as you can get, without actually testing 5 wetuits in a pool yourself.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

I did a bunch of wet suit testing, 2x in fact. The second one never got published due to a death in the family.

No way, not 10 seconds over 100, she needs to put down whatever kool aid she's drinking. I seriously doubt she's going to swim significantly faster in this suit vs whatever she was using.

Suits feel faster/slower. If it helps her latch onto the back of the pack ahead of her she might be 2-3 min faster. But for a solo 3.8k TT swim I bet at most :45 difference...at most

The average difference in my testing between the fastest and slowest suit over 400 was at most :02 per 100. At most.

Here are the results.

http://accelerate3.com/wetsuit-test-results/

In the second round I tested 3 or 4 suits and there was a :01 second difference over 300

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
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She was using a Roka. My guess is she is swims no faster. That doesn't tell the overall picture as group dynamics exists, and fitness, and technique gains also play a role. Frankly, now I am just curious. I was with 2XU for about 5 years or so then switch to TYR last year, but never swam in TYR suit, mainly because they sent a low-tier suit with huge stiff shoulders, this year I am back with BlueSeventy and I look forward to testing both the X:3 I still have vs the Helix. I'll do 800s just like my swim skin test. I can't imagine I will see more than a handful of seconds, and frankly without going nuts with the testing, that can just be chalked up to normal variances between intervals.

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I have the Vanquish, which is a step up from the suit that I think she's wearing... the Aspire. Both are great suits, I really like my Vanquish and the reverse zipper... it doesn't make me 6 seconds/100 faster over another suit and I prefer my TYR Cat 5 to it.

She worked with Paul Newsome (Swim Smooth) here in Perth last year and I'm thinking wetsuits aside ... that could've made a :06/100 difference.

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Where's Monty?

He did a bunch of wetsuit tests .... I value his opinion ... //

Thanks Nealhe, and yes I have been doing testing since the wetsuit was invented for swimming. There is very little difference in suit swim times provided the suit is the right fit. There are some differences when you get to materials, stretchy rubber is better, thicker rubber is better, those are constants outside of fit. NO top of the line wetsuit is going to be more or less than 2 seconds difference, and certainly not close to that in faster swimmers. As noted by others, most fast swimmers get 4 to 6 seconds per 100 out of a full suit, so pretty hard to imagine someone in that category getting another 6 seconds?


MOP and BOP swimmers can get a lot more, some over 20+seconds per 100. But same goes there, same thickness suit, same basic fit, and you get the same advantage. Now some suits just fit certain bodies better, thus they are faster. That is the one piece dilemma, who do you build the suit for? The long torso skinny person, or the short stubby and hefty one. That is why the two piece was so good for most, you could mix and match to fit a lot more different body types. It wasn't really a faster suit that a proper fitting one the same thickness, just a suit that more people could get with confidence.


And the water rover was the fastest suit, but as stated, it was hot and bulky. But when I did swim in it it smoked pool and OW times of all other suits. What I did while it was legal was to just wear the bottoms and a T1 top. let like I was swimming downhill the whole time!!

its absolutely possible that this can happen. and it could very easily happen with 2 wetsuits of the same brand depending on what swimmer you are. since this is zone 3 we are talking in some extreme cases you could get a 6-8 sec difference for some swimmer between the vanguard and the victory suit .( for instance a person with swim background and high legs in the water could lose a good bit of time in te vanquish and a sinker a good bit time in the vanquish . with 80 plus % oft he people the difference would be less, but i have i have seen 10 seconds differneces in different wetsuits for a single swimmer swimmer . Tower 26 has seen 12 sec differences per 100 for ones person slowest and fastest suit , of course this are extreme differecnes but they do exit in rare cases.
heck you can get 10 sec of difference between to equal strong swimmers just using pull buoys .One could get 5-6 sec faster with some can get slower with it . and using differnt sizes of pull buoys for a leg sinker can also make a good difference.
so in theory this is possible.
what wetsuit did she wear before ?

A properly fitting wetsuit is worth at best a couple of minutes for a top professional. Sarah's swim is a little on the weaker side, but given two properly fitting wetsuits within the legal limit, there should be no way there could be 6 seconds difference. That would be at best the difference between wearing a wetsuit and not. She came from a Roka suit.

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My second round of testing which I didn't publish had a higher end suit and a low end suit. #39/40 rubber and a #38 rubber from the same company and line. Both full sleeve

They both swam within :01 of each other over 300yds. My first round of testing found at most a :06 or :08 second difference averaged out over 4x400 in each suit between the best and worst suit. Now the #38 runner was much more difficult to swim in due to the a lack of flexibility compared to the #39/40 suit.

Fit will matter more then what brand she's in. I'd find it hard to believe that for her there is a :06 difference/100 vs another wettie , unless her stroke is radically different or she did testing in one completely de-trained and the other in peak swim shape. That would also mean she didn't test them at the same time, which opens itself to a host of other problems.

I'm not disputing that for some swimmers it's not a possibility but I'd be more inclined to say that's going to happen for those swimming > 80 minutes for the IM distance

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
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Gonna call BS. The biggest differencea are more likely because one product fits better than the others. You don't see Arena or Speedo making these types of claims?

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