What I actually said was that the suit rarely is the difference. If you get down to 50s and 100s between extremely evenly matched swimmers, then I agree that the suits may make a difference, some small portion of the time. But, even this is rare, and the results from the Olympics and other world class meets prove my point.
Exhibit 1: Ian Thorpe won the 400 meter free at the last two Olympics by such a large margin than he would have won even if he were wearing the same type of oversized nylon suit that Mark Spitz wore.
Exhibit 2: There is no consensus about which suits are best. Ian Thorpe wears a full one; Klete Keller wears bib johns and Michael Phelps wears the legging sort of thing. It still seems that your feel for the water is perceived by world class swimmers to be more important than the best hydrodynamics. Otherwise, everyone would wear the same full suit that Ian Thorpe wears.
Exhibit 3: Even in world class competition, in the shortest races, decided by fractions of a second, the same swimmers usually win. For example, Gary Hall now usually wins the 50, but he never beat Popov when Popov was in his prime. This leads me to conclude that it is usually the swimmer, whether because of ability, training or desire, and rarely the suit.
I agree I would probably swim a little faster wearing a $400 fastskin suit instead of the $25 swim trunks that I bought at Dunhams. But, there are so many other things, like how often and how hard I train, how good my start and turns are and how psyched up I am for a race that would have much more impact upon my 200 time than what suit I am wearing.
But, I am not swimming in the Olympics and even chose to swim D3 instead of D1 in college because I was going there to learn, not swim. It seems to me that if you are over 25, live in America and swimming for fun, not profit, then you look really silly wearing a tiny lycra suit. But, real men don’t care what other people think.
