Evolution of the competitive swimsuit
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Hide captionShane Gould of Australia won 3 gold, 2 silver and a bronze medal in the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany. The over-sized, loose-fitting nylon/elastane suit pictured above was standard through the 1970s.
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Hide captionTracy Caulkins of the U.S. dives into the pool en route to winning the women's 400m IM at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. The nylon/elastane suit she is wearing is thinner and more shapely cut than the suits worn in the 1970s.
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Hide captionMatt Biondi of the U.S. (pictured above) wore a standard "speedo" brief at the 1988 Seoul Summer Games. Through the '70s and '80s, these nylon/elastane suits got tighter and smaller as manufacturers learned the importance of cutting water resistance, culminating in the "paper" suit.
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Hide captionDara Torres and the rest of the U.S. 4x100m free relay are pictured wearing the S2000 during the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games. The suit, developed by Speedo, was a pioneer "speed suit" and the first that claimed to be made of "fast swimwear fabric."
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Hide captionLeading up to the 1996 Atlanta Games, Speedo developed a new speed suit called the "Aquablade," which had vertical lines and absorbed water. The Aquablade also came in a model that extended to the knee, so the fast material covered more body, but this model took a while to catch on.
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Hide captionIt was not until about 1998 or 1999 that the "jammer," the men's suit that came down to the knee, became widely popular. Pictured above is Olympic champion Lenny Krayzelberg wearing the Speed Aquablade jammer at the 1999 Pan Pacific Championships.
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Hide captionThen in 2000 came the real game-changer - the FASTSKIN. This new suit was highly water repellant and was so tight it compressed the swimmers' muscles. Pictured above is the U.S. women's medley relay in the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games wearing three different iterations of the suit.
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Hide captionOther suit manufacturers started exploring heavily into speed suits of their own. TYR, Nike, Arena and Adidas all released new suits to be used at the highest caliber swim meets. Pictured above is Tom Dolan of the U.S, wearing a Nike shoulder-to-ankle suit, after winning the 400m IM in Sydney.
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Hide captionIan Thorpe was the first major professional to sport the full-body, wrist-to-ankle speed suit. Thorpe wore an Adidas full-body model for both the Sydney and 2004 Athens Olympics, but the "full-arms" suit was never very popular due to the restricted motion most swimmers experienced.
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Hide caption2004 marked the era of specialization, as swimmers began to have strong personal preferences both on brand and on cut. Aaron Piersol (pictured above), chose to wear a Nike jammer, or "legs" (waist-to-ankle), as most backstrokers felt that the upper-body suits caught water and were restrictive.
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Hide captionThe U.S. 4x200m free relay at the 2004 Athens Games is an example of swimmers fracturing on different cuts. While the new suits offered an advantage, swimmers were weighing suit cut versus feel for the water. All three here are wearing the FASTSKIN FSII, said to mimic shark skin.
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Hide caption2004 is also when it became clear that sprinters would be the torch-bearers who determined which make and model suits were best. Lyndon Ferns and the South African 4x100m free relay won gold in Athens wearing very thin, light-weight compression suits that were a sign of what was to come.
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Hide captionIn 2007, simpler was better. Speedo unveiled the FS Pro, which was essentially a "paper' suit from the shoulder to ankle. Swimmers were skeptical at first, but the tightly-woven lycra suit performed well in the pool. It also took about 15-20 minutes of meticulous tugging and pulling to get on.
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Hide captionBefore the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Speedo unveiled the LZR suit, which added buoyant panels and a "core-stabilizer" to the woven-lycra material. This is the suit that Michael Phelps wore when he won all eight Olympic gold medals in Beijing.
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Hide captionBlue Seventy, which specialized in wet-suits, took a different approach when it created a compression-free, wetsuit-like racing suit in 2008. The LZR and BlueSeventy battled for supremacy throughout 2008 and early 2009, until someone had the idea to combine the best of both suits...
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Hide captionThe Arena "X-Glide" and the Jaked "01" took over the speed-suit world, using a highly buoyant polyurethane material, that was also extremely compressive. It was these suits that aided swimmers in breaking 38 of the 40 world records at the 2009 World Championships in Rome.
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Hide captionAfter the suit controversy in Rome, full-body suits were banned from the sport, with waste-to-knee being the maximum allowable length. Pictured above is Michael Phelps wearing the incarnation of the jammer at the 2011 World Championships in Shanghai.
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Hide captionOn Nov. 30, 2011, Michael Phelps, Natalie Coughlin and Ryan Lochte helped unveil the Speedo FASTSKIN3 which is packaged as a "trilogy" of swimsuit, cap and goggles working together in unison.
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