Thursday, Sep. 01, 2011

U.S. Swimming's Super Suit: The Speedo LZR Racer

Speedo's LZR Racer made almost as many headlines as the famous U.S. swimmers who wore it throughout the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. The suit, which was developed with Speedo, the company's sponsored athletes, the Australian Institute of Sport and NASA engineers, was touted as the world's fastest swimsuit and easily lived up to that title throughout the Beijing Games. According to NASA, 94% of all gold medals and 89% of all medals at the 2008 Games were won by swimmers wearing the suit. Additionally, as of August 2009, 93 world records were broken by swimmers wearing the LZR Racer. While this technology helped catapult the Americans to the podium, other countries cried foul, claiming that the high-tech suit gave its wearers an unfair advantage, even though the FINA, the sport's governing body, approved the suit for use before the Games began.