The Anatomy of the Speedo Tri-Suit

There was a time when triathletes viewed the tri-suit as little more than the icing on the cake of their colour-coordinated race-day kit. But times are changing. Having taken swimming to the next level, Speedo are now looking to do the same with the Speedo LZR Racer Tri-Pro. 42% lighter than it’s nearest competitor in the wet and 26% lighter in the dry, Speedo claim that it is twice as fast as any other suit out there. What’s more, it’s been tested at NASA! But how (and why)? We found out from the man leading the project, Dr Tom Waller, Head of Aqualab at Speedo.

“There’s no doubt that a triathlon suit designed in the right way and developed with the right athletes can have an influence on performance,” Dr. Waller confirmed. “It’s more complex in triathlon because you have three disciplines and it’s very difficult to be the best in each one.”

So how do you develop the a suit in the ‘right way’?

“We spent two years doing needs analysis and product development with athletes of all abilities – from your recreational triathlete up to your elite World Champion, Ironmen etc to find out what they wanted from a suit. We then meshed that with our expertise and technical knowledge on materials – particularly around swim – to see what we could come up with.

And the key to the suit is in the fabric.

“The fabric – which is unique to Speedo – is a woven material. Normally tri-suits will use some kind of knitted material which is quite bulky, certainly heavier and with more space for water to ingress and get saturated. What we learnt from the Lazer Racer about stretch woven (which is what the material is) means that we can we can go for a really, really fine and flat material that, with the right coatings, can be almost impervious to water but still breathable, compressive, light-weight and all the other things that are on the needs analysis.

“So we re-engineered the Lazer Racer swimsuit fabric because we wanted something that would perform on land as well as in the water. The Speedo LZR-Racer Tri-Pro is slightly denser, slightly more powerful, but fitted at not such a high level of stretch, meaning that it’s a little more breathable in a thermally sensitive arena.

“We then did loads of work temperature profiling athletes while wearing the suit; doing water-management tests, to see how much water would get absorbed in the suit after the swim section; then rationalizing the seam placement – how we put the panels together – which is quite complex 3D design so that when it comes together it is the perfect mesh of performance, comfort and speed.

But the Speedo LZR-Racer Tri-Pro is not just a one-fabric-fits-all solution. Oh no, that would be too easy…

“We noticed that in the run section you get a lot of sweat collection in the lower back, so we wanted to use a wicking knitted fabric, but only where we absolutely needed to put it. What that does is to pick up any sweat, spread that over as large a surface area as we can, and let the body temperature evaporate it away, keeping you dry and avoiding abrasion.

And let’s not forget the bike…

“We worked particularly hard on the seat pad because it is one of the areas that has the highest level of tension in the sport. It’s so important in the cycle section for comfort – particularly on a longer race – but then it almost has to have zero feel in the swim and the run. So we created a female and male-specific pad using a process called thermic-bonding, so it’s ultra-low profile right around the edge and only has padding in those key areas around where the pelvis and the hips actually link to the saddle.”

All of this is very clever. But will it make any difference to people like me? “We’ve spent a long enough time on this and done enough research to know that this suit is different and manifests a performance advantage for an athlete.”

Don’t just take Dr. Waller’s word for it though. Check back in the next few days to see how some athletes faired when racing in the Speedo LZR-Racer Tri-Pro at a recent triathlon.

For more information visit www.speedo.com

Filed under : Features • Gear & Tech
Read more about :Aqualab, Demon, LZR-Racer, Speedo, Tri-Pro, tri-suit