WITNESS: Test diving the "revolutionary" Speedo suit

Ken Wills, an editor in Beijing who spent much of his youth in the pool, tries out Speedo's LZR Racer suit, which many Olympic swimmers are wearing this year.

By Ken Wills

BEIJING (Reuters) - To be honest, it's not the swim suit that wins races.

You might think otherwise, from all the hype surrounding Speedo's LZR Racer suit that claims it is no less than "revolutionary".

Indeed, the international swimming governing body only months ago declared the design legal for use at the Games, dismissing concerns that it provided unfair buoyancy.

Since then, athletes have been racing to get into them, with some swimmers even willing to break endorsement contracts with competitor suit-makers.

So given the opportunity to take this suit for a test dive, I couldn't resist.

Full disclosure: I am not an Olympic swimmer, though this fact will come as a shock to my mother, whose aspirations for her son were nothing but the best. I did, however, spend a full decade of my youth swimming endless laps of the pool and countless weekends racing at swim meets.

To be sure, some years have passed since then. Okay, make that decades. And somehow in those intervening years, a once sleek physique has become, well, less so.

No matter. The proof is in the pool, so in I dove.

FISHTIGHT FIT

Well, first I struggled for nearly 10 minutes -- tugging and pulling and stretching and wiggling -- just to get the lightweight suit on. It is meant to be skin-tight, and it surely is. Sweating and tired after putting the suit on, I was eager to cool off in the water.

I did seem to slide through the water further and faster on the dive -- or was I being influenced by the upbeat 30-minute background presentation by Speedo officials?

Particularly on the butterfly and breast strokes the sensation was, well, buoyant.

But that wasn't really what I was feeling, insisted Jason Rance, worldwide head of Speedo International's Sports Aqualab.

"In terms of buoyancy, we tested it to make sure there is no buoyancy advantage," he said. "The suit's stabilizer helps keep the body position right so you feel you're riding higher in the water."