How / why did swimming ban the full body suits?

Something like this - speedo and scientists worked on the technology for years, actually producing the surface are of the suit to have tiny armor like plating, mimicked off of fishes, made in Italy. Claimed to be 24% less drag in the water than without the suit, crazy fast, people ended up wearing TWO of these suits at a time in competition because it also gave a buoyancy factor to the swimmer helping in the lower need of oxygen to get you across the pool. Like 95% of WR that were achieved in the time frame it was allowed was in this suit (or two if them)! Other companies like water is not speedo sued or something because they didn't have the cool commas des garçon shark suit. Laws were made ban the suit, backlash, laws to allow the suit to go to the neck, knees etc, then also allowing other swimmers with non-speedo sponsors to use it. More WC broken, finally, dissallowing the upper torso to use this technology. Has to be on the upper legs only now. PEACE

The suits worked like wet suits since the material made you way more buoyant than a regular suit. In USA open water swimming competitions, they have wet suit divisions for people who can't handle cold water (aka wimpy swimmers who used to be runners)

https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-ban-full-body-olympics-swimsuits-a-scientist-explains-polyurethane

These new suits were providing the same advantages as wet suits and they don't have wet suit divisions in indoor swimming. So it made sense to ban them.

This is the closest parallel to the vapor fly except that since swimming doesn't have a huge population of hobby swimmers (only a small proportion of swimmers actually race) so when the suits were banned, everyone stopped making them.

Nike and other companies have no incentive to NOT make these shoes since there is a huge population of runners who would buy them just for their own PRs.

Because they want to keep possibility of returning to naked swimming competitions. The full body suits provided such a great performance boost that naked swimmers could never reach the world records. Eventually all sports will be naked again. So it would be sad if the naked athletes couldn't break world records.

GreyHeart wrote:

Something like this - speedo and scientists worked on the technology for years, actually producing the surface are of the suit to have tiny armor like plating, mimicked off of fishes, made in Italy.

What’s so great about fishes made it Italy?

wejo wrote:

It seems like with a full body suit there is a lot less technology involved that in running shoes where companies really don't know everything other companies are putting into their shoes.

I dunno, it seems like swimming might have a lot of tech. Buoyancy, body positioning, and the composition of the surface of the suit itself. The way the fabric stretches in different directions and with different motions is probably important too.

Windsuits have been controversial in cycling too. There was a year when TdF guys were stuffing water bottles (or something -- I forget what it was) down the front of their shirts because it improved aerodynamics. That got banned. There's a rule somewhere that the bodysuit have parts sticking off of it to improve aerodynamics (like it can't have a cone sticking off the front of it), but it can be fabricated to apply pressure in various ways to reshape the body to make the body shape/positioning a little more aerodynamic. But cycling has a TON of rules about the shape of the bike and clothing and so on and there are multiple types of time trial world records corresponding to the type of bike.

Italian Tuna wrote:

What’s so great about fishes made it Italy?

they're so great the Mafia likes to sleep with them

Not the same, vaporflies and alphaflys are the same for everyone, the suits were custom measured for each athlete.

gads wrote:

Not the same, vaporflies and alphaflys are the same for everyone, the suits were custom measured for each athlete.

Maybe at first, but I’m pretty sure you could buy an “off the rack” full body swimsuit in the year or so before they were banned for a few hundred dollars. I had buddies on the high school swim team who gave me the impression that all of the competitive swimmers at the state swim meet were using them.

Totally agree! Unfair

I think Wejo should read more Alex Hutchinson. AH looks at other factors but generally agrees that there needs some regulation on the shoes. He talked about the swimsuits a few times:https://www.outsideonline.com/2375581/elite-marathon-data-nike-vaporflys-eluid-kipchoge A relevant paragraph:

What’s unambiguous is that the introduction of new swimsuit rules in 2010 led to a slowdown across the board. At the time, many commentators (including me) wrote about the prospect of swim records that would never be broken, thanks to the distorting effects of the now-banned suits. Curiously, that’s not what happened. Overall top-100 performances are faster now than they were in 2009. Of the 20 official men’s world records, eight have been set since 2010; 16 of the 20 women’s records are post-2010. There are many possible explanations, like faster turns and hyper-optimized swimming pools. Regulating swimsuits didn’t stop the tech-aided march of swimming progress; nor did it destroy the sport.

Tech kept improving in swimming anyway - change the pool not the suit. Change the oxygen concentration etc.

Also like the other poster said I think there's something to be said about the number of 'competitors' in swimming vs running and tennis. There's a real market for the shoes outside of the elites.

the ability of all competitors to access the same suits played a big part in the decision. Swimming is already sensitive to its status as a "country-club" sport, given the cost of coaching and year-round pool access necessary for success. 500-600 dollar suits which needed to be replaced after a handful of races was a bridge too far. Plus just the idea that the technology was the dominant factor.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-ban-full-body-olympics-swimsuits-a-scientist-explains-polyurethane

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/sports/25swim.html

?

wejo wrote:

This isn't car racing so I think track and field can run from swimming's example.

Car racing actually has tons of rules designed to make races even and tons of banned technologies (obviously depends on the series).

When a car marker develops a technology that leads to them winning every race, it is often banned.

wejo wrote:

It seems like with a full body suit there is a lot less technology involved that in running shoes where companies really don't know everything other companies are putting into their shoes.

1) in both cases, the companies published papers on their new innovations, so no, there isnt a situation where "companies really don't know everything other companies are putting into their shoes." The information is right out in the open and other companies should be able to copy it relatively quickly.

2) as an engineer, I can assure you that the technology in the swim suits was much more advanced, both from the standpoint of the intensive modeling involved as well as the difficulty to manufacture it. Manufacturing those micro structures in quantity to produce those suits is something that can be done only with very expensive specialty equipment.

Honestly, an undergrad doing his/her senior project should be capable of making a shoe similar to the vaporfly. Cold molding carbon fiber at home isnt cheap in large projects, but would only use a few tens of dollars of material at hobbyist prices. Tools needed can be found in most garages. Lots of hobby surfers, skiers, etc. making stuff from carbon fiber at home. Use a few donor shoes for the foam and upper and you're in business for maybe a few hundred bucks.

By contrast, even just modeling the swim suits is more in line with PhD level work. Manufacturing them would require a team and millions of dollars of equipment.

The MAIN problem, was speedo, as others have pointed out, who developed the technology.

They didn't just create a full-body suit - they PATENTED THE TECHNOLOGY.

That meant that only speedo athletes could wear full-length suits - suits which reduced drag underwater by over 20%.

There is no comparable technology advantage in running. We'd like to use the 4% for comparison, but it just doesn't do the speedo suit justice.

Just ban swimsuits and shoes all together.

I guarantee any shoe made by an undergrad would be worse than a normal shoe, let alone the VF. It's not just the plate -- there's also the lightweight foam (which is new-ish, though others have it now), the aerodynamics, the stack design, the ground contact mechanics. If you just throw a plate into a shoe you get something that weighs 8+ oz like some of the other shoe companies have made, which isn't good enough.

Ho Hum wrote:

I guarantee any shoe made by an undergrad would be worse than a normal shoe, let alone the VF. It's not just the plate -- there's also the lightweight foam (which is new-ish, though others have it now), the aerodynamics, the stack design, the ground contact mechanics. If you just throw a plate into a shoe you get something that weighs 8+ oz like some of the other shoe companies have made, which isn't good enough.

They would need to use donor shoes for the foam.

My point was that the other shoe companies could easily develop their own version, the engineering involved isnt hard, it is much easier than the swim suits.

Wejo:

Speaking of buoyancy, I'm not sure I've ever seen another distance runner this high off the ground. This photo isn't quite close enough, but the bounce EK was getting tells me that he ran faster the last time, when he missed going under 2 hours.

https://twitter.com/INEOS159/status/1189191469967400966