Speedsuits Olympic Sprinting

The Game Room
1

Why don’t more athletes wear speedsuits? Usain Bolt just wears the regular tank-top (singlet) and compression shorts. Why not wear a speedsuit? Is it against the rules? Or is he so fast he doesn’t need one?

2

Moderator Action

Since this is sports related I am going to move it over to the Game Room.

Moving thread from General Questions to The Game Room.

3

I guess the question is why would he? It’s unlikely the added weight of more clothing would overcome whatever benefits a speedsuit would provide.

4

Other people seem to wear a partial speedsuit; the one designed by Nike supposedly affords a 0.017 second advantage by improving aerodynamics. The Nike one covers even the arms while most other sprinters just wear a compression top. The human body is most definitely very non-aerodynamic.

5

An 0.017 second advantage in what race?

6

How was the advantage determined? There’s a number of factors in the 100m besides sheer speed.

7

True, Nike claims a 0.017 second advantage in the 100 meters, but I’ve never seen anyone gear up in its speedsuit:

http://nikeinc.com/news/track-field-nike-pro-turbospeed-uniforms-and-nike-zoom-spikes

8

Well, right away, part of the problem is that the Jamaican team, at least in 2012, was sponsored by Puma, not Nike.

There’s three other possible things I’d throw out there:

  1. The speedsuits are relatively newfangled things solely for the purpose of sprinting (such suits are common on other sports) and elite sprinters would be understandable loathe to experiment on themselves with unproven technology.

  2. Irrespective of what you WANT to wear, the equipment must be allowed by the IAAF, which sets all standards and rules for virtually all major international athletics competitions (and is the body from whom the IOC takes the rules for athletics.) To say that the IAAF has a lot of rules is like saying the Pacific Ocean has a fair bit of water, so I’m still looking for the rules concerning sprinting wear.

  3. Of all the sports that involve getting somewhere faster than your competitors, the 100m will be the last in which speedsuits will be useful. It’s the race in which fluid resistance is the least important. In many sports speedsuits are already popular, but they’re sports in which the competitors are moving faster for longer distances (like speed skating or skiing) or are in water, where friction is orders of magnitude higher. 100m is the shortest race there is at the Olympic level and there’s no water.

9

For the record, Cathy Freeman wore a Nike speed suit in the 2000 Olympics. Also for the record, she looked ridiculous doing it.

I’m not sure how Nike gets its claim of 0.017 seconds faster with a speed suit, but that is probably under perfect conditions. There are probably 50 ways that a sprinter can lose more than that amount of time in a 100 meter race, so I doubt that a speed suit will actually buy much. Well other than a Nike marketing campaign.