Sleeker gear makes splash at Olympics

Knees may be about to emerge from hiding.

The Speedo LZR Racer will garner most of the attention to apparel at the Beijing Olympics, and rightly so. By mid-June those wearing the swimsuits in pre-Olympic competition had established 38 world records. Star U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps, one of the record-setters, said the first time he wore the new Racer and pushed off on a turn he “literally felt like a rocket coming off the wall.”

The Speedo suits, which will reportedly retail for $550, are a prime example of applied technology, a remarkable fusion of function and fashion to set records and make money. That same thinking is creeping ever-deeper into more familiar sports. The Olympics offer a prime opportunity to unveil such attempts, including the latest “Swift System of Dress” basketball uniforms designed by Nike for the U.S. Olympic men's squad.

Which is where the knees come in, or rather come out, as we’ll discuss in a moment.

Knees and a lot of other skin are of course quite visible in swimming. After all, it seems --erroneously, as it turns out -- that the smallest possible bathing suit would be optimal, assuming that what’s revealed does not stray beyond the comfortable limits of decency.

Fans will recall that when told to wear one-piece, form-fitting lycra body suits during the 1989 basketball season, N.C. State men’s players secured extra coverage below the waist by donning their regular uniform shorts. Nike’s “unitards” were discarded after two games.

“Your performance is hurt if you’re embarrassed,” said Dr. Stephen Michielsen of N.C. State’s department of textile engineering, chemistry and science in the College of Textiles. “There’s more to performance than speed or just ability. There’s a large emotional component. Like when single guys go to a bar and see an attractive woman, they suck in their stomach.”

In fact, the new Speedo confounds expectation and promotes modesty, covering substantially more of the body than previous suits. In some strategically-defined regions of the torso, the LZR Racer actually has a double layer of water-repellent, polyurethane membrane. “It’s not always the obvious thing that’s right,” Michielsen said.

Speedo employed everything from NASA’s Fluid Physics and Control research facilities to “computational fluid dynamics” software to craft a swimsuit that reduces resistance as its wearer passes through water, particularly when a body is held in a “streamlined position" like diving into the pool or pushing off on a turn, according to Design News magazine.

Product research in textiles is robust; among the most interested parties are universities, corporations such as auto and athletic gear manufacturers, and the U.S. Department of Defense. But when it comes to sports, function and style sometimes clash.

Consider jockeys. Seated atop thoroughbred horses in races often decided by the length of a nose, riders still wear shirts with arms that catch the wind like small sails. Tradition presumably dictates the style, but perhaps at the cost of a decisive measure of speed.

The need for speed produced tighter uniforms in football and track. Not so in basketball, however. During the early 1990s, when popularized by the University of Michigan’s Fab Five of Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, and company, basketball jerseys grew blousier and shorts grew to resemble pajama-style pedal-pushers.

That look, compared to the shorter, form-fitting outfits it supplanted, is embedded in our culture, said Ken Brown, product director at Nike for Global Product Services. “Basketball players are so much more expressive, and so much more creative, in what they do on the floor, and their apparel is an extension of that creativity.”

Equally germane, tight basketball outfits may also restrict movement and heat evaporation, said Michielsen, the N.C. State professor.

Yet there are changes afoot in Nike’s products. The NBA has gone to shorts that end above the knee, as has the U.S. Olympic squad. Colleges such as Syracuse, LSU, Oregon, and Ohio State retain baggy shorts but have, like the Olympians, gone to more body-fitting jerseys made of light-weight material that better dissipates moisture.

Nike's Brown said that North Carolina coach Roy Williams is well known for demanding the style of shorts only now being worn by the pros. “Two years ago I instructed Nike I wanted our shorts two inches shorter than anybody else’s,” Williams said in the only interview he recalled granting to a local reporter since early spring.

The coach said his thinking changed when he saw a player lose his dribble during a game because the ball got caught in the billowy fabric of his shorts.

“I like the look better than I did the short shorts of 20 years, but I just think that, when it goes down below your knee, I just think that’s too long,” Williams explained. “I think it interferes with your running. I think it interferes with your play. I think it gives something else for the team to grab onto when you’re trying to fight through a screen. And I do think that it interferes with the basketball when you’re dribbling it and then take the ball between your legs.”

Olympic chatter about sportswear will surely focus on the LZR Racer. But the enduring market impact of the Summer Games could be that shorts, and sightings of knees, may soon be on the rise far beyond Chapel Hill. And if less voluminous uniforms provide a split-second advantage in a race down court, all the better.