Prompt's TechBlog
An Honest way to cheat?
29 August 2008
Posted by ellie
Hands up who wants to have a go with the Speedo LZR Racer suit?
The Olympics are a golden memory now, especially for those athletes involved in the Water Cube in Beijing, and more importantly for those that were wearing the Speedo suit. Watching from the comfort of your living room it was the best way to spot a minnow
from a shark, in other words who has a good marketing agent.
While I agree that what Micheal Phelps achieved was spectacular, I can't help wondering; has technology and science (this time) got in the way of celebrating a human achievement?
People began mumbling about the incredible Speedo suit but then just somehow accepted that they were witnessing world records being smashed left, right and centre, but when the 100m sprint got a new world record in the Birds Nest stadium it was it was enough to send goose pimples down your spine. The makers of the Speedo suit have been strangely quiet, accepting not much credit at all (until you hit their website) - anyone would think they were a British company with a reserved stiff upper lip.
The way this remarkable suit works is by engineering the surface so that it is smooth, not rough. The tradition to date has been to make suits rough so that a thin layer of turbulence results in water-water friction, but in the new suit a composite material creates very low suit-water friction directly. The swimsuits also have elastic properties that squeeze the body much more than traditional suits; uncomfortable but evidently worth it!
"It's clearly not cheating because it doesn't break any of the rules," says Mike Caine, director of the Sports Technology Institute at Loughborough University. It's no worse than one athlete training with a better exercise machine than another, he says.
I'm sure sports equipment and clothing would never be banned but is it a step closer to 'cheating' in a sport, the same way as perhaps taking steroids is banned?
The world just learnt a new phrase: 'Technological Doping'
The Olympics are a golden memory now, especially for those athletes involved in the Water Cube in Beijing, and more importantly for those that were wearing the Speedo suit. Watching from the comfort of your living room it was the best way to spot a minnow
from a shark, in other words who has a good marketing agent.While I agree that what Micheal Phelps achieved was spectacular, I can't help wondering; has technology and science (this time) got in the way of celebrating a human achievement?
People began mumbling about the incredible Speedo suit but then just somehow accepted that they were witnessing world records being smashed left, right and centre, but when the 100m sprint got a new world record in the Birds Nest stadium it was it was enough to send goose pimples down your spine. The makers of the Speedo suit have been strangely quiet, accepting not much credit at all (until you hit their website) - anyone would think they were a British company with a reserved stiff upper lip.
The way this remarkable suit works is by engineering the surface so that it is smooth, not rough. The tradition to date has been to make suits rough so that a thin layer of turbulence results in water-water friction, but in the new suit a composite material creates very low suit-water friction directly. The swimsuits also have elastic properties that squeeze the body much more than traditional suits; uncomfortable but evidently worth it!
"It's clearly not cheating because it doesn't break any of the rules," says Mike Caine, director of the Sports Technology Institute at Loughborough University. It's no worse than one athlete training with a better exercise machine than another, he says.
I'm sure sports equipment and clothing would never be banned but is it a step closer to 'cheating' in a sport, the same way as perhaps taking steroids is banned?
The world just learnt a new phrase: 'Technological Doping'
Labels: Olympics, Science, Speedo, Technology
# posted by ellie at 3:28 PM 
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