Let’s take a look at some of the latest technology and advancements that the athletes are using this year at the Olympics in London. Michael Phelps– the great American swimmer will move through the pool using swimming cap and goggles that are specially designed to reduce torque. There are also special uniforms designed with dimpled texture just like the outer side of a golf ball that can help some of the fastest racers in the world go even faster. The technological advancement being used in London Olympics have now risen four years after an innovative swimsuit helped break 15 world records in Beijing. At the 2008 Olympics Games, around 94 percent of the swimmers who medaled, including Phelps, wore full-body LZR Racer suits by Speedo. These suits helped them break many world records. The success of these swimmers led FINA, swimming’s governing body, ban the suits in 2009. However, swimmers like Ryan Lochte believe that in earlier times swimmers wore banana hammocks and swam fast. The Olympic experience in Beijing has led London to be more cautious. There are lots of manufacturers trying to work on innovations since the closing day of the Beijing Games. But sports engineers are now designing within the parameters that are implemented by Olympic regulatory committees. The committee has prohibited certain advances out of fear of technology doping. The purity of sports remains the question in the face of innovation that is now undergoing struggle. For instance, the new Speedo Fastskin3 suit was crafted to work together with the matching swimming cap and goggles. Designed using 3D scans to create a flow of water around a swimmer’s body, the combined set appears to reduce drag by 16.6 percent in comparison with standard-issue equipment. In addition, Nike’s Pro TurboSpeed uniforms, the official suits for the U.S. track and field team, have been proven to provide an edge to sprinters. Nike’s latest two-piece uniforms are aerodynamically engineered with a dimpled texture to imitate the exterior of a golf ball and can shave up to 0.023 of a second more over 100m than Nike’s previous uniform. But what may seem like a miniscule gain can affect medal standings. For instance, that 0.023 second gain would have left US sprinter Walter Dix coming home with silver, rather than bronze, in the men’s 100m final in Beijing. Andrew Wheating, an American 1,500-meter runner said that he gives importance to the kind of spikes he wears for competition. He believes that the fluorescent yellow Nike shoes he wears for the Olympics are the fastest the company has ever come out with. Their weight is hardly noticeable, he says. However, these outfits and innovations might raise the fury of Olympic supervisors in future, but for now they are perfectly legal and help athletes perform faster and better.
