Swimming was first included the Olympic Games at the 23rd Greek Olympic Games. Before that, this sport had a history spanning thousands of years. Swimming originated in Egypt more than 3,000 years ago, and later began to spread in countries along the Mediterranean Sea. Later, swimming became a sport performed all over the world, and many swimming events were added to the Olympic Games. There were a total of 32 events in the swimming of later modern Olympic games, and swimmers from various countries gathered together to compete.
An athlete's performance in swimming is affected by many factors, including their talent and subsequent training, and even the venue and
swimsuit used. These elements will have an impact on the athlete's performance. Especially in international competitions, those who participate in the competition are usually the top players in their respective sports. Sometimes the influence of a swimsuit can determine the winner of a gold medal by mere tenths of a second.
This was the sharkskin swimsuit that was once the most popular swimwear in international swimming competitions. This type of swimsuit uses advanced technology to make the material similar to sharkskin, thereby reducing friction and allowing athletes to swim more freely and faster in the water. Although this swimsuit is expensive, it has gained a lot of recognition from athletes. In the years since sharkskin swimsuits were allowed, many top athletes have achieved impressive results with their help.
What is a sharkskin swimsuit?
The sharkskin swimsuit is actually a nickname given to it based on its appearance and design principles. This type of swimsuit was produced for one purpose only: to allow athletes to swim faster.
In order to achieve this goal, Speedo, a sharkskin swimsuit design company, thought of many ways. What it finally put into practice was to use high-tech materials that imitate the texture of shark skin to make swimsuits. These swimsuits are designed in a black one-piece tight-fitting style. Coupled with its unique shark leather texture, athletes wearing it can swim in the water like a shark. When designing materials, researchers conducted in-depth research on shark skin and found that the secret that allows sharks to swim in the water lies in the rough V-shaped wrinkles on the surface of shark skin. These wrinkles can reduce the friction between water and skin, allowing the body to swim freely. The water flows more efficiently next to it, and this detail is used in the design of the super-stretch fibers of the sharkskin swimsuit.
In addition to this, the researchers also specially designed the sharkskin swimsuit based on the human body structure, imitating human tendons at the seams, allowing athletes to save more effort for backwards strokes; use high technology to make the fabric of the swimsuit more similar to the texture of human skin, making this seemingly ordinary swimsuit the uniform of choice for many athletes. Of course, such a complex and thoughtful design requires higher costs. It is said that the material cost of such a sharkskin swimsuit alone reaches 7,000 RMB, and the shape of the expensive shark skin swimsuit also has a great impact on the its effectiveness. Your need to be especially careful when wearing it. One sharkskin swimsuit can only be used six times before it loses its effectiveness. From this perspective, sharkskin swimsuits can definitely be regarded as luxury goods in swimming competitions, and not all athletes have the opportunity to use such swimsuits.
Applications of sharkskin swimsuits in swimming competitions
Sharkskin swimsuits, a swimsuit with high technology, attracted attention as soon as it appeared. Many people were just curious at first about whether it could have a positive impact on athletes' performance as advertised. Soon, the sharkskin swimsuit proved itself with results, and more and more people noticed this swimsuit after October 1999. At that time, FINA officially allowed athletes to wear sharkskin swimsuits in the competitions, and the power of sharkskin swimsuits was also revealed at the Sydney Olympics the following year.
That year, an athlete named Ian Thorpe wore a sharkskin swimsuit to compete and won three gold medals in one go. This made sharkskin swimsuits well-known and also attracted everyone's attention to high-tech swimsuits. Besides Speedo, there are other companies that are developing high-tech swimsuits. Since FINA recognizes athletes wearing high-tech swimsuits, this research becomes meaningful. If external forces can be used to help athletes in the competition field, more people will be willing to invest in this endeavor. Facts have proven that these research and development are effective. High-tech swimsuits have been proved to be effective through one competition after another. The development of high-tech swimsuits has not been limited to just sharkskin swimsuits. More products from various companies are also entering the market. At the 2009 World Championships, Phelps, wearing a sharkskin swimsuit, surprisingly lost to Biedermann, who was wearing Arena products.
Shark skin swimsuits have opened the door to the development of high-tech swimsuits, and the emergence of other products is also vying to expand this market. Although the outcome of a competition cannot be determined entirely by the swimsuits worn by two athletes, Phelps’s defeat also proved that it is necessary to invest in the research of high-tech swimsuits. During the years of development of high-tech swimsuits, many world records in swimming competitions have been broken, and the field of high-tech swimsuits has also developed from a single brand to numerous brands. It can be said that this signifies the prosperity of an industry in its era.