A Suitable Suit

The Olympics are over, and chances are that the gold medal swimmers were wearing a very hi-tech body suit.

By the time you get around to this week in the lectionary, the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London will be over. Records will have fallen, new heroes crowned, and medals will adorn trophy cases around the world. Chances are that a lot of the records that fell happened in the pool, where dolphin-like swimsters like Michael Phelps and Natalie Coughlin turn water into a drag strip.

Phelps, Coughlin and a whole pool full of swimmers who make the Olympic games are already naturally fast. Years of training, sacrifice, sweat and fierce competition make them push the aquatic envelope more and more each year. This Olympics, however, technology has jumped into the pool with them in the form of a newly approved, space-age swimsuit by Speedo® called, appropriately, the Fastskin3. "These are the fastest suits ever made," says Speedo® scientist Dr. Tom Waller.

We've heard about other suits in the past. During the swimming world championships in Rome in 2009, a full-body suit emerged that...