Swim Center

RUBBER THICKNESS
PATTERNS
PULLING SURFACES
ONE-PIECE VERSUS TWO-PIECE

I'm whining over the state of triathlon wetsuits today. Honestly, I think these products (some of them, not all) have been getting slower in recent years. It's time to remind triathletes what makes a wetsuit fast, in the hope that companies will repent of their ways, and return to the good work upon which their companies are founded.

For those long-term readers of Slowtwitch, yes, I'm again waxing Biblical-like, and like the Babylonian Captivity (it can't have been nice walking across today's Syria and Iraq in 586 BC, only to spend the next 48 years in the Fertile Cresent -- let's hope America's Babylonian Captivity is a bit shorter, but I digress) one hopes the world's triathlon wetsuit manufacturers will get their fingers out of their... honey pots... and introduce innovations that move the ball forward.

None of this is to indicate that there are not very good, very modern, very comfortable, warm and fast suits out there. It's just to say that triathlon wetsuits are like bikes: There's a gap between the best and the ho-hum, and it's the wise and enterprising consumer who bridges it.

RUBBER THICKNESS

Primary on my list of questionable "innovations" is the thinning of rubber from knee down. What now ought to be universally known is that buoyancy, more than anything else, makes a wetsuit fast. Buoyancy from the thighs down is critical, and from the knees down is equally needful.

There are a few -- and the number is exceedingly small -- athletes who do better with less rubber on their legs. But these are a very nuanced, unusual group who'd acutally do best with no rubber on their legs. Their best wetsuits would have long arms, and terminate just below the waist, with a bikini cut, and no rubber at all covering their legs. For everyone else (the other 499 out of 500) the more rubber the better.

This seems to be one of those basic features that's been forgotten over the years. This is surprising to me, because this was known right from the start. From the beginning of [triathlon wetsuit] time, back in 1986, when I put the very first two Quintana Roo triathlon wetsuits on a pair of my fellow competitors, Mike Fillipow (above and adjacent) and Tom Gallagher (below and adjacent), it was always 5mm legs that were the fastest. Check that. Seven millimeter legs were the fastest, but within short order these became illegal.

Yes, wetsuits did not come off all that easily in the old days, and for this reason it was tempting to consider putting zippers in the legs. Many people resorted to cutting the legs of their wetsuits just below the fat of the calf.

But this was before we started using rubber with a lot more flexibility. The rubber in these first suits -- the precursors to all tri wetsuits today -- was made of Rubatex G231N. This American-made rubber was very high-grade, well-made, but its primary use was deep sea diving. This was nitrogen-blown rubber, that is, the cells were filled with an inert gas and so did not compress at depth.

By 1990, or thereabouts, I'd made contact with Tommy Yamamoto, the owner of a small, boutique, blown rubber manufacturer in Osaka, Japan. Tommy had some strange ideas about his rubber, which he called "chloroprene" (Dupont owns a registration on "neoprene"), but his rubber was light, not very dense, supple, and stretchy. This instantly made the problem of 5mm legs a non-problem. Soon after we started using Yamamoto rubber, the other wetsuit companies jumped on board, and now most of the best tri wetsuit makers use Yamamoto.

By the early- to mid-90s we were making wetsuits like this one at right. The neck had come down a bit in height, the suits fit spectacularly, Yamamoto had gotten reasonably good at applying their "Super Composite Skin" coat (SCS) that made the rubber impervious to fingernail tears and also made the suits easier to get off. Honestly, I don't think there's a one-piece suit today that's much better than this one, even though its design is at least a decade old. I do know that there are suits for sale today, costing $400 and more, that are not its equal.

And one reason this suit was very good is that it had 5mm rubber all the way to the ankles. Which suits built today still offer this feature? Interestingly, the two companies whose suits that have been around since the beginning of tri wetsuit time, which are also the companies that have always had their own factories: Quintana Roo and Aquaman. Joining these two in offering 5mm legs from the calves down are T1 Wetsuits.

Perhaps the companies that make suits with 3mm calves and ankles know something I don't. Be that as it may, suits with rubber 3mm thick that starts at the knee and terminates at the ankle are as follows: all Xterra suits, as well as I can tell, though the Vector II has 5mm rubber appearing to extend a bit further over the knee than does the Ventilator, Vengeance and Vortex. The Zoots also choose a 3mm calf and ankle, as does Orca and Ironman. Noteworthy is the decision Ironman Wetsuits makes to build its Instinct line with no 5mm rubber at all. This suit is 4mm at its thickest point, and 3mm in the legs (but, it must be noted, it's got a very attractive price).

All these companies make fine wetsuits, including those I'm noting that place 3mm rubber in their legs. XTerra, Orca, Zoot (see below) and Ironman have been leaders in the industry for years. Well, Zoot's new to it, but it's got a seasoned industry brain running the wetsuit division.

Speaking of Zoot, they employ a different approach. Their suit has 5mm in the front of the lower leg (for floatation), 3mm in the back (for ease of exit).

In any case, I'd not be unhappy were all tri suits makers to pay attention to that extra sixteenth of an inch of rubber around the calves.

PATTERNS

I recall a Far Side cartoon in which a two-story building is burning. Despairing men have their heads poking out the second story, wondering what to do in order to get themselves out of their predicament. On the side of the building is the company name, "Acme Ladder Company."

Triathlon wetsuit manufacturers despairing as to how to speed up their wetsuits have only to look at the rubber sheet inventories inside their own companies, at least according to my current knowledge. Replacing thinner ankle rubber with thicker will instantly, according to me, improve the speed of these wetsuits. Patterns, though, they are a bigger problem. The sorry fact is, many or most tri wetsuit companies have not, over the past decade, employed full time pattern makers, and this is not a specialty you can easily access by typing what you want in the search field of Google or Yahoo.

No, if you're a triathlon wetsuit maker and you've got pattern problems, you've just plain got problems. There are only three companies of which I'm aware that have their own Western World factories. One is in San Marcos, California, and I built it. It's QR's factory, and it houses what were in their time (and I suspect still are) the finest craftsmen in the biz. Just south of this factory is De Soto's T1 factory, much smaller and used primarily for samples, R&D, warranty work, and short runs. T1, as is the case with Aquaman, does most of its wetsuit manufacturing in China, but Aquaman has had a factory in France (its headquarters) for decades. (The allure of China is not simply the lower wages; it's the hyperstrong glue that almost welds the seams together.)

Many of the other companies are reliant on their Chinese factories for patterning, and this is an impediment to solving problems. Certain of these companies may simply not know how to fix their pattern issues.

A glued wetsuit, which describes all triathlon wetsuits of note, has built-in advantages by virtue of its mode of construction. But employing these advantages requires a knowledge approaching alchemy, and few have this knowledge. The beauty of a glued suit (which is then sewn with what is called a "blind stitch") is its ability to arc and shape the suit's contour through the joining of two dissimilar edges (right). When you glue these surfaces together, the arc'd surface is now concave or convex. My factory workers used to make neoprene beach balls in their whimsical moments, almost perfectly round, using this technique.

Alas, when I look at a lot of today's triathlon wetsuits, I must confess that this seems a lost art. The photo adjacent shows the lower legs of a tri wetsuit that fits almost perfectly, with a concavity behind the knee and a bulge at the calf that comes quite close to matching the contour of the wearer's legs. Were you to see this wetsuit hanging on a rack, it would be constructed in this precise shape, with the rubber tapering to the ankle in the exact manner illustrated. You can't buy this wetsuit. It was an off-the-rack model made in my QR factory 16 years ago.

While the fit is not absolutely perfect, it is close, and we had to be close. We didn't have the kind of rubber back then we do now. This rubber did not stretch very much. Our patterns had to be perfect. Certain wetsuit manufacturers today appear to me to fudge, and try to use especially stretchy rubber to solve a pattern problem. That's an unfortunate band-aid on what is a more endemic problem: triathlon wetsuit patterns of today are no better, and often worse, than those of 10 and 15 years ago.

PULLING SURFACES

Though I've had my wetsuits tested at the flume in Colorado Springs, I've reliably found that the most precise wetsuit "feature" testing was accomplished at the pool. You put a guy (or gal) in a "featured" suit, he swims 3 x 200m, then you put him in an "unfeatured" suit (exact same suit without the "feature"), he swims the same set, then he's back in the first suit for another set, and so forth. After four people swim four sets in the same pair of suits, you have a pretty good idea whether a new feature is fast or it's not.

Back in the early 1990s we put "pulling surfaces" in our wetsuits. These were forearm panels that had irregular textures that would theoretically stick to the water during the pull. I took these suits to Interbike. I got my dealers all jazzed up over them. I took orders. I'd taken a giant leap ahead of my competition. I had only omitted one thing. I never tested these pulling surfaces.

So, before I commenced production on these new super duper wetsuits, I decided to go through the perfunctory formality of testing them. Besides, I wanted to see just how much faster than a standard pulling surface these new designs were. My worst nightmare was that they would be no faster at all.

No need to have been concerned about that. These new secret speed suits did not exhibit speeds identical to the "unfeatured" suits. They were slower.

I was crestfallen. But also curious. So, I put on my goggles, held my breath, and watched underwater as swimmers stroked past me with these new suits on. It was immediately obvious what was happening. With each catch air was trapped by these surfaces, and whatever techniques swimmers used to shed the surface of water did not work when using these suits. Air bubbles came streaming off the arm during the pull phase.

I write this because there is frequently a disconnect between what seems intuitive and what is in fact happening. "One test is worth a thousand expert opinions," engineers are fond of saying, and it was fortunate that I did not equate intuition and logic with sound engineering (well, I did in the beginning, but fortunately repented before it was too late). Had I not tested these suits, I would've been charging my customers extra money for a slower product.

I do not mean to imply that today's pulling surfaces (examples include "Phase I Catch Panel," "grooved panel," "waffle grid pattern," "aqua-grip,") are actually slower than standard wetsuits. They may well be faster. Wetsuit designers may have figured out the secret to the "pulling surface." However, I have not yet seen any study of these surfaces, and I have not found a manufacturer who sells this feature (many companies do) who can provide me with its testing "spreadsheet."

Accordingly, I would question the utility of such a feature until somebody demonstrates to my satisfaction -- with an empirical argument, not a reasoned one, nor one with anecdotes -- that these surfaces work. Until then, I must assume that they belong in the same category as carbon seat stays, that is, this feature might work and it might not, but it certainly is sexy.

ONE-PIECE VERSUS TWO-PIECE

Where are my swashbucklers? Where is the wetsuit designer the equal of, oh, say, those at Kestrel, who just one day up and omitted the bike's seat tube for cripes sakes? All the one-piecers look pretty similar to me. It's like aluminum bike frames. What's there left to do? (Well, make them with correct geometry, but that's another story.)

The main difference between one wetsuit manufacturer and another is in the patterns. Orca, well, you'd most likely fit in this suit if you have an athletic build, and it helps to be shorter in the torso. Ironman? Probably fits more newbies and diverse body styles. Quintana Roo? Sort of in between the two.

But honestly, the technology behind one-piece wetsuits is quite mature. The rubber's probably not going to get much better, and most people are using the same rubber. One guy's got a stretch panel here, another's got something else, and while one wetsuit might be slightly better for a greater range of audience, there's not heaps and loads to separate one from another.

Then there's the two-piece. Shiromoto, a Japanese manufacturer, was the first to come out with any sort of triathlon wetsuit made of two pieces, and then De Soto picked up on the idea and ran with it. De Soto's T1 is the mature and usable North American version of this style.

A two-piece wetsuit ought to be able to accomplish three things, on paper at least. It's top and bottom are disconnected. The suit's shoulders and crotch are therefore not joined and, theoretically, should allow for much more range of motion.

Second, the top and bottom are each made in a variety of sizes, allowing people of disparate body styles to more easily fit into a wetsuit that works for them.

Finally, there is no neck closure, the achilles heel of one-piece wetsuits. No neck hickies, no scabs, no scars. And, ideally, the suit would be drier, as there is no pucker in the back of the neck through which water can enter.

This is how it works on paper. As I had a lot to do with two-piece designs I am biased, and my preference for exploring this design should be filtered through this prism.

My point is not to advocate for two-piece designs, but to advocate for creativity. Every company has formulated its lingo for why a two-piece is not technologically sound. Okay. But how many other companies have made a two-piece, just as an R&D exercise? How many such decision makers have even swam in a two-piece? In fact, I'm constrained to ask how many of them swim at all any more, or ever did?

If not two-piece technology, fine. But then what? Whaddya got for me? Where's the beef? Where's the new idea? Don't offer me fancified trade names, handing me brochures peppered with Hydroslip™ and Flotofill™ and Flexiplexi™. Where are workable ideas that have been proved out in the pool, with precision and attention to protocol? Where is there a guy or gal who'll take this category seriously? Not a lot of them out there, at least from my vantage point.

This isn't to say there aren't people who know their stuff. But you've never heard their names. Most of the wizards with whom I worked were Thai or Hispanic, and worked as pattern makers in factories and understood the craft. No, they weren't swimmers, but they understood the concepts and the goals. Working with people like this, on a daily basis, for weeks and months at a time, perfecting a new idea, this seems to me what is lacking in today's wetsuit products.

I'd like to see another company or two give De Soto a run for its money. Somebody ought to dive on in and compete for that two-piece market. Some company ought to come out with a zipperless one-piece. Divers and surfers have had these for decades. I was playing with this at QR until the day I ceased to work there. But I could never make it work. Maybe somebody else can figure out what I couldn't make happen.

Back in the early '90s I also tried to make a dry zipper work. I had hundreds of these made to my spec -- open one end -- and ordered special rubber made to adhere and sandwich these dry zippers into the backs of tri wetsuits. These zippers kept our suits remarkably dry, but were too hard to open and close. Perhaps the technology is better these days. Maybe this is an area where wetsuit makers can pick up the ball.

And, as noted above, a very few swimmers did actually perform best in legless, long-arm wetsuits. As well as I could tell these were people who had very vigorous scissor kicks, and who got a lot of propulsion of their kicks (usually backstrokers or IMers). Adding rubber to their legs made it harder for them to get their legs into the water (most people have the opposite problem, they can't get their legs out of the water). While there weren't many of these kinds of athletes, it be nice to see a manufacturer make a wetsuit for these athletes. I guarantee there are ITU cmpetitors who'd benefit from this design. That no one has made this style of wetsuit, though this category of swimmer had been identified a decade ago, speaks to the lack of attention to detail among those who manufacture in this category.

Then there are the many great ideas that others will think of. They -- whomever they may be -- are more creative than I so, of course, I do not know and cannot list what bright designs they'll come up with. I know the inventors are out there. I just wish a couple of them would go to work for our sport's wetsuit companies.

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