Thursday, February 25, 2010

FastSkin Timeline – Brief Insight into Its History

The Speedo is a world wide company that stands behind Fastskin – one of the most popular competitive swimsuits on the market today. Without any doubt, in case this famous company shuts down everything they were manufacturing and selling male and female swimmers would suffer because they make a lot of essential equipment crucial for water sports.

Back in the early 2000s, the Speedo manufactured first of its latest line of superb swimsuits, the FastSkin. As they like to say Speedo kicked off the twenty first century in big style, introducing this innovative suit. The first model that was ever made is no longer in production. However, many new models from the same line work on the same well known principles. They are usually made out of Spandex and Lycra, materials responsible for its performance, and are basically copied after shark skin to reduce drag and increase the speed. Also, there are some models made out of Lycra and Nylon. Basically the material is developed to minimize muscle vibrations and skin vibrations, which minimizes drag and saves a lot of energy. As a final result, the Sydney Olympics saw 13 of the 15 World Records beaten in the FastSkin and 83% of medals conquered by swimmers.

Back in 2004 a FastSkin FSII was launched, which reduces passive drag by up to 4%. It was the most significant breakthrough in competitive swimsuit design that year. As a result, more swimmers in Athens Olympics decided to try their luck with Speedo than all of the other brands put together. Three years after that, FS-Pro was born. Basically, it was the upgraded version of the FSII. Professional athletes only had to wait for one year until they launched the new suit called LZR Racer. To this day it remains the best in its class, with few improvements made since it was first introduced.



Throughout the years, these fast suits were admitted to listing on the FINA Official List of approved suits. Just pay attention that on the Official List may be swimsuits that aren’t on the list that will still be totally legal if they agree with all of their guidelines. On the other hand the swimsuits on the FINA official list are guaranteed by the manufacturers and approved by the international governing body of swimming as completely legal.

So, if you wish to purchase one of the suits from the FastSkin line of swimsuits you should know that you are buying an ultimate piece of gear developed through many years of tradition and experience in order to answer the need of a professional swimmer.