After four years of research and development, Speedo has launched the Fastskin FSII, claimed to be the world’s fastest swimsuit.

Its creation started – in conjunction with London’s Natural History Museum – with a new study of the shark and its skin texture and movement through water, and has resulted in the development of a full Bodyskin featuring different fabrics on different parts of the body.

The company says this optimises the water flow around a swimmer and has enabled them to increase speed by up to 4 per cent more than the next best suit, the original Fastskin which is made from the same fabric throughout. They have also been able to create male, female and stroke specific costumes.

To test the new suits, Speedo used ‘virtual’ and ‘actual’ representations of both male and female world champion swimmers – created by special effects company, CyberFX – plus Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software from Fluent which was used to analyse the results.

The new suit – which has been approved by international swimming organisation, FINA – will be worn by world record holder, Michael Phelps, for the Olympic Games in Athens. It will be available through retailers later this year.

To coincide with Fastskin FSII’s launch, Speedo has also introduced the Speedlite lightweight racer goggle, created using the same CFD testing techniques.

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