Team GB’s secret Olympic weapon revealed: go-faster triathlon wetsuits

Great Britain’s triathletes will pursue Olympic gold in Paris with the help of a new weapon: cutting edge trisuits designed to make them go faster on the water or a bike.

The new kit, which uses different materials and covers more of the body than conventional trisuits, was tested secretly in competition by Team GB’s Alex Yee and Beth ­Potter in a world series race in Cagliari in May. Yee won his race, while Potter was third.

The trisuits, which have been developed by the UK Sports Institute, draw on some of the aerodynamic technology that has helped British Cycling to top the Olympic medals since 2008. However, they can also be tweaked to give triathletes extra help in the water.

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The performance director of British triathlon, Mike Cavendish, ­confirmed that the new suits had been approved by World Triathlon for use at the Games. “For us, trisuits are a big one,” he said.

“I can’t say too much, but we have spent the last three or four years developing suits that have as much of the body right up to the edge of the rules covered up as you possibly can.

“If you know anything about cycling, the more you can cover up the skin, the better. The sport’s rules are pretty restrictive, but we found some interesting things we can do around that, and the type of ­material we use.”

Cavendish confirmed the suits were very different to off-the-peg models produced by major brands. “You won’t be able to buy these,” he said. “They’re bespoke fitted to every athlete. It’s quite difficult to get materials that work very well in terms of fluid dynamics, as well as heat dynamics and aerodynamics. But we’ve done a lot of work with our partners at the UK Sports Institute and their innovation team, testing both materials, fit, and then treatments for materials.

“What you will probably see is if you look at the back of our women’s suits, for instance, they will look different to everybody else’s. The sleeves will look different, along with the way that the zips have been designed, and you won’t be able to see a treatment on them.”

The UKSI initially developed the trisuits for the Paralympics when rules were changed to allow sleeves down to the elbow. It then realised they could find performance ­benefits for Olympic triathletes too, even though World Triathlon has dif­ferent rules. “The beauty of this project is we’ve been able to tailor it to the individual athlete in terms of their strengths – whether it’s the swim that they’re trying to protect, or it’s their performance on the bike,” said Fiona Johnson, a senior performance innovation consultant at the UKSI.

“There’s a lot of knowledge that we’ve learned from cycling and ­swimming that was transferred across to our triathletes.”

Johnson’s colleague Greg ­Stevens said that while it was hard to ­quantify the precise level of performance gain, he expected that the GB trisuit would be “at least as good” as a top of the range trisuit in two of the three events – and “a step up in ­whichever metric that individual athlete is really ­looking for, whether that’s ­aerodynamics on the bike, heat and temperature ­regulation, or on the swim.

“It’s not just a cycling suit with a slight bit of water repellency,” he said. “Likewise it’s not a swimsuit with some cycling sleeves grown on.

“It’s actually a hybrid of the two. What we’ve been able to do is make sure that the key metrics of a ­performance fabric from swimming are in the right areas of the body. And the key bits for cycling are in the right area of the body. And then put on to a pattern in a seam placement that makes it comfortable to run in. ­Hopefully we can help our athletes push on. If it looks faster and it scares the opposition, that’s an added bonus as well.”

Team GB’s rivals will certainly be fearful given their successful record of using skinsuits in other sports. ­British Cycling and British ­Skeleton have had success using suits with ­special drag resistant ridges ­developed initially by scientists at TotalSim in ­Northampton and the UKSI for the 2008 Games.

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Those ridges are able to ­create a turbulence effect in the suit that reduces the amount of wind ­resistance acting on the body. The suits are also custom made, with each athlete undergoing a 3D laser-scan for fitting before they are built with polyurethane derivatives.

However, Cavendish was also keen to stress that the trisuits were just one element of Triathlon GB’s ­preparations for Paris, and that the squad’s talent, culture and the ­intricate planning for the event, were even more vital for success.

“I reckon we’re ahead of people in terms of our open water protocol,” he said. “I would say we’re ahead of people in terms of what we’re doing with our trisuits, our relay tactics and relay strategies. And we’re also ahead in terms of our open water prep.”