Originally Posted by
wphamilton
With the caveat that the media blows everything out of proportion, it appears that the suits were just one out of a number of things indicating that the team wasn't mentally prepared for the competition.
Wind tunnelled tested or not, the suits were kept under wraps until the Olympics. They weren't tested in a race, they didn't train with them. It seems to me that an Olympic race is the wrong time for experiments and unknowns.
I think the media is just reporting on this one. There is no overblown hype because the US Team is back to their old suits.
They ditched the "mach39" suits
When the Dutch know they have faster suits, it's an advantage that snowballs. It's not just physical.
When the Dutch look at the suits and tell the US, "We tried that, it's a air scoop."
Mentally, that's tough not to have in your head.
For all the hype UnderArmour had made about the suits, they are fairly ill fitting
and just like many military projects, fail without real world testing.
over 300 hours of wind-tunnel testing on reinforced fiberglass mannequins with hundreds of different skins setups and textile configurations
http://regressing.deadspin.com/is-a-...spe-1522523272