Originally Posted by
ArgoMan
Mike, thanks. So I heard back from the promoters and the wet suit will be optional. I've only raced once in the wet suit, my first sprint. It was a horrible experience. 400 yards and I thought I was going to drown in the last 100. I simply wasn't fit enough and didn't pace myself. Now, I can go two miles and be okay, without a suit. The swim in the next Oly is 1500 yards. So, you're thought is that the wet suit will shave enough time to justify wearing it? I can get out of the suit in less than a minute. I just thought I'd wear tri shorts and throw a quick shirt on during T1. I'm just worried that I'd give up so much time in the swim san the suit as to look silly!
My understanding is the better the swimmer you are, the less advantage the wetsuit provides (through personal experience and talking to people on their times with and without wetsuits/ pool times/etc.). Body position is critical, top swimmers have very good body position, generally the slower swimmers do not. The wet suit provides buoyancy that helps overall and additionally floating the legs, creating a better position in the water. Even if you are a top swimmer, there is still enough benefits to wear a wet suit (the top pro's do). By extrapolation, there is even a greater benefit for the swimmers that are not elite swimmers since they get both the body position improvement and the overall buoyancy. You may gather by my bikeforums handle, I am a swimmer first. Even with swimming being my background, I still have found that for any event over ~800 yards I find a wetsuit to be an advantage.
So with all that said, in my opinion, independently of how good of of a swimmer you anything above a sprint a wet suit is an advantage. The slower you are as a swimmer, even in a sprint, a wetsuit may be an advantage.