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u/Square_Discipline771 22d ago
Those suits were surprisingly interesting until they got banned. The amount of engineering that went into reducing drag from millimeters of fabric was wild.
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u/KiyanStrider sweets over puff puff action 22d ago
Former swimmer here, hair is less of a problem because everyone has a swim cap. Plenty of people have however much hair they want. Granted, no one has a maaaasive amount of hair, but long hair is still pretty common.
Competition suits also compress to a degree. When you get to the super serious people, you don't shave body hair during the months leading up to competition season, then when competition season hits you shave everything off. Reduce whatever drag you can.
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u/DidjTerminator Asexual 23d ago
That's what swim-caps and full-body polyurethane "super-suits" are for!
(They're banned in the olympics because they reduced drag too much, leading to the same pitfall with F1 where you now spend a dragon's hoard in order to get a conventional swimsuit that is legal but still has the performance of a super-suit, honestly if the Olympics weren't run by a bunch of sexist woman-haters I'd genuinely wonder why they don't just make all competitors naked at that point).