Will truce in swimsuit wars carry on past Rio Olympics?

Yet, the big-money swimsuit companies — so crucial to the sport's financial viability — are always pressing to show off their high-tech chops, which are severely crimped by rules that restrict the size and fabrics for competition swimsuits.

Forty-three world records were set at a meet that was more farce than competition, leading governing body FINA to hastily impose new swimsuit rules that mandated only textile fabrics, banned zippers and restricted the amount of coverage from the waist to the top of the knees for men — so-called "jammers" — and to the upper body and upper legs for women.

Kate Wilton, the senior director of merchandising and design at Speedo, said the current rules forced the swimsuit giant to change its design approach.

Speedo was on the cutting edge of the swimsuit wars with its revolutionary LZR Racer, which was developed with help from NASA's wind tunnel testing facilities and became the go-to attire heading into the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

With polyurethane incorporated into the fabric and strategically placed panels that compressed the body in key spots, the suit helped a swimmer stay higher in the water and minimize resistance — essentially mimicking the effect of a dolphin gliding through the ocean.

Speedo, for instance, unveiled the Fastskin LZR Racer X for the Rio Olympics, touting a one-way stretch technology that allows more flexibility, a thinner fabric around the core of the women's suit to provide better feel of the water, and an X'' strip across the backside — hence the suit's name — to give a bit more power and snap off the turns.

[...] there's the new kid on the block, Aqua Sphere, which developed a suit for Phelps' signature MP line that uses two different fabrics to create a material known as "Exo-Core," hoping to provide both the compression and the flexibility desired by the most decorated athlete in Olympic history.

[...] that's just the way the swimmers want it.