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LIAM McHUGH: Long track speed skating is a sport that rewards
quickness, endurance, and skating prowess. Attributes that
define Shani Davis.
ANNOUNCER: Shani Davis, pushing it 'til the end! And he's got
another gold medal!
McHUGH: After winning the 1000 meter event in 2006 and 2010,
Davis has a chance to become the first U.S. man to win gold in
the same event in three consecutive
Olympic Winter Games.
SHANI DAVIS: That given day hopefully when it comes, I'm the
best man out there and I'm able to stand as tall as I possibly
can on the podium.
McHUGH: Davis will have more than his physical skills to rely
upon. He'll also be wearing what may be one of the most advanced
competition suits ever engineered.
KEVIN HALEY: How can you make the suit help the athlete to
just be that much faster in a sport where, you know,
hundredths or even thousandths of a second make
a real difference?
McHUGH: Kevin Haley and his team of designers at the Under Armour
Innovation Lab in Baltimore, Maryland have spent more than
two years developing the suit. It's made from materials such as
nylon, spandex, and polyester. These materials are sewn
together in a way that improves the aerodynamics of Davis
and his teammates.
HALEY: There are a number of different components to the
suit. It's not a, you know, single piece of fabric. It's
actually a number of different textiles, and even little bits
and pieces on top of the textile to create the fastest suit.
McHUGH: Many apparel makers design competition suits for
athletes in all types of sports. And whether it's designed for
speed skating, downhill skiing or bobsledding, its primary goal
is to make the athlete more aerodynamic.
Sarah Morgan is a professor of polymer science at
the University of Southern Mississippi and receives funding
from the National Science Foundation.
Dr. SARAH MORGAN: We want to use a compressive suit that will
help to compress the muscles that will help to cover up
things like the hair.
McHUGH: As Davis skates around the track, the main impediment
to his progress is friction. Friction occurs as his arms
rub against his body and his legs come into contact
with each other.
Dr. MORGAN: Friction is the force that resists movement of
two objects past each other. So friction is the resistance
force. So if I try to move my hands past each other that's
a friction between two solid surfaces.
McHUGH: Part of Dr. Morgan's research involves developing a
friction-reducing substance called POSS which can be
used to coat objects.
Dr. MORGAN: The POSS coated system has small little ridges
on the surface and that decreases contact between
the two surfaces.
McHUGH: As Davis skates, he also encounters another type of
friction called drag, which is the resistance of the air moving
across his body.
Dr. MORGAN: Drag is the component of friction that
occurs when a solid body is trying to move through a fluid
like air or water. Fish encounter drag when they're
trying to move through the water, or humans do too,
when we're trying to swim or when we're trying to run or
trying to skate.
McHUGH: Under Armour spent much of its focus on creating a
competition suit that reduces drag against the athlete.
HALEY: You want something that really slips through the air and
doesn't add any wind resistance, as well as any resistance to
your limbs as you move along the track.
McHUGH: To build the right suit, Haley and his team used motion
capture technology to determine how the athletes move on the
ice, then created a series of mannequins that replicated a
speed skater's most common body positions. Then they outfitted
the mannequins in a variety of fabrics, textiles, and other
materials and put them through wind tunnel tests to decide
which ones worked the best.
HALEY: There's some that are very smooth and don't allow any
air penetration. And then there's some fabrics that are
very open, almost like a mesh, and the air flows through them.
and then there's seams connecting those two fabrics
that are strategically placed so that you create the fastest suit
possible. Finally, on top of all of the fabric and the textiles,
we have, what are little flow-molded bits. You can barely
see it, but it's disrupting the air just enough to create the
better aerodynamics that allow the athlete to travel more
quickly and hopefully make the athlete more likely to win.
McHUGH: Finally, the suit must feel like a second skin to the
athlete, where he or she feels comfortable with its range of
motion not just during competition, but also during the
long hours of practice.
DAVIS: All those hours I put into my training, the hours, the
days, the months, the weeks, the years and then my training's
gonna come out this given day. I finish the race and if look up
and I see the time on the board, says, "Davis, number one."
McHUGH: With a competition suit designed to reduce friction and
drag and make him more aerodynamic, Shani Davis
may be the skater to beat in Sochi.
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