Under Armour/Lockheed Suit Blamed For US Skating Performance 357
Koreantoast writes "The United States' surprisingly poor performance in speedskating, despite strong performances in recent World Cup events, has been blamed in part on an untested speedskating suit. The Mach 39, designed through a joint venture between Under Armour and Lockheed Martin, was supposed to provide Team USA with a high tech advantage, using advanced fluid dynamic models and a dimpled surface to disrupt air flow and improve comfort. Instead, performances have been disastrous thus far, with athletes going as far as modifying their suits at the Olympics to try and reverse their fortunes. The suits have caused enough concerns that U.S. Speedskating is taking the unusual step of seeking special dispensation from International Skating Union to ditch the high tech suits and switch back to their old uniforms. Teams are normally required to keep the same equipment through the entire Games. Insert jokes and comparisons to Lockheed's more famous product, the JSF, here."
Untested? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who the hell goes to the Olympics with untested gear, just hoping it will work?
Its too bad.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Its too bad these games end up being more about your tech than your personal ability. Participants should all be required to use the same gear so that the gold is won based on personal merit.
Another way to look at it... (Score:3, Insightful)
...perhaps other countries just have better made and tested suits.
Hard to get excited about Olympics (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all money, money, money. Corporate, corporate, corporate. The tickets are expensive, the travel murderous on the pocket and many seats are taken by corporate people who never show up. Then we get to the ugly bits about technology, so and so has a suit built by some high tech company of Unobtanium fibres and they are going up against Joe Somebody from Outer Slobovia, who is wearing whatever was on the rack at the local sport shop.
It's like cheering on millionaires and then getting your blood in a boil when you think someone cheated them.
Re:Untested? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who the hell pushes untested code to production, just hoping it will work? Who the hell pushes an untested insurance exchange on a country, just hoping it will work? Who the hell pushes an untested beta on 25% of a website, just hoping it will work?
Testing is unAmerican.
BTW, you can bet whoever is responsible for this already jumped ship with an extra golden parachute for "bringing it in ahead of time and under budget" by chopping the test schedule and test team.
Re:Dice Blamed for Beta (Score:4, Insightful)
In the ancient world, Greek athletes competed naked, and rubbed with a layer of olive oil.
I advocate this as the rule for all modern Olympians.
Some of the gymnasts and figure skaters are 15 years old. But I bet you knew that.
Re:Untested? (Score:3, Insightful)
Who the hell goes to the Olympics with untested gear, just hoping it will work?
No one. It was tested. They just sucked when it mattered and want to blame their suits. It's the equivalent of a 12 year old screaming on XBOX Live about how he's losing because his controller is broken.
Re:Hard to get excited about Olympics (Score:5, Insightful)
The amount of whining I've heard about these Olympics in general is pathetic. So transparent. Even though the games themselves have been not bad at all IMHO.
Similarly it was pretty lame to listen to the announcers bend over backwards to excuse the mistakes of the US snowboard halfpipe team on the bad snow or the design of the pipe itself - then Shaun White said, "yeah, well, everybody was on the same course." I've been seeing some articles lately about him being a dick but that bumped him up a couple notches in my book.
Re:Dice Blamed for Beta (Score:4, Insightful)
Some of the gymnasts and figure skaters are 15 years old.
And?
Remember, nudity != porn.
Typical American Attitude (Score:4, Insightful)
Heaven forbid that someone else in the world was just better and won legitimately. No, there has to be something to blame for the loss.
For every winner of gold, there are dozens who go home with nothing. Maybe it's just your turn to be the ones who go home empty handed.
It does happen.
Hard to have sympathy (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like they were trying to get an advantage with better gear, and it turned into a disadvantage. What, do you only want the good parts of having non-equivalent gear, and not the bad?
Seems like we should look into standardizing the gear across competitors-- if not, doesnt seem like theres much room for complaining.
Re:Untested? (Score:2, Insightful)
We're talking about 0.01s of seconds as a margin of victory. Testing is tricky. The athlete has to make a run, change suits, and make another run. OK. Day 2. Same test but use the new suit first instead of using it for the 2nd run. Did they run the Zamboni between runs? Wait the same time after the ice was fresh? These are just a few variables I came up with off the top of my head. Maybe a wind tunnel is the best way to test them, but is it a practical test? They sit still in the wind tunnel and the vents make no difference. They move and the vents make little folds in the fabric or something, or change the way you move ever so slightly. Damn, it's tricky...
Re:Typical American Attitude (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Untested? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or more likely they were bitching all of january about the new suites but too much money and sponsorships were on the line and the US Olympic committee just told them to shut up.
In most other sports you have quite a bit of leeway as to your sport clothing. As long as the colors pretty much match the team colors, nobody checks the labels and sizes [yahoo.com].
Re:Then again, maybe it’s not the suits at a (Score:5, Insightful)
Michel Mulder, who led a Dutch sweep of the medals in the men’s 500, offered another explanation.
“It could also be,” he said of the Americans, “that they were just outclassed here.”
The issue is that these same Americans have been winning races against the same competitors over the last two years. Brittany Bowe is a world record holder, but came in 8th this week.
To the American athlete's credit, they have been downplaying the suit's impact and giving credit to the winners. The controversy is coming from the media.
Re:Untested? (Score:5, Insightful)
Better question is, who the hell tries to gain an unfair advantage over other athletes by having millions of dollars worth of resources dumped into their clothes, then expects to be taken seriously when they ask for a variation of the rules because those clothes are slowing them down?
I'm embarrassed for them.
Re:Not so simple (Score:5, Insightful)
For instance, in cycling one major decision is which gears you put on your bike for a given race. Some people are better with bigger gears, and some smaller gears. Forcing everyone to use the same ones would put people at a disadvantage.
This isn't a problem: just give them all a multi-speed bike that has ALL the gears. The only reason you'd only put some gears on a bike for a given race is because you're trying to eliminate extra weight and streamline the bike for the conditions it'll see in that race (you're trying to optimize it). If everyone has the exact same bike, this isn't necessary. No, this bike won't be as optimal for any one person as a custom-built (and -geared) bike, but it'll have all the gearings that any of the athletes might want, and eliminate the machinery as a competitive advantage
And the machines still make it unfair- if you homogenize the machines to that extent then you end up homogenizing the people who can be competitive, as well. Staying with your example, small cyclists tend to have high power to weight, but low overall power, so it makes them more suited to climbing. Putting them on bikes with "all the possible gears" at the expense of weight means that the machine is a larger fraction of the rider+weight than for larger cyclists, thus using the machine to take away some of their real physical advantage. Even racing in a very controlled environment (i.e. a velodrome, where it's essentially dead flat), where riders are allowed to choose any gear they want (but only one gear), riders in a given race will choose different gears depending on their riding and racing style (spin vs mash, breakaway for laps vs. sit in and sprint). Sticking everyone in the same gear will likely put some of them at a disadvantage (which is intentionally done in junior racing, for both physical and fairness reasons).
Re:Typical American Attitude (Score:3, Insightful)
You do realize that it is possible to congratulate the winner while also trying to find the cause for a loss, don't you?
Not really, no.
Re:Its too bad.. (Score:4, Insightful)
While it drives massive sales of consumer goods, but it also drives interest in sports, even though most just watch them and forget about it. It's especially important for young impressionable children, who may pick up sportsmen and women as their idols instead of whatever singer or model or actor mass media sells them. And in effort to be like their idol, instead of doing massively stupid shit that these idols are known to do, they might actually pick up sports instead.
I would argue that with the current health situation in the West, anything that drives obesity down is going to be a net positive. We are simply losing far too many good people to it.
Re:Untested? (Score:3, Insightful)
These skaters have spent years practicing, and yet they spent just one month in the actual gear they would wear for the competition. And worse, some of them are making last-minute mods:
Years racing, means they know their shit, and ought to be in a position to judge a suit in less than a month. You might have some doubts after day one, but after day 5, if you are still reaching for your old gear, you know something ain't right. Its not their first rodeo.
Re:Untested? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fair enough, but then what's worse...?
I mean, there aren't a lot of good options for the American team...
Re: Dice Blamed for Beta (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention that in the era of the original Olympics, 15 year olds of both genders were *all* married and usually had more than one child.
The notion that a sexualization at 15 is "immoral" is just the last nanosecond on the historic clock. Remember that 99% of your ancestors married at 15 or younger. By contemporary definitions, we are all descended from long lines of pedophiles. As childhood gets longer and longer, how long until 18 also becomes "immoral"?
Re:Untested? (Score:5, Insightful)