Elizabeth Stinson

Can a Speed-Skating Onesie Beat Physics?

Carving up the ice takes more than muscles. It takes science.
  • Damien Maloney
    01
    Speed skating is a war on physics. That flat-backed pretzel stance ain’t about style: To reach speeds over 30 mph, skaters hunch to minimize the hole they punch in the air—and the drag that comes with it.
  • Damien Maloney
    02
    And while their form-fitting onesies look simple, they’re anything but. "We’re trying to get the body to be more aerodynamic than it is in its natural state," says Clay Dean, chief innovation officer at Under Armour, which made the US team’s suit for the PyeongChang Olympics.
  • According to athletes Under Armour missed that mark in Sochi where no US speed skaters even medaled. The alleged culprit...
    03
    *According to athletes,* Under Armour missed that mark in Sochi, where no US speed skaters even medaled. The alleged culprit? A vent designed to keep skaters from getting too sweaty may have created a vacuum behind them, slowing skaters while they sliced across the ice.
  • Damien Maloney
    04
    But now, after more than two years of wind tunnel testing, the company is back with an overhauled new model—and are calling it their fastest yet. Under Armour developed a special, sandpaper-textured fabric for wind resistance problem areas like skaters’ arms and legs.The surface’s tiny peaks and valleys disrupt the air *just* enough to reduce drag, kind of like the dimples on a golf ball.
  • Under Armour
    05
    The rest of the suit is stretchy polyurethane designed to hug the skater’s body no matter how contorted it gets. An asymmetrical seam that runs from the lower left leg to the right shoulder, which reduces bunching and allows the skaters more freedom of movement during their left turns.
  • Under Armour
    06
    The new model is not only competition tested, but tailor-fit to each US speed skater’s body. Does it guarantee a gold? Not really. But at least this time, skaters will have a big technical advantage over those pesky laws of physics.
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