Since [the wetsuit-style Speedo LZR Racer (here's a pic)] was introduced in February of 2008, more than 50 world records have been broken by athletes wearing it.
Talk about planned obsolescence:
the suits (which cost around $600 each) must be thrown out after an athlete has used them 10 times
And just like big pharma - the suit making companies happily issued the first few samples for free (it's all about patriotism, you see)
In the US, Nike was generous enough to allow the athletes it sponsored to wear the suits gratis.
Not entirely sure where generosity ends and an impressive marketing campaign begins.
Update I:
From the Mother Jones article, I had gotten the impression that Nike made the suits. Wrong. Speedo makes the suits. Although, IN THE US, advantage to Nike-sponsored athletes who didn't have to pay for the suits.
The Daily Telegraph U.K. has more information:
The suit ... was created by Aqualab, the research and development arm of Speedo which is owned by Britain's Pentland Group Plc.
Jason Rance, the worldwide head of Aqualab, said that while the suit was tested in a NASA wind-tunnel the physics behind the design emanated from the research departments of Nottingham University.
"We worked closely with Dr Herve Morvan of Nottingham University on the computational fluid dynamics," he said, "as well as with ANSYS, a Sheffield-based company who provided computer software used in the design."
The manufacturers claim the suit, which took four years to design and has 'ultrasonically welded' seams instead of traditional stitching, improves performance in three key ways.
It reduces drag by being made from super smooth material; physically compresses the swimmer's body to make them more aqua-dynamic and acts like a corset around the swimmer's stomach to help them maintain the correct body position when they are getting tired in the dying stages of a race.
To create a level playing field for all the swimmers in Beijing, whether from rich or poor federations, the company is forced by FINA, the sports governing body, to make the suits available to every athlete at the Games who wanted one.
As a result Speedo brought more than 3,000 suits to the Games and have seen queues of more than 100 swimmers at a time waiting to be fitted out.
LA Times reports that Phelps had four corporate sponsors who gained "face time" at the olympics:
Joyce Julius calculates that Phelps' corporate partners have combined for six minutes of exposure during prime time. The company estimates the value of on-screen time by calculating the cost of commercial spots running during NBC's broadcasts.
Phelps' races are won by cutting down on the number of seconds spent in the pool, but sponsors obviously win when the seconds mount up.
Nike's winning time through Tuesday night was 3:33 -- the minutes and seconds that Phelps wore his warm-up jacket with the Nike logo. Joyce Julius set the value to Nike at $5.3 million.
The Speedo logos on Phelps’ warm-up jacket, swim cap and bodysuit currently are in second place with 2:24 of airtime valued at $3.6 million. The remaining time was shared by Adidas and Visa.
