The Speedo LZR Racer Clones of 2008

The Full Supersuit story

In last week's blog post, I talked about the overpowered supersuits of 2009 and how they took the best parts of the historic Speedo LZR Racer and ran with them. I did however miss out on one step of the story. You see I mentioned that in 2007 every brand had bad suits. I then said how 94% of Olympic medals were won in the Speedo LZR Racer and how that was the only noteworthy suit of 2008. I then said how every brand except Speedo made a suit in 2009 that was better than the LZR Racer.

So what did I miss? The other 6% of Beijing 2008 Olympic medals of course.

Filling the Gap

After Speedo released the LZR Racer, it didn't take a genius to work out that every suit from arena, TYR, Mizuno, Finis, Diana etc was incompetent for the job of swimming fast. It meant that if you were a swimmer wanting to win an Olympic medal in 2008 and sponsored by anyone except Speedo, you were going to have to break the contract, suck it up and wear the LZR.

If you are any of these brands you know this is not a good look when your most prevalent ambassadors are rocking up to swim meets, swimming PBs and wearing another company's suit.

So every other brand was under a massive time crunch to do two things.

Make a suit as good as the LZR
Make a suit FASTER than the LZR

Making a comparable suit was also of a much higher priority, meaning they have a suit that their sponsored athletes were comfortable wearing and balancing out the sea of LZRs seen at literally every domestic and international meet. This led to a lot of new suits that can only be described as LZR clones.

The Copycats

When I say clones just take a look, here is the LZR Racer.

Now for the most obvious rip off... Diana's Shining Arrow.

Then for the rest...

Looking at these suits 17 years later it seems outrageous to me that they were able to get away with this. With time not on their side, it was very clear what these companies did. They took their current best suit and arranged polyurethane panels in some sort of layout similar to Speedo. There was no time for testing or innovation, it was just a race to get something on the market to be worn. My guess would be after they had got these suits to the market, they probably realised how ridiculous a material polyurethane was and then went all in, completely coating their suits in it by the start of 2009.

Just from looking at these suits two of them do stand out to me for a couple of reasons.

Adidas powerweb

Somewhere around 2007-08, Adidas released the Powerweb. A pretty standard lycra-style tech suit with one stand-out feature, TAPING.

Adidas had a Powerweb model for both track athletes and swimmers and had worked out way back then that taping gave both targeted compressed and/or an energy response that could be used to snap body parts back into place. This was the first time we saw taping used in tech suits and we would not see it again until Mizuno circa 2016.

The follow-up version of the Powerweb released to combat the LZR was an identical suit, just with added polyurethane panels. Interestingly when they went full poly in 2009, they moved away from any taping system with the Hydrofoil.

TYR TRacer rise

Just by looking at the images of all Speedo "clones", if I had to pick one to wear, including the LZR, it would be TYR's Tracer Rise. Just like Adidas added poly panels to their Powerweb and arena added poly panels to their R Evolution, TYR added Poly to their Tracer Lite. But unlike Mizuno, arena, Diana, TYR and Adidas who all opted for some kind of panel system that looked remarkably like Speedo's, TYR just walloped a lot of poly on.

While the Rise doesn't go 100%, it looks like it has at least double the polyurethane content as its 2008 competitors and that to me can only mean it was faster. The only drawback I can see from the picture is it still opted for stitched seams instead of the bonded ones that 2008 introduced. Regardless I know that some of the 6% Olympic medals that were not LZR were wearing the Rise.

Where was Jaked?

Jaked was in the game in 2008. They would not release the J01 until later but they did have the J03, a suit I know absolutely nothing about, except that Federica Pellegrini wore it to win the 200 free in Bejing.

I can also see from the images of this suit that it was absolutely not a LZR clone. Maybe it was the best suit in 2008 and people just hadn't caught wind yet. Maybe it was already 100% poly? If anyone knows more do let me know.

The one thing that does make me laugh about Fede winning Olympic gold in the J03 is how she was so obviously wearing her training suit under the Jaked. The practice of wearing two suits was banned in 2009, mainly because swimmers abused wearing two supersuits.

Still Copying...

While tech suits are not even close to what they were in 2008 and 2009, the copying from brands is still happening. Seemingly every company is trying to make their version of a Mizuno GX Sonic and in some ways, the copies are even more direct.

The only company who seems to steer clear from the copy game is Speedo, who also decided not to fire back with a full poly suit in 09 and now isn't making a direct Mizuno clone (even if it is to their detriment by having worse suits, just like they did in 2009).

How to swim faster

I hope you enjoyed this look back at suits in 2008 but if you want to swim faster, especially in the 50s events, in 2025. I have two suggestions you must try.

Try out a Mizuno GX Sonic VI NV
Join my RAW SPEED MEMBERSHIP

The Mizuno is the fastest suit in the world (objectively) and the RAW SPEED MEMBERSHIP is my first program tailored specifically to the pursuit of getting faster. On top of that it is working. Beyond seeing swimmers all around the world swim PBs, it also finished 2024 with the fastest masters breaststrokers in Europe!

To celebrate the membership launch this week, it is currently being offered at an introductory price of just £29 a month. From the 21st the price will be bumped to £49 a month.

Join Now