Inspiration for fashion comes from diverse places and the Olympics is not immune to fashion designers as a muse, though not necessarily for silhouettes but more for performance. Such is the case with swimsuits, wherein showing off a great body shape is as important as performance.

Tyr Sport

On Wednesday, April 23 at Dunkirk, France, during the French Olympic trials, Amaury Leveaux, who set a new French National Record and swam the World’s 2nd Fastest Time for 2008 in the 200m Freestyle, wore Tracer Rise, the latest generation technical swimsuit from Tyr Sport Inc.

Aurore Mongel, who was also wearing Tracer Rise won the 200m Freestyle and Benjamin Stasiulis won the 100m Backstroke.

Tracer Rise, which features the Rapid Boundary Technology™, the new patent-pending technical swimsuit was unequivocally approved for competition by Federacion Internationale de Natacion (FINA) on April 12. It was initially approved by FINA in January 2008 and was first tested in competition at the Southern California Grand Prix.

For non-competitive swimmers and the fashion loving in all of us, all the technical advantages of Tracer Rise like the fusion of a non-permeable, polyurethane micro-coating to create a lightweight water repellent woven fabric assisting the swimmer in a higher body position in the water and drag reduction are not really of high importance.

Still, today’s fashionistas are more tech savvy than their sisters 20 years ago, so all this talk about high performance actually make the product very appealing to them.

In short, if during the upcoming Spring / Summer 2009 season, swimsuit companies start using the fabric used to make Tracer Rise, don’t be surprised. After all, the Beijing Olympics would have just concluded when September rolls around and the fashion season begins.