Swimming performances in long distance open-water events with and without wetsuit Until now, it could be clearly shown that swimmers benefit from a floating suit when swimming in a basin over short to medium routes. However, it has not been studied if a swimsuit brings something when the athletes swim on long to very long stretches in the open waters.And we do not know if men and women benefit equally.For this purpose, we examined the performance at 26 km long marathon swimming in Lake Zurich and 3.8 km long, Lake Ontario Swim Team Race. At both events, the floats can start either with or without swimsuit.In Zurich’s swimming, the swimmers were not faster with neoprene than the swimmers without neoprene if one compares men against women.However, the 10 fastest men with wetsuit were faster than the 10 fastest women without a wetsuit.In the ‘Lake Ontario Swim Team Race’ were the 10 fastest men with wetsuit faster than the 10 fastest women with neoprene.In addition, the 10 fastest men were without neoprene faster than the 10 fastest women without neoprene. The 10 fastest women with neoprene were faster than the 10 fastest women without neoprene.
These figures show that wearing a wetsuit is beneficial when swimming in open waters. However, the influence of the route length seems to departure and women seem to benefit from wearing the neoprene than men. All other information can be found under https://bmcsportscimedrehabil.biomedCentral.com/articles/10.1186/2052-1847-6-20