Welcome back to our test of the cream of the 2007 wetsuit crop. Last time we gave the results for the first four suits that we tested: Quintana Roo’s Superfull, De Soto’s T1 First Wave, Foor’s Synflex and Aqua Sphere’s Blue Marlin. There are just four suits left in The Shark’s kitbag – surely one of them will prove to be a winner...

Zoot Zenith

Just looking at the Zenith tells you that this isn’t going to be the same as any of the other suits on test! The company is using images of Luke Bell and Kate Major to promote the new design and pretty much everyone who has seen the pictures instantly thinks “Batman” because of the sculpted lines highlighting the joins between the panels. The reason for this unusual appearance is the even more unusual construction method, what Zoot are calling their BIOwrap Balance Technology.

A conventional wetsuit is made from lots of different shaped panels, often of different thicknesses, each of which is designed – in the simplest terms -- to provide flexibility or buoyancy or a combination of both. Zoot have, literally, turned that idea upside down and start with a complete 2mm suit into which they insert 3mm blocks of neoprene that provide additional buoyancy for key areas like the chest, thighs, buttocks, etc. Because the 2mm outer skin is very flexible it provides the same freedom of movement that was experienced with the De Soto T1 but, unlike that suit, the top is obviously an integral part so it feels more conventional.

For every one of those sculpted panels on the outside there’s a corresponding pad sewn in on the inside. If you can get to see one, turn it inside out to see what we mean. Interestingly, none of the internal seams appeared to be taped and there’s an awful lot of exposed stitching in there.

Other key Zoot features claimed to provide additional benefits included an anchor point for the zip tether, stretch cuffs to seal the sleeves and prevent water ingress and a textured forearm ‘grab’ panel to assist with the catch. The split calf feature, claimed to assist with removal, turns out to be the fact that the calf area has three separate internal pads so the 2mm will stretch easier between them when you come to take it off – a conventional suit would either make the calf from all 2mm or have a 3mm front and a 2mm back.

The Shark confirms that the suit does, indeed, have lots of float, all that 5mm neoprene definitely gets you up in the water and the flexibility is a definite benefit with the stroke being more natural. Unfortunately the low neckline didn’t seal as well as he would have hoped and water did get in – which highlighted what we consider to be the slight flaw in this whole concept. A conventional wetsuit has a completely flush internal skin and whatever water does get in can only collect where there is a gap – something we try to avoid by ensuring that the suit is a proper fit in the first place. With the Zoot Zenith there is a whole internal system of channels created by the gaps between the 3mm pads. To be sure, the designers have chamfered off all the edges to reduce this effect but it hasn’t eliminated the problem completely and, as a result, when water does get in you can feel it moving around inside the suit. And, as water equals weight, we suspect that this suit would have performed much better if the designers could figure out a way to get the inside of the suit to fit flush like a normal suit. As it was, the Zenith also logged a 5:05 making it identical in performance to the Foor and the Aqua Sphere.

For more information see the Zoot Sports website: www.zootsports.com

Orca Apex 2

2007 sees the second generation of the Apex, the Apex 2 – a suit claimed to offer “unparalleled flexibility”. This was the only other suit in the test to use a completely different type of neoprene to the regular Yamamoto #39 in part of its construction with the Airlite body panel. Orca claim that the Airlite panel gives a 25% increase in buoyancy compared to regular 5mm neoprene, presumably because the cellular construction replaces neoprene with bigger pockets of air but in the pool the suit didn’t seem to float any more or less than its key rivals. In fact, we know of at least one pro athlete who switched the chest panel of their Apex for regular 5mm neoprene in 2006...

Two things that have been significantly improved from the 2006 version of the suit are the overall fit and the neckline seal. This just goes to show that small tweaks can make all the difference, because you’ll have to go over the two suits side by side to see where the changes have been made.  Apart, that is, from the trademark red panel colour that was introduced with the Pflex and Apex 1! This year the suit is all black but with miles of tiny little writing along the arms and chest seams – a bizarre decorative effect that we suspect will quickly get abraded with use.

The other obvious change for 2007 is the incorporation of a HydraStroke forearm panel – another one of these raised print jobs that, as with the QR Superfull, is claimed to improve the catch phase of the stroke by giving the water something to grip onto. As with the QR, it wasn’t possible to detect and effect from this during the stroke and we do have concerns that the material these panels are made from have the potential to carry water. Given all the effort to make a suit from material that is hydrophobic (ie, sheds water) it seems odd to put panels in made from stuff that could actually absorb it. That said, the panels do look pretty and will probably have the same equivalent effect as the roughened neoprene used by other suit builders.

Whatever feature was contributing to the performance improvement, the Orca consistently clocked 5:04 putting it a second ahead of those tested so far.

For more information see the Orca website: www.orca.com

Two for one

What happens next is the interesting part and is worth a little background explanation. We have just two suits remaining in the test and so it’s going to go down to a head-to-head for the final decision. The Shark had never previously swum in a Blue Seventy suit and during the initial phases of the test where we were assessing general fit and performance (and checking that we had the right size suits) he felt that this was a potential winner. On the other hand, he had also never swum in a 2XU suit and was interested to see what their design pedigree would bring – 2XU was founded by a couple of people who stepped away from Orca so they ought to know a thing or two about neoprene.

2XU Elite

2XU’s claim starts with their slogan “Velocity Multiplied” and they set about backing this up by building in a massive 5mm panel  running from chest to knee for flotation and then add a couple of extra sections called a “Roll Bar” to assist with the alignment of the hips – something that no other suit seems to provide as a designed-in feature. Jamie Hunt, 2XU’s Product Development Manager, is quoted as saying, “The fact is, it’s the positioning of the materials that makes all wetsuits different, along with the fit. You need buoyancy on the front and flexibility under the arms and across the shoulders, it’s that simple”.

2XU believe that coloured neoprenes lack the flexibility of the raw product, something we suspect is true given how badly some of the coloured panels on our older suits have cracked up over the years, and their designs try to avoid seams which run across the main front and back panels as these can also limit flexibility. To assist in this they created a “Floating Zip Panel” which effectively de-couples the rigid zip from the suit rubber on the back panel.

To improve the stroke flexibility they build in the largest underarm panel on the market using 1.5mm neoprene and a very flexible lining and they build the arms with a single 2mm shoulder to wrist panel on the outside. The ubiquitous forearm catch panel has a roughened surface for grip.

OK, so much for all the claims – what happens when you stick in the water and let The Shark at it?

The fit is definitely very good and the 5mm chest panel lifts you right up in the water, The Shark said it was like being on a surfboard compared to some of the other suits. And that roll bar idea also seems to contribute to a positive body position. But, does that all add up to a faster time?

The answer is a resounding YES because the 2XU Elite came back with a score of 4:56, a cool 8 seconds quicker than the previous best.

For more information see the 2XU website: www.2xu.com

Blue Seventy Helix

While The Shark may not have had the benefit of using a Blue Seventy suit in the past that’s not entirely true of the rest of the Tri247 team as Henry (very, very occasionally!) swims in an Ironman Stealth and Jenny has a modified (she had a Snugg collar retrofitted) Helix from 2006. However, neither of us is ever going to be able to swim as fast as The Shark in a suit of armour – even if we broke both his arms – so we don’t feel that we have any kind of bias towards the brand as compared to any other.

When the Blue Seventy brand was born in 2006 they achieved a significant amount of success at pro level competition with their logo being first out of the water in every triathlon world championships that year. And, yes, we know that Hawaii is a non-wetsuit race but the fastest swim of the day was actually an age grouper wearing one of their pointzero3 swimsuits... ...so they must be getting something right.

Of all the claims made about the suit there are two stand-out differences. First is the double hoop of blue neoprene that forms the helix shape after which the suit is named. The idea here is that this extra-stretchy band of neoprene mechanically decouples the arms from the rest of the suit. When you stretch into the stroke you are normally pulling against all the rubber (OK, not in a two-piece...) but in the Helix the blue band works to “float” the arm so it doesn’t have to work against the body of the suit. Interestingly, this is exactly what 2XU have done with their “floating zip panel” to decouple the rigid zip from the back panels of their Elite suit.

The second major difference is that the Helix comes with a reverse zip, the only other brand to offer this as a standard feature is Aquaman and we didn’t manage to get one of their suits to test. Reverse zip suits have the disadvantage that they are almost impossible to put on by yourself – not that you should EVER go open water swimming on your own... – but the advantages that they cannot be pulled open in the swim and that they are much easier to undo and the unzipping action actually helps to get the shoulders out of the suit.

So, with all this going for it, can the Blue Seventy Helix beat the 2XU?

The Shark reckoned that the Helix was not quite as buoyant as the Elite, hardly surprising given that the front panel is slimmed down at the top of the chest where the blue bands eat into the main 5mm panel. However, the freedom of movement was superb -- allowing a stroke technique much closer to a regular non-wetsuit style of swimming than the slightly ‘arms out’ style that you are normally forced to adopt. At the end of the day, the score for the Helix was exactly the same as the score for the 2XU, 4:56.

And that was over repeated swims in both suits – it simply wasn’t possible to split them on the basis of our test protocols.

For more information see the Blue Seventy website: www.blueseventy.com

Where do we go from here?

So, although we’ve concluded the tests that we set out to do there is still some unfinished business for The Shark to sort out! We are going to conduct a couple more tests, but this time we are going to do a proper swim-off between the two suits over a full 1,500m open water loop – as soon as the water has warmed up a bit more... We will also get the suits swum by another athlete, just in case there’s some difference that can be highlighted by a style or fit change, so each suit will do three 1,500 metre swims with each of the athletes and then we’ll compare the results.

The testing has also thrown up another possibility, one that didn’t occur to us when we started the process. What if the way a suit maker puts the suits together is actually more important that the materials they are made of? So, for example, if these two suits represent the best designs that exist out there, how well will the cheaper versions of these suits perform? At this point the Blue Seventy Helix has a problem because none of their cheaper models have the decoupling band whereas the mid-price 2XU suit shares many of the Elite’s characteristics. One way or another it could prove an interesting exercise!