Back in the early years of the Chattanooga Swim League, you knew you had an edge if the guy in the next lane was swimming in shorts. As soon as the race would start, his pockets would immediately billow with water and the drag it caused would make you an easy winner.

This was back in the days when those of us who were superstars would wear a skimpy Speedo suit and it not only fit skin tight, you could wad it up afterwards and carry it in the hip pocket of your blue jeans on the short walk home.

Naturally you didn’t want to walk down the road wearing your Speedo – somebody would call your mother – and later, as the years have progressed almost as fast as a waistline, you wouldn’t get caught dead wearing one now lest somebody were to confuse you with Shamu the whale.

The reason I bring it up is because when the time trials for the U.S. Olympic team are held in Omaha starting on Monday, there will be more talk about the Speedo than any athlete there. The British company has come up with a suit called a LZR and both males and females wear what a first glance looks like a body suit.

The LZR is cut high on the chest and ends about where a pair of Bermuda shorts would right over your knee. But the trick is that the suit includes a corset-like device called an “internal core stabilizer” and, once they add these polyurethane panels at strategic locations, it is the sports’ greatest innovation since the butterfly kick out of a flip turn.

Now an LZR costs about $600 and takes a swimmer about 20 minutes just to put the thing on. I mean, this is as high tech as it gets – even NASA helped in the design phase --and, before you laugh, suffice it to say the Economist magazine reported the other day that 38 of 42 world records have been broken by swimmers wearing the LZR since it was introduced last February.

There is a solid belief in the swimming world the suit shaves as much as 2 percent off a swimmer’s time, which is gargantuan in a sport where two-tenths of a second can divide first and last place. As a matter of fact, the LTZ is so good that other suit companies are allowing the athletes who endorse their products to wear the Speedo suit until they have a similar suit to market.

The others, like Arena and Nike and Adidias and Mizuno, are obviously intent to have some of their versions available by the time this year’s games are held in Beijing, but watch what those who qualify for the U.S. team are wearing in Omaha starting on Monday because the buzz is all about the new Speedo LZR suit.

It is made out of a thick nylon fabric that is very elastic and it squeezes a swimmer’s body in a way where the athlete – simply put – becomes more tubular. Then, as a swimmer tires, and his lower torso tends to dip causing that dreadful drag, the corset-like device now holds his body straighter, thus he moves faster.

The suit is not just fabric sewn together, but, instead, is actually molded to an athlete’s body and is held together by an ultrasonic welding technique. Even the smallest seam, scientists have found, will slow a world-class swimmer and the welding process further enables a “second skin” effect not seen since the ancients used to compete naked in the Olympics.

You may think that “squeezing” a swimmer would alter the breathing technique, but tests have proven the LZR actually helps. Swimmers wearing it use 5 percent less oxygen and some feel this is a key reason why the times are faster than ever – an athlete’s body uses that oxygen in other ways.

The biggest thing of all is that the suit is perfectly legal. While there were complaints that the suit was introduced too near this year’s Olympics, the governing body of international swimming – FINA – approved similar suits by four other manufacturers earlier this month.

So when world records continue to fall next week, pay close attention what each athlete is wearing because the Speedo LZR is the greatest innovation to hit the Olympic Games since the athletes started wearing shoes. It is incredible.

royexum@aol.com