Swimsuits are becoming big business, and not the Sports Illustrated teeny bikini issue kind:

Speedo's Fastskin II and Tyr's Aqua Shift, billed by their respective companies as the "world's fastest swimsuit," both claim to improve finish times by decreasing "drag," the resistance that slows a body's movement through water. The companies spent millions of dollars over the past four years developing the suits and plan to incorporate the technology into more affordable, everyday suits. Speedo expects to apply the technology to skiing-, cycling- and activewear — part of the $41 billion performance-apparel market.

That the "performance-apparel market" is a $40 billion plus industry is stunning. And here's a piece on the use of bumps on swim skins to enhance performance.

Tyr claims that its patent-pending suit will trim more than twice as much off a swimmer's race time as the Speedo suit.

Swimmers generally try to reduce frictional drag by shaving the hair off their body or by donning ultrasmooth suits. Because water is so dense, swimmers expend more than 90 percent of their energy just trying to overcome fluid resistance. Thus, the more they can reduce drag, the more efficient swimmers can be.

According to David Pendergast, a research physiologist at the University of Buffalo and one of the inventors of the Tyr suit, the approach is, at least on the surface, counterintuitive: that a swimmer's time can be improved by increasing rather than decreasing friction. This friction comes in the form of fabric piping that forms strategically placed ridges on various parts of the suit.

"Most swimsuits have tried to reduce frictional drag," Professor Pendergast said. "But with this suit we took a completely different approach."

It is a new approach for swimsuits but not for skiing: In 1994, Spyder skiwear founder Dave Jacobs designed a downhill skiing suit with similar raised piping. The ski suit was banned before the 1998 Nagano Olympics because it was perceived to give an unfair advantage. By contrast, the Tyr suit has been approved for swimming competition by the International Swimming Federation.

More than 35 years after James Counsilman - who is known as Doc and was the coach of Mark Spitz, who won seven gold medals in the 1972 Olympics - proposed a revolutionary theory in his book "The Science of Swimming," there is still no strong consensus on the physics of swimming.

My hunch is this Athens Olympics we're going to see a LOT of controversies over the use of various performance enablers and enhancements.