I am not a big sports fan. I like to watch tennis because I played it as a kid, but other than that I don’t think I could care less about professional sports, much less college teams. However, there is one major exception—the Olympics! I can’t get enough of them. Every two years, I get really excited and really patriotic and basically don’t leave the house for the two weeks that the games air on TV. This year, though, I’ve been unintentionally looking at them through the lens of a boob blogger. And there are some very confounding sights:
First off, this year the Olympic regulations changed so that female beach volleyball players are permitted to wear shorts and sleeved shirts instead of the previously required swimsuits (it’s about time! What a stupid, sexist rule). But the results are a bit strange. Some athletes decided to wear shirts—with sports bras on top! What??
Here are Australia’s Nat Cook and the Czech Republic’s Marketa Slukova, both sporting the bra-over-shirt look:
And here’s Nat Cook again, this time in just the sports bra, but an Austrian player (sorry I don’t know her name) with a bra over her shirt:
Now I know some of these matches have been played in mid-fifties (Fahrenheit) weather, which is too cold for just a bikini top. But why are the players wearing their sleeved shirts under their bikinis? American stars Kerri Walsh Jennings and Misty May-Treanor have been wearing long sleeves too, but they wear the shirts on top. Wouldn’t wearing a bra over a shirt make your chest extra hot and sweaty? I’m so confused. At least it looks like they’re all wearing the right band size—no riding up in the back!
Next up are the bizarre swimsuits that female swimmers wear. There is so much side boob! Check out American Dana Vollmer:
You can even see side boob on the side not facing the camera! And I keep seeing the swimmers yanking the edges of the suit out to the sides when they’re standing at the starting block. I’m assuming they need a lot of freedom to move their arms, and a suit with higher armholes could be constricting…maybe?
However, this article from NASA says compression “helps the swimmers maintain the best form possible and enables them to swim longer and faster since they are using less energy to maintain form. The compression alone improves efficiency up to 5 percent, according to the manufacturer” (italics mine). So my assumption would actually be incorrect. More coverage is actually ideal, because that means more opportunity for compression.
So what is the deal with the excessive exposed side boob? Is it just that these swimmers have such broad shoulders that the suits don’t match up with their body width? But I would think the suits Olympians wear would be designed specifically for their bodies, not for the body of a casual swimmer.
Are there any volleyball players or swimmers out there who can shed some light on these odd wardrobe choices?
I’m totally with you on questioning the bra-over-shirt nonsense – I’ve been complaining about it to my husband every time we see it. I think Misty and Kerry look *fine*, and actually comfortable wearing sports bras/bikini tops under their shirts, but they really don’t require a lot of support, by the looks of it. On the other hand, some of their competitors choosing to wear sports bras over shirts look like they likely need more coverage. I’ve been guessing that they want their shirts to be as close fitting as possible, and maybe having the bra overtop helps to hold the shirt close to their bodies? Maybe? Still looks weird to me, though.
As for the female swimsuits – yeah… they really aren’t flattering in the least bit. And it seems, for the most part, that most female Olympic swimmers just aren’t well-endowed. But the “side-boob” is less boob, more huge lats, according to my swimming husband, and more coverage (in the lat region) would probably amount to less rotational arm freedom, or something like that.
Those “sport bras” look like they have player numbers and Country info on them. Has there been a match where they weren’t worn at all? I haven’t been paying attention.
Agreeing that the sports bras are quite probably for team/country uniform purposes. If they weren’t expecting to wear shirts, they may not have had uniform ones made.
Yeah, maybe they weren’t expecting it to be so cold in London!
Yup. I was thinking the same.
I was a swimmer in high school. We had a buy our competition suit very very small. If you could pull your shoulder strap up to your ear, it was too big, go down another size. The Nike suits we always used as our uniforms, were really bad about being cut too narrow across the chest. TYR is better about cut wider across the chest, in my experience.
If I ever get my hands on the Freya active wear suit, I’ll write up a comparison of it to my other athletic suits for chest coverage and overall fit.
As a runner who struggles with finding a tank top that covers all of my bra straps (I need lots of support), I find it very strange that these players would wear their bras on top too. I’ve had a few laughs about it especially since I hat the look I have that you can see my straps around the straps of the tank. I personally can’t wait for cooler weather so I can wear a more concealing top!
The swimmers’ suits bug me too. Do you remember the men’s suits from 4 years ago…very similar to the women’s this year. Very strange too.
Oh well, I guess there’s no making us happy :). Just kidding of course.
I have even seen this kind of “bra” at some male Olypians, but I can’t find a picture yet. 🙁
Maybe this bras have another critical function? But you’re right, it looks a bit strange.