By Gold Medal Mel Stewart on SwimSwam
In this GMM takeover of the SwimSwam Podcast, we have Nate Tracy, Speedo’s VP of Innovation Design and Future Concepts, and Luke Mears, Lead Product Manager at Pentland Brands, to break down Speedo’s latest innovation: Speedo iQ.
Since the early 2000s, head-up display goggles have been heralded as the next technological breakthrough in swimming. The promise was enormous: real-time data, and performance tracking that would fundamentally change how swimmers train and race. However, for more than two decades, one problem remained. Swimmers are fiercely loyal to their goggles.
Your relationship with your goggles is as intimate as a best friend. You can’t compromise fit, comfort, durability, or dependability for tech no matter how impressive it might be. That’s the first barrier. The second is making the tech small enough to integrate into goggles swimmers trust. The third, and maybe the most significant, is making that tech race-ready, with approval from World Aquatics for use in competition.
Speedo iQ overcomes all three barriers.
Built around Speedo’s popular Vanquisher 3.0 goggles, Speedo iQ uses a removable sensor module to collect performance data without a head-up display or anything obstructing the swimmer’s vision. The system tracks all four competitive strokes, capturing metrics ranging from stroke efficiency to head position to breathing mechanics and turns.
And unlike most competing wearable technologies, Speedo iQ is approved by World Aquatics for competition, opening the door to analyzing performance under actual race conditions.
Lastly, and this is a big one, there are on subscription fees for the tech. I think a lot of us are exhausted by subscription for tech, and Speedo got the message. So, once you buy Speedo iQ, that’s it. That’s the price, once, and you’re locked into the data feedback.
In this podcast, Tracy and Mears take us inside the development of Speedo iQ, explaining the engineering challenges, the decision to eliminate the display, and the role elite swimmers and coaches played in shaping the product.
We explore how the tech measures performance, what swimmers can learn from their data, and whether these insights can translate into faster times.
We also look ahead. Could Speedo iQ work across Speedo’s entire goggle lineup? Will Speedo release head-up display for practice/training only? And could connected performance data become part of swimming TV broadcasts at major international championships?
At $189 with no subscription fee, Speedo iQ also raises an interesting business question: Is this simply a new generation of smart goggles, or the foundation of a much larger connected swimming ecosystem?
For more than 20 years, smart goggles have promised to change swimming. Speedo iQ may have finally solved the hardware problem. Now comes the more important question: Can the intelligence actually make swimmers faster?
Follow Speedo USA on Instagram here, a 14-year SwimSwam partner.
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Many thanks to Swimoutlet.com for their 15-year partnership and support of this swimming news and media.
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This is a Gold Medal Media production presented by SwimOutlet.com. Host Gold Medal Mel Stewart is a 3-time Olympic medalist and the co-founder of SwimSwam.com, a Swimming News website.
Opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the interviewed guests do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints of the hosts, SwimSwam Partners, LLC and/or SwimSwam advertising partners.
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