We've come a long way from t-shirts and shorts.
In The Beginning, There Was Cotton
Hurdlers at the 1908 Games.
Source: i4.mirror.co.uk
When Thomas Burke won the first Olympic 100-meter dash in 1896, he was wearing a cotton t-shirt and shorts, not that different from what you'd see in a modern-day gym class. But when sprinters step the mark this week, they'll be outfitted in computer-modeled sneakers and wind-tunnel-tested polyurethane, some of the most advanced fabrics money can buy.
But let's start at the beginning.
As the 19th century drew to a close, there was good reason to use cotton. As natural fabrics go, it's hard to do better. The individual fibers of cotton have a naturally winding helix shape, which gives the resulting fabric an unusual amount of stretch. That means you can keep uniforms trim enough to be aerodynamic without restricting a hurdler's range of motion. Cotton's also very breathable, given a light enough weave. On the downside, it holds a lot of sweat, so the runners were often soaked by the end of the race.
Nylon Arrives
The 1956 Olympics were one big nylon party.
Via: wiki.prov.vic.gov.au
Nylon was first developed by DuPont in 1935, but the synthetic fabric didn't make it to the Olympics until 1948, via the first nylon bathing suits. Almost immediately, it was hard to imagine swimming without nylon. The material itself is made up of long carbon chains that don't absorb nearly as much water as a vegetable-based compound like cotton. That means there's less weight to hold a swimmer back, and a more frictionless way to move through the pool.