Of all the possible humiliations, this was potentially the worst blow. Nike has been forced to allow its Olympic swimmers to compete in Speedo swimsuits, effectively conceding that the LZR, the body-hugging suit made by Nike's rival, gives swimmers an advantage.

The apparent benefit of the LZR, which has a novel hydrodynamic construction that compresses the body into a tube, reducing drag while at the same time improving muscle performance, became apparent in national Olympic trials.

Nike has taken a difficult and very political decision. Were it to have enforced the letter of its endorsement contracts with elite competitors, it might have risked a backlash - aquatic prima donnas complaining that their hopes for gold were dashed by marketing flunkies followed by the rage of a nation cheated of its moment of patriotic glory by the private greed of a multinational.

Nike knew that it could not win and gracefully took a backwards step. Others were not so diplomatic. TYR, a Californian sportswear company, initiated an antitrust case against Warnaco, the American company that markets Speedo products, and, for good measure, sued Mark Schubert, the US Olympic swimming coach, for suggesting that the LZR provided an edge.

Meanwhile, Speedo and its British owner, Pentland Group, have been relishing every moment, counting the number of LZR-suited swimmers on the starting blocks.

The firm arrived in Beijing with hundreds of suits, offering them to any competitor who wanted one. The LZR has given Speedo a big boost in the market for performance swimwear - Nike has lost market share - while the stock prices of Mizuno and Asics, the Japanese firms, tumbled as Olympic teams began to switch to Speedo this year.

The competition for real gold has begun in earnest. When the crowds leave Beijing and the pools are drained in the Water Cube, business can begin.

When TV news editors forget their infatuation with the breaststroke and resume their obsession with the more lucrative football, the star of the Olympics will be revealed - not Michael Phelps or Rebecca Adlington but a lightweight nylon/elastane water-repellent fabric.

The American and British gold medal-winners are duly thanked for the loan of their bodies, vehicles necessary to propel an obscure bit of textile technology on to a billion television screens.

This is the process by which materials technology is transported from laboratory and industrial process to wardrobes and locker rooms. If you are old enough, try to remember underwear and swimsuits before the commercialisation of Lycra. Before woven polyurethane, DuPont's magic fabric that clings like a second skin, there was floppy cotton, scratchy nylon and, before that, wool.

Think of sports paraphernalia, such as bicycles, tennis rackets and ski equipment, before the commercialisation of carbon composites and Kevlar, another DuPont plastic with steel-beating strength.

Good chemistry lifts athletes to places that mere fitness, training and fortunate genes cannot reach. Outside the Olympic arena, the technology can lift sales - you can buy your own LZR race suit for the princely sum of £320.

Beyond the intimate world of extreme athletics and body fetishists, Speedo may find relatively few takers for its unadulterated product.

So body-hugging is the suit that it is said to require 20 minutes to don and is less than comfortable. Not the most convenient apparel for a week's break on Lanzarote, but Speedo doubtless is developing an LZR-lite for the muscled and cellulite-free to display their assets to full advantage.

The latter market is the goal for the companies that sell branded sportswear, and Pentland knows that its Olympic boost must be exploited at a rate of knots.

During the four-year gap between Games, public awareness of track athletes and swimmers is almost nil. Speedo's marketing team needs to transform the LZR and its offshoots from techie sports gear into fashion accessories.

Pentland knows all about this business - the company, which is owned by the Rubin family, took control of Reebok in 1981 for $78,500 and a decade later sold the footwear company for $750million.

At the conclusion of every Olympics there is a ritual beating of the breast over the intrusion of commercial sponsorship in the Games. Visa dominated the Beijing event and the stakes will be high for London in 2012. The fuss over commerce is silly - would we rather have Olympic taxes?

The struggle against corporate aggrandisement tends to obscure the more subtle intrusion of technology into events that were intended to celebrate the human body. Swimming was the last bastion of equipment-free athletics. There was little that separated Mark Spitz and the water when the American swimmer won his seven gold medals in 1972.

If the most physically fit humans on the planet regard their bodies as a drag and a hindrance to performance, is it any wonder that the rest of us cannot cope? On a beach in Wales last week, every torso in the surf was clad in a skin-tight neoprene wetsuit, a rare sight only a decade ago. Speedo is knocking at an open door.

carl.mortished@thetimes.co.uk

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