Quote:
Originally Posted by nomilkforsanta
Be mindful when buying swimming goggles, there are training, competition, and crap. The competition ones are really small and really dig into your face.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BigCP84
These are actually called Swedish style, but they are not the only competition style.
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Indeed, the "Swedish" style are hard plastic, and at first, you might assume these would be the least comfortable, but by the time I was an adult competitive swimmer, they were all that I would wear that wouldn't have irritating leak issues and wouldn't hurt after several hours of practice, and especially during dives. The key is getting the length of the nose-piece tie exactly right (they should come disassembled). These goggles were still $3 a pair when I stopped swimming over a decade ago. Always the cheapest and most reliable option.
There are softer pre-assembled PVC variations of this style, now, that tend to cost a lot more. I noticed that there's also a version of this "cut" with thin gaskets that was popular at the last Olympics.
Those are a modern, Swedish-esque take on the rounder, thicker-gasket goggles that TYR came out with over 25 years ago that I wore as a kid and are still very popular.
My older brother always a very short, wide pair of Speedo-made goggles with thick foam, and nothing else during training. There's always a few who are comfortable with less orthodox goggles like this. I believe they stopped making them because he was irritated in college and he could never find a new pair. I couldn't even find an image of them. Perhaps they stopped making them. He always preferred foam goggles over gaskets, PVC, or hard plastic. They were cut like this, but came with foam twice as thick as I ever saw on any other model of goggle:
At big swim meets, there used to be a sales rep for a company (based in Washington) who would put up a stand near to the pool. During warm-ups, sometimes the rep would have a couple of "display" models that he would let swimmers try out in a lane before purchasing. Other than that, you'll find no greater variation for tryouts than at a swim team practice, man. It's a bit of quest for every swimmer to find the perfect pair of goggles for them. It's no different than guys in here with boxing gloves, or baseball players finding the perfect mitt. The Swedes are the only "standard" that have ever existed in the sport. As far as brands, stick with Speedo, TYR, or Nike.
