How swimming goggles can restore swimmers' sight

Today, all swimmers wear them. Whether they're the torpedoes speeding through competition pools or the enlightened amateurs in municipal swimming pools. We almost forget that there was a pioneer, the first man to use swimming goggles during an official race.

In this case, Briton David Wilkie, future Olympic champion in the 200m breaststroke at the Montreal Games in 1976, donned goggles at the 1970 Commonwealth Games with a fairly simple goal: to improve his vision and protect his eyes from chlorine. Since then, the device has become widely used. But the question of vision for swimmers continues to be an ongoing issue.

No one has forgotten Yohann Ndoye-Brouard's misfortune at the Tokyo Olympics, when he was disqualified in the semi-finals of the 100m backstroke for missing a turn . The young man, then mocked on social media for literally hitting the wall, revealed that he suffers from keratoconus, a deformation of the cornea. " Instead of being a football, it's a rugby ball ," explains Didier Rosset, his optician in Chambéry. In all transparency, Yohann Ndoye-Brouard explains that while swimming, he couldn't see much: " In the water, you don't always need to see. I got used to seeing blurry and, when I couldn't see, I closed my eyes. It was my way of building myself. "

French swimmer Emma Terebo has chosen to keep her contact lenses under her goggles. (S. Boué/L'Équipe)

Yet there is an alternative, with sports glasses adapted to the wearer's vision. This is the niche of the company founded by Roger Demetz, optician and scuba diving enthusiast, who invented a prescription diving mask with a polymerization system in 1950. " He would glue mineral glass optical lenses to the inside of an existing mask ," explains Thomas Ximenes, head of the Demetz collection.

In the 1980s, sports glasses became more widespread. " But we don't offer streamlined, competition-style glasses ," explains Thomas Ximenes . "We're talking about what we call fly glasses, with symmetrical frames that we offer for prescription. " The flagship product, aimed at people who are nearsighted or farsighted, is a frame that is corrected for vision and that you then assemble yourself. An affordable solution, since it costs 60 or 70 euros per pair.

Some have chosen to keep their lenses under their glasses

" Canadian Maggie MacNeil swam with flies and was an Olympic champion (in the 100m butterfly in 2021, editor's note)," says Yohann Ndoye-Brouard. "But I always preferred to wear hydrodynamic goggles, even if it meant not seeing anything. " Others have chosen to swim with their contact lenses under their goggles. " I talked about it with people around me; Emma Terebo, Mary-Ambre Moluh, and the Swiss Noé Ponti all do it. I raised the subject with my ophthalmologist, who is completely against it, due to infections linked to bacteria found in swimming pool water. He told me: 'If you want to lose your sight...' I already have too many problems with my eyes and I'm very allergic. "

But while he refused to take this risk, Ndoye-Brouard didn't give up on solving the problem. His equipment supplier, Arena, considered developing prescription swimming goggles, but faced the challenge of obtaining a medical license to hope to sell these devices. " Since Didier Rosset is a friend of my grandmother, I used to go to his place to have my goggles made, and I naturally turned to him to find the right contacts ," says Yohann Ndoye-Brouard.

First, he approached people he won't name, who had created the first prototypes. " They were supposed to offer me the goggles, and even support me financially. They communicated about this partnership but sent me the invoices for the goggles and never paid me the promised money ," the swimmer regrets.

" In the water, you don't always need to see. I got used to seeing things blurry, and when I couldn't see, I closed my eyes. It was my way of building myself. "

Monitored for five years by Professor Gabisson of the Rothschild Foundation, Yohann Ndoye-Brouard first underwent cross-linking to stabilize the progression of his keratoconus. " We can't give precise figures, but we tripled his visual acuity ," revealed Didier Rosset. "We balanced this small, frail body, two meters tall and wide, and gave him absolutely incredible self-confidence. " Above all, the optician directed the swimmer to the Transitions company, which belongs to the EssilorLuxottica group.

" We took advantage of the eyewear show to approach people who might be able to make swimming goggles, but most of them said it was too complicated because of the water. Except for Transitions, who had the engineers and technicians for that. We quickly began the adventure: I sent them five or six pairs of goggles. I admit they damaged some during testing, but in the end, we managed to get a pair with their own touch: lenses that tinted. "

Controlling glare is an additional advantage for backrest specialists like Yohann Ndoye-Brouard. (HERVIO JEAN MARIE/L'Équipe)

Laurent Dosseville, European Sales Director at Transitions, sheds light on the issues raised by Yohann Ndoye-Brouard: " We don't manufacture swimming goggles, but dynamic lenses, variable-tint lenses. We're working more and more on the concept of light modulation, on glare recovery times, on transition phases between indoors and outdoors, with improved contrast perception. We're very focused on stabilizing good vision in extreme conditions. What we're trying to avoid is photo-stress. We have vision recovery performance levels that are quite impressive; in glare situations, we'll gain something like six seconds between a conventional static lens and our technology. But that's for conventional wearers." In Yohann's case, out of our three technologies, we selected a product called Transitions Xtractive, which activates with UV rays and some of the blue light responsible for glare. Rather than polarizing technology, which allows you to gain a field of vision, this one offers greater efficiency in filtering glare.

Glasses that correct vision but also glare

The association pushed the company to take on a real technological challenge to handcraft swimmer's equipment according to his medical prescriptions. " It's quite complex to glue the glass that is normally made to be in a prescription glasses frame ," explains Laurent Dosseville. "To cut it and glue it inside the swimming goggles. You need glues that are resistant to the chlorine environment, temperatures to prevent detachment. It needs to be machined in such a way that it doesn't interfere with Yohann's eye and vision, that it remains waterproof... That's quite a few parameters. Didier Rosset's intelligence was to contact Transitions because Yohann's research was not only to correct his vision but to find a tool that would allow him to control glare. "

This is obvious when you remember that Yohann Ndoye-Brouard is a backstroker. The 2022 European Champion, he also started the 4x100m medley relay at the closing of the Paris Olympic Games last summer, and participated in the bronze medal won with Maxime Grousset, Florent Manaudou, and Léon Marchand.

Equipped with this custom-made equipment, Yohann Ndoye-Brouard can now strive for extraordinary performances. " But not everyone can afford that," he admits. "My eyesight continues to evolve, we remake goggles every year. I must have had ten pairs, but I try not to overdo it because they're expensive. I take great care of them, whereas before, I used to consume quite a bit; I liked to change goggles depending on my cap and wetsuit. Last year, I swam almost the entire season with the same pair. Except for the Games, where I changed at the last minute. " And managed to erase the memory of Tokyo once and for all.