Many swimmers use swimming caps to cover their heads during swimming. Swimming caps generally cover the upper portion of the swimmer's ears and contain the swimmer's hair during swimming. In competitive swimming where winning margins are often measured in hundredths of a second, a swim cap may be particularly important for reducing the hydrodynamic drag on the swimmer. A conventional swim cap covers the crown of a swimmer's head, a portion of the swimmer's forehead and the ears, and the upper portion of the nape of the neck. The wearer's hair is generally tucked inside the cap during use.
Conventional swim caps are typically generally hemispherical in shape and are made from a relatively thin, pliant, stretchable, and resilient material, such as a manmade fabric (e.g., spandex), silicone, or latex. Silicone and latex are convenient materials for swim caps due to their relative toughness, flexibility, and easy manufacturability. The pliability of the conventional swim cap is particularly important when the swimmer is engaging in strokes requiring a high degree of arch in the back and neck, such as the butterfly stroke, so that the swim cap does not interfere when the swimmer's neck is arched back.
A disadvantage of conventional swim caps, however, is that the upper portion of the swim cap tends to deform during use, forming transverse wrinkles, particularly over the crown of the swimmer's head. These transverse wrinkles result from a variety of factors, including the highly flexible and stretchable materials used to form the swim cap, the swimmer's hair enclosed by the swim cap, the motion of the swimmer's head and neck, and hydrodynamic and other forces acting on the swim cap during entry into the water and swimming. The transverse wrinkling reduces the efficiency of the swimmer by increasing the hydrodynamic drag as the water flows about the swim cap. In addition, during use a conventional swim cap typically covers only the upper portion of the swimmer's ears, leaving a portion of the ears in the flow stream.
It would therefore be beneficial to provide a swim cap that adequately covers portions of the swimmer's head and hair, including all of the swimmer's ears, but that does not tend to form wrinkles or otherwise deform to reduce the efficiency of the swimmer in the water.