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news
Chris Froome during Stage 1 of Tour de France 2017 (video still).JPGTeam Sky's Tour de France time trial skinsuits declared legal despite rivals' complaints
The race jury at the Tour de France has rejected claims that the skinsuits worn by Team Sky riders at yesterday’s opening time trial in Dusseldorf gave its riders an unfair advantage over their rivals.
The British UCI WorldTour outfit dominated the 14-kilometre race against the clock, placing four riders in the top eight to take control of the team classification.
Besides the stage win by Geraint Thomas that saw him take the yellow jersey, former time trial Vasil Kiryienka placed third and defending Tour de France champion Chris Froome sixth to take time from his rivals on the first day of the race, while Michal Kwiatkowski finished eighth.
But sports scientist Fred Grappe, who lectures at the Université des Sports de Besançon and is also performance director of the FDJ team, questioned the legality of the skinsuits worn by a number of Team Sky’s riders, which had small bubbles on what appeared to be panels on the upper arms.
The allegation was that the panels had been added to the Castelli skinsuits rather than forming an integral part of the garment and that they did not therefore comply with UCI regulations regarding equipment, which state:
Garments must not be adapted in any way such that they diverge from their use purely as clothing. The addition of any non-essential element or device to clothing is prohibited.
Writing on Twitter yesterday evening, Grappe said: “What aero advantage can you get from vortices [bubbles] placed on the side of the arms in a time trial? Is it within the regulations?” He added a link to his blog in which he highlighted an academic study on the subject.
Quels avantages aéro peut-on tirer de vortex placés sur les côtés des bras en chrono ? Est-ce réglementaire ??? https://t.co/kg51ktI6e9
— Fred Grappe (@fredgrappe) July 1, 2017
Reuters said that at least two teams had complained about the panels, adding that the performance director of one team, whom it did not name but is possibly Grappe, said it had tested a similar garment and found that it created an advantage of 1 second per kilometre.
But Philippe Marien, president of the race jury, told Reuters: “It is an actual part of the jersey, it was not added.
“We summoned the team’s sports directors to check the jerseys. Nothing was added to them.”
Speaking today, Team Sky sports director Nicolas Portal insisted: “There are other teams who have been using it.”
Other than being in the predominantly white design that Team Sky have switched to during the Tour de France, the skinsuits complete with those bubbles on the upper arms look identical to the ones worn by two riders in May on Stage 10 of the Giro d’Italia.
Those were Mikel Landa and Geraint Thomas, with the Welshman, who would abandon the race shortly afterward, finishing second that day to overall winner Tom Dumoulin of Team Sunweb.
It is not the first time the skinsuits used by Team Sky have come under scrutiny at the Tour de France.
When Sir Bradley Wiggins won the race in 2012 with Froome runner-up, questions were asked about the ‘wires’ sewn into the fabric of the skinsuit worn by Wiggins during the time trials on Stages 9 and 19, although the UCI confirmed that they had been cleared beforehand.
The skinsuit Wiggins wore, in the race leader’s yellow, carried the branding of Tour de France sponsor Le Coq Sportif but is believed to have been made by Italy’s MOA, a subsidiary of Nalini.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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43 comments
It's not the convace bits, it's the anti-concave that creats the boundary layer.
My Zipp's have got golf ball like dimples in them, I think it's for the exact same reason.
PS. You don't have to be a scientific prof to read a few articles and have a basic understanding of aero dynamics...
Everything is questionable, even if scientifically tested and proven to work, it won't stop people questioning them. Luckily that's also how improvements are born.
I think it's been fairly widely reported that the purpose of dimples on both golf balls and on cycle clothing is to break up the airflow. Whether concave is as good as convex or vice versa, I don't know.
Pretty sure a lot of the other posters have given good enough explanations, but here goes.
Both concave and convex dimples will cause a turbulent boundary layer. The turbulent airflow delays flow separation, thus reducing drag induced due to the wake.
The reason the frames don't have bubbles on them is they are designed to keep the flow laminar, rather than turbulent, so controlling flow separation isn't as important.
On areas where there will be flow separation (areas where the pressure goes from being high to low dramatically) i.e. shoulders and wheels rims, creating a turbulent boundary layer keeps airflow attached for longer.
And yes, there is plenty of scientific/engineering proof. Just run some CFD on a smooth sphere, a sphere with concaved dots and a sphere with convex dots. You'll easily be able to see the difference in the boundary layer and flow separation.
It doesn't require being a genius, a degree in physics or engineering does help a bit though
This is just great advertising for Castelli.
Step 1: Team Sky dominate the TT
Step 2: Their rivals blame the new suits.
Step 3: Profit!
Oh bloody great. That's £4k of tricep stud piercings up the bloody swanny before Thurs evening's Club time trial.
Will be fine until it is discovered they were delivered in Jiffy bags.
According to David Millar, the new suits were hand delivered the day before the TT by a member of the Castelli senior management who drove through the night to do so in person.
Have Team Sky just simply not heard of the postal service?
I hear the US has a great postal service. I'll give you the fool (sic) scoop in return for some positive press.
If this is banned, there'll always be wiggle room elsewhere in the rule books. Maybe next year Sky's marginal gains department will determine that the optimal source of nutrition is mint imperials, kept in special pockets stitched into the arms. And if the riders don't happen to be hungry enough to eat any during a short time trial, there's no regulation against that.
There was an interesting piece in Chris Boardman's book on skinsuits. For the Beijing olympics the UK track team used an impermeable matterial. That was fast and got banned.
They then moved to suits with the kind of detailed mix of panels and textures that are in use now. But where the impermeable suits were effectively a "brute force" approach, and the same suit was pretty much equally fast on everybody, the new approach needs a lot more design and testing and indvidual fitting.... but ends up faster again.
The effect of the change of rules was to take it from something anybody could gain from, to something that needed more time and money spent on it to get the benefit.....
There's regulations about this now - the chance of them stripping yellow off someone and punishing the reigning champ are minimal at best.
Edit: regulations state you can't stitch stuff on but if it's integral to the fabric it's sort of ok. Movistar have a similar pattern and the 2012 Olympic skinsuits had a disrupting material edge (source INRNG.com). Regs will be tighter next year I'm sure.
Officials will say it's okay now, but will quietly work on regulations this off-season when attention is lower.
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