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.
43 thoughts on “Team Sky’s Tour de France time trial skinsuits declared legal despite rivals’ complaints”
Officials will say it’s okay
Officials will say it’s okay now, but will quietly work on regulations this off-season when attention is lower.
There was an interesting
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…..
If this is banned, there’ll
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.
Will be fine until it is
Will be fine until it is discovered they were delivered in Jiffy bags.
Grahamd wrote:
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?
Rich_cb wrote:
Will be fine until it is discovered they were delivered in Jiffy bags.
— Rich_cb 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?— Grahamd
I hear the US has a great postal service. I’ll give you the fool (sic) scoop in return for some positive press. 😀
There’s regulations about
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.
Oh bloody great. That’s £4k
Oh bloody great. That’s £4k of tricep stud piercings up the bloody swanny before Thurs evening’s Club time trial.
This is just great
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!
This sport is so petty.
This sport is so petty.
bubbles on the suit makes it faster and a clear advantage?? seroiusly?
hsiaolc wrote:
Yep. Has been working on golf balls since 1905…
madcarew wrote:
I don’t care how big the marginal gains are, I’m not hammering dimples into my balls.
Bigtwin wrote:
Don’t come crying to me when you get beat by 0.100 by someone who did.
Bigtwin wrote:
If you want a good handicap…
Bigtwin wrote:
Lack of commitment…
madcarew wrote:
You play golf? The dimples concave on golf balls but these bubbles on the suit are convex.
So by your reasoning that concave balls are used because they get a clear advantage of speed and sitance so tehcnically convex will have the reversed effect.
hsiaolc wrote:
Not sure you understand how physics works
hsiaolc wrote:
Aaaah, no. I don’t play golf. Technically it won’t have the reverse effect, it’s not whether or not they’re concave or convex, it’s whether or not they break up the airflow at the surface of the object. Which they do in both cases (technically). Bubbles would work just as well on the surface of a golf ball… except they would affect the accuracy of it coming off the club head. It’s probably easier to put bubbles into the texture of a suit rather than dimples. Who would have guessed that the difference between a casual fit cycling top and a tight fitting lycra top would be 90 sec over a 40k TT. Seroiusly!
madcarew wrote:
The dimples on a golf ball have to be concave and not convex or it would not roll across the green.
madcarew wrote:
And you have scientific prof that concave has the same effect as convex? You all making assumptions and claim to be some genius at physics. The gain is questionable.
why not make bubbles out of the frame too?
They shold hire you guys to design their kits and equipments.
hsiaolc wrote:
It’s not the convace bits, it’s the anti-concave that creats the boundary layer.
hsiaolc wrote:
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.
hsiaolc wrote:
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.
hsiaolc wrote:
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 😉
No one complained when Sky
No one complained when Sky used these skinsuits at the Giro or when Movistar used something similar on theirs. Other teams have had time to develop something similar or ask for a clarification of the rules.
The final TT in Marseille could be interesting as over a longer course whoever is in the organisers yellow skinsuit will be at a huge disadvantage.
NeilG83 wrote:
Often making a compliant is the best way of getting clarification of the rules. It’s the same in F1 etc. The other teams want to copy an idea, but want to make sure that their money won’t be wasted if the governing body is simply going to ban it the following week.
“gave its riders an unfair
“gave its riders an unfair advantage”
Castelli’s motto is “you know you’re getting an unfair advantage”. Says so right on the silver backed baggies their kit ships in.
Does anyone know where the
Does anyone know where the rules sit if say I was to damage my shoulder, and applied support tape on my upper arms and shoulders to support that… and that tape just happened to have a heavily dimpled surface?
Would it be my fault if that dimpled surface effected the outer surface of the skin suit?
Jimmy Ray Will wrote:
That is the logic that led, for a few seasons, to Rugby Union professionals being almost padded up like American footballers with under jersey protection. Until it was stopped.
Obviously the kit does make a difference in cycling. But wouldn’t it be nice if it didn’t make quite as much difference as Sky seem to be proving.
Getting like F1. One team
Getting like F1. One team comes up with an innovation, the others complain because they didn’t think of it first, the rules get changed – and the circle starts again.
tigersnapper wrote:
Does that make Sky the McLaren of cycling?
earth wrote:
Nobody has been trying to copy McLaren for the last few years…
earth wrote:
Not sure you have seen F1 in a while, mate.
do team sky need any more
do team sky need any more bloody atttention?
As The Inner Ring article
As The Inner Ring article points out and as discussed by the Stage 2 episode of The Cycling Podcast Sky had already used this (specifically, Geraint Thomas coming 2nd in the TT at the Giro to Dumoulin).
Which is clever, because the “nobody complained then, the commisaires passed it is allowable both then and today” defence does hold. As The Cycling podcast discussed, the GB team did this as long ago as Boardman’s day, with a team mate using the Lotus bike in a World Cup a few months earlier to know great fanfare but with ample photographic evidence.
But as said, up thread, it’s almost certain the UCI technical department will either:
A: work out a wording that bans this in time for the 2017-2018 Track season- potentially in time for the 2017 road worlds
B: go “fine, everyone go for it”
Because ofthe speed the rules work at, it’ll be interesting to see how many team manage to get similar skinsuits in place for the later TT- and if Sky/Movistar/whoever have a special yellow version, like Wiggins had, with special dispensation so they don’t have to wear the ill fitting le Coq Sportif yellow suit.
Al__S wrote:
The current wording prevents teams getting a product that is available to all and modifying it themselves to produce a unique item that gives them and advantage that no one else has due to the uniqueness.
If the item is available to all without modification then it’s the teams decision to use that item or not. They can accept what ever sponsor they like and in some cases they use products that don’t come from the sponsor .
Those rules seem fair, why change them?
1 second per km? So the 14km
1 second per km? So the 14km TT took about 1000 seconds, giving 70 seconds per km. I’m amazed that 1.5% improvement can be gained from bubbles on GC riders arms that are about 4mm wide they’re so skinny.
Dont you love this nonsense?!
Dont you love this nonsense?! Apparently a couple of dimpled panels on your shirt will give you a 7% power saving (if I read teh DS from FDJ right).
WOW – get the full suit done and with all the other aero improvements you won’t need to use your legs to get a sub 22 10 mile TT!!!
Such utter rot! Sure it might give a tiny benefit otherwise why bother – (oh yeah how much is a new Castelli TT suit) but 7%!!! I think that if aero efficiencies like that were true then pretty much every vehicle on the planet would be smothered in the stuff
Made me laugh! I do love the French – this is right up there with the British teams use of wheels that were ‘more round’ love it.
FatBoyW wrote:
And don’t forget they are – of course, lighter and stiffer, whilst offering greater verticle compliance.
Bigtwin wrote:
Is that the suits or the riders? (Fnarr, fnarr…)
In layman’s terms the dimples
In layman’s terms the dimples on golf balls provide lift, in conjunction with backspin and being twatted hard, which helps them travel further through the air.
Can’t work out why they would help on a bike suit, but then I am not an aero specialist but a cyclist who used to be a golfer.
Mechanical Engineers have
Mechanical Engineers have been playing with laminar and turbulent airflow for years.
Here is some info on Spitfire rivets and simulating rivet heads with dried peas:
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/rc-warbirds-warplanes-200/2680115-spitfire-fuselage-domed-flat-rivets.html
Here is some more on airflow : https://www.euroga.org/forums/maintenance-avionics/2116-do-protruding-rivets-affect-speed-merged
Controlling boundary layers does work, but the gains are less at slow speed.
Exup wrote:
Knowledge is power. I’m going to fill my skin suit with dried peas.