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In this column, “CQFD” (“Ce Qu’il Fallait Démontrer,” the French equivalent of QED), we answer your questions, and sometimes your preconceptions, about cycling and triathlon. Simple questions, but the answers are not always obvious for beginners or for anyone unfamiliar with our world.
Cyclists and triathletes are well known for shaving or waxing the hair off their legs. A practice that, moreover, is spreading to many other sports. Here is why.
By Guillaume Judas – Photos: pxhere.com/3bikes.fr
Many sport cyclists shave their legs (women and men alike) without knowing exactly why. The first reason, and probably the main one, is the feeling of belonging to a community. In a group of cyclists, whether they race or not, the odd one out is the hairy-legged rider. Nobody will refuse to ride with a cyclist who has hairy legs, but they will at the very least be looked at sideways. The smooth calf is part of the kit, just like the bib shorts or the socks at the right height. Period.
A purely aesthetic justification that has been specific to cycling for decades and has become something of a tradition. It gave generations of homophobes something to laugh at, linking the absence of hair with a supposed lack of masculinity. Thankfully, the world is changing, and even soccer players now shave their legs, and sometimes their chests. What is funnier, though, is the self-centered side of shaved legs, ideally toned ones too: a way for athletes to show their level of preparation and commitment, in terms of both the kilometers covered in training and the sacrifices made at the dinner table. In the cycling world, having well-defined leg muscles (which are more visible without hair) means you are “doing the job.” In other words, being serious. Cyclists spend a lot of time looking at each other’s calves, especially when they are slim and lean, but they are often the only ones who find them appealing. Female spectators on the roadside physically prefer soccer players. And while it is no longer only women who fantasize about hairy men, studies are divided on the question of the masculinity of athletes, and therefore of cyclists. Reasonable or “moderate” training is said to be excellent for boosting libido, whereas overly intense training would, on the contrary, reduce it. Are you sure?
To prevent infections
However, for competitors at least, leg shaving mainly serves another purpose: in the event of a crash, with the inevitable road rash when skin meets the ground, having no hair makes treatment easier. Hair can carry germs, and once stuck to a wound, it makes the wound harder to clean and slower to heal. A bandage sticks less well to hairy skin, and you get a free hair removal session every time you change the dressing. Well, that is the theory, because we have to admit we have never crashed with hairy legs.
To make massages easier
What makes other elite sports adopt leg shaving too is the regular time athletes spend under the hands of the physiotherapist. And the latter (male or female) generally does not enjoy kneading, rubbing and massaging hairy legs for long, especially when athletes come in one after another on the table. Oils and creams slide and penetrate the skin less well. Those who prefer electrical muscle stimulation for recovery can also attest to it: the electrodes stick less well and wear out faster on hair. The moral of the story: the shaved cyclist also looks after their recovery.
For aerodynamics
Really? What if the performance gain were the only valid reason to shave your legs… and your arms, since that is also a common practice among cyclists and triathletes now. We already knew that shaving the whole body saved about 2% in aerodynamic drag in the water for the best swimmers. That is far from negligible at the elite level, when medals are decided by hundredths of a second. But the figures are even more telling on the bike, at 40 km/h: shaving the legs would save an average of 70 seconds over an hour, and shaving the arms another 19 seconds, according to a wind tunnel study conducted by Specialized in 2014.
