'It's a small advantage' - Why different coloured socks and gloves could be the new marginal gain in team time trials

Love them or hate them, team time trials are back in vogue. There will be one at this year’s Vuelta Femenina, one at next year’s Tour de France, and Paris-Nice continued its tradition on Tuesday of hosting one each spring.

With more team races against the clock scheduled – particularly at the calendar’s biggest races – cycling’s great innovators are coming up with ways to draw marginal gains out of them. The latest came from XDS Astana, who wore multi-coloured gloves and overshoes when they lined up for Paris-Nice’s third stage.

The eagle-eyed among you may have already spotted it. Perhaps you thought it was just a fun gimmick, a nod to the disco trends of the 80s. According to XDS Astana's performance engineer Alex Dowsett, there’s good reason behind the rainbow.

“When you do a turn in a team time trial, you do obviously a massive pull on the front, with really high power, and then you have to come off the power,” he said in a team post on X. “When you get to seventh position or sixth position, you then have to do another big effort to get back into the line. If you miss the back of that line by centimetres, it then becomes a third monumental effort to close the gap.”

Riders typically count their way to the back of the line when they swap turns, rejoining the end, if they can hold on. At Paris-Nice, XDS Astana judged it quicker to respond to colours, rather than count back through teammates.

“You react to things in your periphery faster than you react to them if you look directly at them. The difficult thing about team time trials, from that respect, is everyone looks the same,” Dowsett said.

“It could be that split second where you’re like, ‘Is that [Harold] Tejada or is that [Mike] Teunissen?’ The first thing you see from each rider is their hands. I was like, ‘So what if we could make everyone’s gloves a different colour?’ So instead of looking for the person, or the riding style of that person, or counting one, two, three, four, five, six, you’re just looking for a colour.

“It’s a small advantage,” he continued. “Let’s not beat around the bush, we’re not saving on aero gains or anything.”

There are also advantages for the team directors in the follow car, Dowsett explained.

“They’re not having to memorise riders’ numbers,” he said. “I think it will just be easier for the directors to know if someone needs to miss a turn, if someone says they’re struggling, [or] if someone’s getting in on the back. It’ll hopefully be easier to relay that information to the riders as well.”

XDS Astana ultimately placed 13th of 22 teams in the Paris-Nice team time trial, which was won by Visma-Lease a Bike. Without the fluorescent gloves, though, who knows where they might have finished?