The Women’s Tour de France, currently in its fifth edition and running through August 9, has been hit by a scandal in which Women’s WorldTeams are filing complaints alleging that some riders are wearing padded bras during time trials not for athletic support but as aerodynamic chest fairings designed to reduce air resistance, per Fox News OutKick’s confirmed reporting published yesterday. The Dutch outlet Wielerflits, which broke the story, received multiple complaints from WorldTeams describing riders inflating their cup sizes artificially to improve their aerodynamic profile by up to 3.6%.
A 3.6% reduction in air resistance is not a rounding error in professional cycling. Time trials are decided by seconds. A 3.6% aerodynamic advantage over a 30-kilometer course is the kind of margin that determines podiums. The teams filing complaints have not named specific riders, which is the approach of people who want the governing body to investigate rather than the lawyers of the people they are accusing to become involved. The UCI jury, which is the race’s governing authority, has received the complaints and has not yet announced what action it will take.
The proposed solution, per Fox News OutKick, is that the UCI employ female jurors to check riders in a closed tent immediately after each time trial, inspecting bras and aero clothing for padding that goes beyond athletic necessity. This is the enforcement mechanism available to a sport that has added aerodynamic underwear to the list of equipment that requires regulation, which is a list that previously included helmets, frames, wheels, and handlebars, and now includes bras. The sport is adapting.
“Not since the Winter Olympics was put on edge by the ski jump penis injection rumors has a sport faced such a potential scandal,” Fox News OutKick noted, which is the historical comparison that puts the padded bra controversy in context by noting that it is not, in fact, the first time a winter or spring sport has discovered that athletes will use their bodies’ aerodynamics as a competitive variable in ways the rule-makers did not anticipate.
The race is currently in Stage 4. Stage 3 produced the longest solo breakaway victory in the Tour de France Femmes’ history. No padded bra was confirmed to be involved.
When professional cyclists are accused of padding their bras for aerodynamic advantage and the solution is tent inspections after every time trial, what exactly is the sport governing?
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