Enric Mas has endured a tough start to the Giro d'Italia, losing major time on Blockhaus and Corne alle Scale to drop to 28th place, almost 14 minutes off the lead, after nine stages.
The Spanish rider is leading Movistar at the Italian Grand Tour and hasn't been making headlines for his racing, then. Instead, it's what he's been wearing that has drawn attention.
"I wear a small jersey. Maybe they made a mistake when distributing the clothing, but it doesn’t matter. I didn’t notice, I just wore the clothes. Everything was my size, and the shorts too; the only difference was the logo."
Movistar teammate Iván García Cortina pointed it out to him following the tricky stage 8 to Fermo. "It was Iván who pointed it out to me on Saturday night. We had a good laugh when we realised!" Mas said.
What's really going on here?
Mas makes reference to jersey and shorts, but he has in fact been wearing skinsuits at the Giro d'Italia so far, where the jersey and shorts are stitched together in a one-piece garment for aerodynamic benefit.
Curiously, on some days, he has been wearing skinsuits that carry the correct men's 'UCI WorldTeam' logo, while on others, the chest has carried the 'UCI Women's WorldTeam' logo.
While Movistar's men's and women's team kits are visually identical – save for the WorldTour logos – there are structural differences in the make-up of the garments.
With the skinsuits, the major point of difference is the lay-up around the crotch and the chamois pad itself. Gobik uses a women's specific chamois in most of its top-level shorts, the K9 Graphene pad, which is "designed to fit the female anatomy with precision".
So if Mas been riding around in a WWT-emblazoned skinsuit, has he also been sitting on a women's specific chamois, and not the men's version he's used to?
Not quite. Closer inspection shows that, even on the days he has been seen in the WWT logo, Mas has in fact been wearing a men's suit, with a double zipper and the specific chamois lay-up we see on the men's suits, and not the one we see on the women's suits.
There are two possible explanations for this, and both point to a fault in the production line.
The first, and the most simple, is a mis-print. It's possible that Gobik has made a mistake when printing a certain number of its men's skinsuits, leaving them with the Women's WorldTour logo.
The second possibility is a mis-build. Skinsuits are made by stitching together an 'upper' and a 'lower', so it's possible a men's lower has been stitched to a women's upper.
Even in this scenario, there may be no real performance difference. Gobik makes a unisex jersey as part of its Movistar range, so unlike the 'lower' that is gender-specific, there may be no difference in the fit of the off-the-peg 'upper'.
In any case, it's a problem that's likely to be rectified come the second week of the Giro starting on Tuesday, with the women's kit surely to be taken out of Mas' laundry rotation to avoid any further non-sponsor-correctness.
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