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Female cyclists want gender differences to be given greater priority in kit design - including overcoming saddle-sore issues

Katie Archibald, Elinor Barker, Joanna Rowsell-Shand and Laura Trott competing at the Rio Olympics - AFP
Katie Archibald, Elinor Barker, Joanna Rowsell-Shand and Laura Trott competing at the Rio Olympics - AFP

It was in August 2016, towards the end of Great Britain’s track cycling medal rush at the Rio Olympics, that stories started to circulate about the female riders’ intimate hair removal techniques. One headline read: Bikini wax ban for Team GB cyclists to stop saddle pain and win more gold medals.

“It was about me, and it wasn’t really accurate. I was quite mad about that,” Elinor Barker, one quarter of Britain’s title-winning team pursuit squad, says. “There is advice given but nobody would be able to say they’re banned from doing this with their pubic hair, I mean, that’s just not OK.”

Katie Archibald, Barker’s team-mate, was equally taken aback by the attention on their nether regions. “We ended up on a Buzzfeed list of something like ‘the 13 strangest things that Olympians do for success’ about how we had apparently all been issued beard-trimmers. And as part of our British Cycling marginal gains, we had all got our pubes to 1cm or something.”

Archibald found it funny, but adds that it was upsetting to others. “The idea that friends and family could be reading about your pubes ... ” she says, encapsulating the sensitivity that continues to surround conversations around saddle health and comfort and well-being in the most intimate areas.

For women especially, confronted with a cycling industry that has previously predominantly taken men as its reference point, ignoring, for example, the saddle impact of wider differences in female genitalia presentation, it can end up being one of the more private battles elite and casual riders face.

In 2016, the source for the stories was an interview given to The Guardian by Phil Burt, then British Cycling’s physiotherapist. The idea was to show how rigorous scientific research into both sexes by backroom staff had helped to address the saddle-sore issues that were afflicting riders.

It ranged from having the correct saddle and saddle angle; (their evidence, presented to the UCI, cycling’s global governing body, brought about a saddle tilt rule change); correctly fitting kit (Laura Kenny, team-mate to Barker and Archibald, post-Rio said new shorts helped “change her cycling career”); improving personal hygiene and then that issue of pubic hair. Like Barker and Archibald, Burt – who left British Cycling in April 2018 and set up Phil Burt Innovations, which offers services including a saddle health clinic and high-end bike fitting – is keen to set the record straight.

“The world‑class expert advice from a professor at Cambridge was that waxing and shaving didn’t help our fight against saddle issues as it can be really bad for skin health,” Burt says about the research that meant, in the six months before Rio, not a single rider had a saddle sore.

Rigorous scientific research had helped address the saddle-sore issues that were afflicting rider - Credit: Getty Images
Rigorous scientific research had helped address the saddle-sore issues that were afflicting rider Credit: Getty Images

“The advice was you can do whatever you want, but a bit of hair provides an air barrier. But when you’re waxing all the time, you can get issues such as folliculitis, and if you’ve got sweaty skin, which you often do when you’re a professional athlete, that can exaggerate such inflammation or infection. But we didn’t go around checking them. That was a complete misquote.”

Nicknamed “Project Ouch”, it represented part of British Cycling’s unrelenting quest to leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of marginal gains, but it also transcended a crucial health and well-being issue that continues to be taken seriously.

“There has been maybe a culture around female cyclists that this is just normal and, of course, it isn’t,” explains Dr Nigel Jones, head of medical services for the GB cycling team since September 2017.

“It’s a medical issue that needs managing and addressing in the same way you’d manage any other issue. What I’ve tried to ensure we do is make this part of what would be a normal cycling conversation. Suffering in silence turns a potentially minor problem into a potentially major one in terms of time away from the bike.”

Not everyone has a team of science boffins working for their cause or mouth-wateringly expensive cycling kit to hand to minimise suffering. But the guidelines issued to riders and staff by British Cycling, such as correct skincare, saddle choice and shorts and chamois, are readily available to the public. There is also another straightforward tip that, according to Burt, is often forgotten: “You wouldn’t believe just advising ‘don’t wear underwear’, the difference it makes.”

But Burt, who describes visits to his clinic as a 50/50 split between middle-aged men trying to do Ironman and women “who love cycling but who are about to give up because they cannot find a solution”, wants more done. “Women are very underserved by the cycling industry,” he says.

According to Burt, who has just signed up with a major company to work on a women’s cycling short to help with pressure on the sensitive areas, females are much more exposed to issues because of their genitalia presentation, which can be much wider compared to men. He adds that the limited research into saddle products for women can create issues as women try to find solutions by using products designed for the male anatomy, such as the gap saddle.

Archibald favours a two-pronged design, by brand ISM, that takes pressure away from the centre. “It was 2012 when I first tried the saddle design I am on,” she says. “The difference it made was unbelievable.”

Archibald believes the issue is being taken a lot more seriously. To that end, she is proud of close friend and Paralympian Hannah Dines, who in March disclosed that chronic inflammation to her vulva, caused by years of suffering in the saddle, had led to her having surgery.

Dines called for female bike racing to be taken more seriously.Burt, who provided shorts for Dines to protect her post- surgery, agrees. “There are things that women can do to try and get themselves better, like guidelines. Ultimately, though, some are just going to need better equipment which just doesn’t exist right now.”