Winning By a Hair
nautil.us
nautil.us
You should of course feel free to remove hair if that's your preference, but it's not to be confused with good hygiene.
Back to the OP, hairy legs makes things harder for long distance cycling. Especially multi-day cycling. The level at which this bothers you is a personal decision of course. I'm an average amateur mountain biker and I don't bother shaving. But I only ride 2 hours at a time! If I was going for longer trips ... yeah definitely, leg hair is a liability.
If hairless skin is more aerodynamic than their jersey, I'd expect them to show as much skin as the officials allow them to. And if skin is less aerodynamic, I'd expect full body suits. The current jersey seems like it has to be wrong, but I assume I must be missing something.
The only types of race in which they use something close to what you're suggesting, where the aerodynamic gain of the suit is higher than the danger to overheat the rider, are time-trials, or velodrome races, which have a lower duration (max 1h).
I'm sure that there's no aerodynamic advantage for tennis but when you're out there sweating in the sun, I'm sure you don't want a bunch of water-retaining hair. Also depending on the surface a lot of dust can get kicked up. Not a lot of fun mingling with sweat. Easier for taping/massaging, too, I guess.
While I am a (terrible, amateur) male tennis player, I barely have any hair on my legs to begin with, so I can't do my own A/B comparison for science's sake.
It is also a good way to trap contaminants before they can reach the nose, skin and the body, so if one is meticulous about keeping one's body hair clean, one can stay healthier than someone with relatively less of it.
Such naturally body hair devoid males also happen to live statistically significantly longer and healthier lives as well as outnumber the number of the said proudly hirsute males by a significant proportion.
As though living longer without a beard is somehow a good thing.
If you're shaving off your body hair, then you're
defeating Mother Nature's most effective air conditioning,
and you're going to ensure that your sweat slides uselessly
down your legs before it can help your body cool down.
I've spent many, many hours in the sun (sports, yard work, hiking) including in muggy 95F/35C+ summers over the years. There are days where I have consumed gallons of water just to replace what I've sweated out.
Wouldn't exactly be hard to detect. If it was literally running down my legs with no chance to evaporate then it would be pooling in my socks and shoes or leaving trails of sweat on the tennis court. Never seen this happen to me or anybody else in person or on TV. And certainly you don't see this on televised sports. You don't see leg hair-less people passing out or dripping sweat onto the playing surfaces in basketball, tennis, etc.
One tends not to see much body hair on native equatorial people, either.
Body hair may serve other sorts of cooling purposes. Certainly the hair on our heads (if we're lucky enough to have it) protects us from the sun. And thick enough body hair may do that as well. Really not buying the sweat thing though.
Tour de France level riders shave their legs for a combination of reasons 1. Aerodynamics gain (albeit small) 2. Reduces the pain of massages on hairy skin 3. Don't have hair sticking to bandages and 4. Looks.
Much like what has already been said, for the majority of us it's likely just for aesthetics and perhaps sunscreen.
Consider me less than impressed. At elite competition levels where winners are determined by <s>doping/transfusion</s> hard work and micro-optimizations, sure. Mortals can worry about anything else.
Edit: According to this random site (https://cyclinglevel.com/cycling-times/40k-times), an elite rider can complete a 40k in 75 minutes. A 70 second reduction would be a savings of ~1.5%. Meanwhile, an intermediate rider should expect to run the same course in 88 minutes (~17% worse than the elite with hairy legs).
Otherwise most of the riders will rotate through the peloton (group).
Don't get me wrong aerodynamics is important and yes it is of most importance during a time trial, but that's about it. Otherwise they wouldn't shave their legs all year round. There are many other reasons why professional cyclists shave their legs that are just as important.
I don't think the increase is surprising at all, it's been known for a long time.
Cycling teams have been using wind tunnels for over a decade to improve aerodynamics, all the way down to the difference between tucking and untucking their jersey on warmer stages, head tilt, compression socks, wheels, elbow angle.
Shaving legs only seems to be talked about so much because its a main talking point between cyclists and non-cyclists.
Body hair is gross, simple as.
Also, having some hair (and decent hygiene ofc) makes sweat more bearable imho.
As a runner, swimmer, and biker, hair doesn't help sweat wisk off my chest, it holds heat in, and makes going number 2 disgusting.
I have a chest the rivals Austin Powers. It is awful.
Trim it all off and then some. If permanent removal wasn't so painful I'd do it.