{"id":851122,"date":"2026-08-08T22:44:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T22:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/851122\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T22:44:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T22:44:09","slug":"of-course-a-dude-tested-the-bra-doping-theory-at-the-tour-de-france-femmes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/851122\/","title":{"rendered":"Of course a dude tested the bra doping theory at the Tour de France Femmes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The so-called \u2018bra doping\u2019<\/a> debate has made its way from the Tour de France Femmes<\/a> to the world of triathlon. (Also it was the winners at Canadian Cycling Magazine who came up with the term, for better or for worse.)<\/p>\n

And btw, speaking of the TdFF, please check our daily coverage of the race as it\u2019s been absolutely spectacular. The nine-day race is coming down to the wire with the finale in Nice. So please check our site for all of the coverage and post-race coverage, \u2018cuz there\u2019s been a lot.<\/p>\n

Lundberg weighs in<\/p>\n

Swedish triathlete Elias Lundberg decided to find out for himself whether there was actually anything to the idea that filling the space between the arms and chest could make an athlete faster. Because hey, why not?<\/p>\n

The Swede, who\u2019s pretty damn good, normally uses two bottles snuggled between his armar, a familiar setup in triathlon that can also provide an aerodynamic benefit. For his test, he swapped the bottles for a bra and headed out for a series of intervals. Funny story, the word for good in Swedish is bra. Serious. V\u00e4ldigt bra.<\/p>\n

The test<\/p>\n

Anywho, the plan was six 10-minute efforts, alternating between the two setups.<\/p>\n

After finishing the test, Lundberg checked the results and came to a rather amusing conclusion: the bra was faster.<\/p>\n

His reported difference was around 0.3 per cent.<\/p>\n

That is a tiny margin, but still. Lundberg\u2019s experiment was hardly a controlled scientific study. Still, he calculated that at 40 km\/h over 180 km, the difference could add up to roughly 40 seconds.<\/p>\n

The test is similar to the thinking behind the recent controversy in cycling. Recently, researchers said they have looked at whether adding material to the chest area can smooth airflow and reduce drag. In other words, the idea behind \u201cbra doping\u201d isn\u2019t completely ridiculous from an aerodynamic standpoint.
Lundberg, for his part, seemed more amused than anything else.<\/p>\n

\u201cStop the cap,\u201d he joked after declaring the bra the winner.<\/p>\n

He then suggested trying the experiment again with bigger or smaller bras to see whether the size made a difference.<\/p>\n

Science? Maybe not quite.<\/p>\n

But apparently, someone had to test it.<\/p>\n

Although this is seems like an Instagram bait-post, there\u2019s some truth to it. In fact, major teams like Lidl-Trek admitted they\u2019d tested padded bras\u2013just like the men who would use bottles, or radios, or whatever, to round out their profile and be a bit quicker.<\/p>\n

The idea behind the bra test isn\u2019t as ridiculous as it sounds. Aerodynamics professor Bert Blocken has studied the effect of chest fairings on cyclists, has argued that changing the shape of the chest can smooth airflow and reduce drag. The Dutch dude, through his research found that an optimally shaped chest fairing could reduce aerodynamic drag by as much as 3.6 per cent. That doesn\u2019t mean a rider is suddenly going to gain tens of seconds, but over a 20- or 30-km time trial, even a few seconds can matter.<\/p>\n

And we all know in cycling, that counts. I mean look at the Tour de France Femmes\u2013it\u2019s coming down to the last day. All pro cycling is the matter of seconds, not minutes, it seems lately. I\u2019m sure there\u2019s a joke about every masters rider rushing to the store to get a padded bra, but let\u2019s just focus on the TdFF.<\/p>\n

The Tour de France Femmes wraps up tomorrow after an amazing nine days. What a race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The so-called \u2018bra doping\u2019 debate has made its way from the Tour de France Femmes to the world…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":851123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[291441,49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-851122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-2026-tour-de-france-femmes","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}