olympic kit

[mig]

typically are the olympic track riders still using tubs?

[mattsccm]

I would imagine so as they stay on if punctured.

[Paulatic]

and I thought you meant

[rjb]

Pair of socks how much. £720.
Cheap compared to Cavs £1000 socks in pursuit of his final tdf stage victory.
According to the Sun.
While Team GB's 3D printed seat post has set them back £2000 and the saddle £600 - while custom made socks aimed at maximising aerodynamics are priced at a whopping £720.1 day ago

[cycleruk]

3D printed titanium handlebars as well.

[scottg]

Team Japan's track bike is £108,000,
so that Lotus looks good value for money.
Too bad they're charge extra for the mud guards.

https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/japa ... drivetrain

[atoz]

Pair of socks how much. £720.
Cheap compared to Cavs £1000 socks in pursuit of his final tdf stage victory.
According to the Sun.
While Team GB's 3D printed seat post has set them back £2000 and the saddle £600 - while custom made socks aimed at maximising aerodynamics are priced at a whopping £720.1 day ago
DD-05-08-team-GB-lotus-bike_GRAPHIC-1-1.jpg

Wow. £1000 for socks. Are they made by magic elves in Middle Earth? Meanwhile I shall keep on with my Lidl polypropylene socks which allegedly are for "winter biking".

[rareposter]

Pair of socks how much. £720.
Cheap compared to Cavs £1000 socks in pursuit of his final tdf stage victory.
According to the Sun.
While Team GB's 3D printed seat post has set them back £2000 and the saddle £600 - while custom made socks aimed at maximising aerodynamics are priced at a whopping £720.1 day ago
DD-05-08-team-GB-lotus-bike_GRAPHIC-1-1.jpg

Wow. £1000 for socks. Are they made by magic elves in Middle Earth? Meanwhile I shall keep on with my Lidl polypropylene socks which allegedly are for "winter biking".

All these Olympic stories in the tabloids are pumped out by time-pressured junior staffers at the behest of some senior editor who knows that "Olympics" = big news clicks and has just demanded that the staff (none of whom will have the slightest clue about the sports in question) write 400 words of clickbait copy about it. Off they pop to Wikipedia, find out a few "facts" about the sport in question and then they get AI to co-write a breathlessly exciting article about why there's a motorbike on the track and who [former Olympic star] is now dating.

Pricing is the perfect article - lots of clicks and comments going "you could buy a car for that!". Whether the info is correct or not is a distant second to just getting the article out there.

There's another factor - IOC and UCI rules state that all the national teams have to have their final kit approved a year in advance and then made "commercially available" in January of Olympic year. The "commercially available" part is (in theory) to level the playing field a bit but there are any number of ways around it - one is to have ridiculously long lead times, one is simply to put the price out of reach or create a lot of hoops to jump through. Much like how a jumbo jet is commercially available but you or I can't go out and buy one...

The bike (or wheels, socks etc) don't cost anything near the price stated but if you factor in the endless hours of wind tunnel testing, the countless different materials tried and tested, R&D costs and so on and tack that onto the price, it sounds quite impressive - and that can be useful for mind games against rival teams. Our socks alone cost £1000!

And other teams go "wow, if the socks cost £1000, think of the kit they'll be on, think of the time they've spent preparing..." It's pure mind games.

Plus the Olympics is mostly just one massive sponsorship and branding game, acres of publicity for the companies involved so if you can say that you are the exclusive contract for Team GB Olympic socks (bargain at £1000/pair), you get a whole load of publicity and you can sell lots of the "replica" socks for £40/pair.

Anyway, at the opposite end of the spectrum, it turns out that the gloves used by Team GB track sprinters actually cost £10.99 at Decathlon:
https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/team ... s-olympics

[mattsccm]

Mildly interesting GCN video on YouTube about this. Good point made that the bikes have to be commercially available which the makers and users don't really want, hence a silly price. Not completely universal but a factor.