Sky was wearing them earlier this year. They are (were) on the site, but without a price last time I looked.

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My Blog - http://leegoocrap.blogspot.com

and they are ugly as sin.

these cannot be worn during the swim, correct?

I believe Specialized may also make such a sock? Mike McCarthy (former pursuit world champ), with whom I work at Zwift, used them for Masters WCs down in LA this week. I asked him if he thought they were viable for triathlon - he's done a bunch of tris - and he said no because they are extremely tight and a real PITA to get on. He couldn't imagine trying to get them on in T1.

I do believe, however, that this is (part of) why Andy Potts where compression calf sleeves. You could at least theoretically make such a calf sleeve that had the same aero benefits and I know some people have tested the calf sleeves as being faster in the tunnel, though not sure with what degree of precision.

I also don't know if people have tested them when wet - wet clothing, I know, was on Chris Yu and Mark Cote's "To Test" list up at Specialized - as that might also be a factor.

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

Lusso, Rule28 and Nopinz (not the ones with trips) all make pretty much the same sock. Haven't seen any specialized ones. The old Coure's are a similar, but without the ridges running up them.

The idea is that socks with tripz have to be very carefully placed for it to work right (and on one individual to another on an already moving body part) and my guess is that figuring that out is why Wiggins went from wearing socks with trips in them for his hour to sockless for the Olympics.

GB spent a fair amount of time testing fabrics dry and wet before 2012 I think. Certain fabrics definitely behave differently.

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My Blog - http://leegoocrap.blogspot.com

Actually, I love the mismatched look of them.

aero socks but has a couple of boa straps sticking out of his shoes that has to have an aero penalty right?

I have the no-pinz socks and I could probably put each one of them in on in 3-4 seconds if I took the time to neatly roll them down ahead of time while setting up my transition. If I knew I'd be near the head of the second swim group and I was going to wear socks on the run anyways it might be worth trying.

Is there evidence that boas cause drag?

Hello BryanD and All,

If there are demonstrable aero gains from trip strips ..... how about sort of a two piece operation .... regular running socks with a sleeve to pull over the top .... that would be pretty quick.

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Cheers, Neal

+1 mph Faster

I will tell you, socks and shoe covers are some of the most perplexing items you will ever test. Nothing makes sense at all when it comes to testing around the feet and ankles; just when you think you've got a handle on it and know what is and isn't fast, you're proven wrong.

Good story...When testing in the tunnel for the US Women's Pursuit Team in the lead up to Rio, we spent quite a bit of time testing prototype socks of all kinds (shoes covers are not allowed on the track). Some of this stuff was really cool; super-secret sh*t from around the world that had to cost seom serious coin to make, and I thought we were in for some breakthroughs. Test after test, sock after sock - nothing worked consistently, and virtually every design increased drag for each girl. Everyone just kept shaking their heads. Nothing seemed to work better than our plain white sock baseline. A completely innocuous f*cking white sock that didn't even go up mid-calf on the girls. Why did nothing work? Well, we finally realized that white sock was actually really fast. Like, 4-5 watts faster on every athlete we tested! Wtf?! It's a sock! It wasn't an aero sock, it wasn't designed to be fast, there was nothing seemingly special about the material, but on each of the girls (and subsequent athletes since), it just worked. Okay, cool, but obviously I had to keep my mouth shut and not say anything.

Fast forward to Interbike a few weeks ago. I walk over to Assos and we start talking about those socks and how fast they tested. Blank stares from them...they had no idea what I was talking about. Of course, they were intrigued, and obviously wanted to know what socks they were. Well, I didn't know. I came to them wanting the info so I could finally give them some online love by posting about their crazy-fast socks. Phones rang around the globe, and a little crowd gathered at their booth as we all tried to find out what model of sock it was. Nothing. Crickets. No one from Assos or USA Cycling could definitively tell us what sock tested so fast. You know what? We still don't know. Best they can tell, it was hybrid sock they probably made but never brought to market. Likely one of those sponsor-type things, "Here's a bunch of white socks we don't need. Let your athletes wear them for training or something."

I'm not kidding, the consistently fastest sock I've ever seen is a no-name model form Assos that can't be replicated because no one knows exactly what it was. Go figure.

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Jim Manton / ERO Sports

This is awesome.....

Que everyone going to Assos website now....

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blog

I dont know but surely they have to have to have a penalty compared to being flat ..

Awesome. Accidental aero excellence strikes again...it's like the Continental GP4000S of the sock world! ;-)

BTW, don't any of the athletes involved still have the socks by chance?

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Yes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtHdsNxCkjk

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There are a few pairs hanging around, I think. I knew where some were at one point, but by the time I received permission to go get them to test someone else, they were gone. Likely just packed away somewhere during a "spring cleaning" session. I'm sure I'll get my hands on a pair at some point.

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Jim Manton / ERO Sports

It's available as a Castelli custom item now, i.e. if your team gets its kits from Castelli, you can custom design the lycra portion of the sock to match your team's design and get them from Castelli. I have a few pairs in hand already that Castelli made for our club as very small pre-production run prior to our big fall order opening up this weekend.

They are very similar if not identical to the NoPinz aero socks. They take a little more time to put on that a normal sock only because you need to make sure the laser cut lycra lays flat on your leg and doesn't get folded on itself. Like Body Paint speedsuit cuffs, the sticky band on the sock cuffs that keeps the sock up on your leg has a tendency to stick to itself. Despite this, they don't take nearly as long to put on as NoPinz trip socks or dog forbid Velotoze shoe covers. All of this is with a leg before a bike ride, not T1.

Like Jim said, who knows if they are faster than your standard (non-secret sauce Assos) sock, but the one thing I do know (and I have them in my hands at the moment), is that you can print the same razor sharp design and text on the lycra area that you can on the rest of your kit (jersey, bibs, speedsuit, etc). No more "8-bit" pixellated look that you get with anything other than the simplest, blockiest design on a knit sock.

And really at the end of the day, isn't it about looking good?

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Haha yep! I wanted to buy a pair because I thought they looked cool.

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

Sounds like a chapter in your next book..."Stories from the Tunnel"

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"Good genes are not a requirement, just the obsession to beat ones brains out daily"...the Griz

Jim, what's the best way to reach you to schedule testing?

While i believe Boa's create drag, and likely significant drag, that video is a good representation of how not to conduct an A vs B aero test. All it really told you was one setup was faster than the other, but not why. Why matters. Beyond the means of retention, you're told nothing about the dimensions of the shoes and how they differ. They removed surface area, so of course no Boa's would be faster. But, how else were those shoes different? Was one toe box narrower than another? What if you covered the Boa's? What were those numbers? Still slower than without Boa's altogether, for sure, but there's likely a difference. It's pretty well set that laced shoes are faster than non-laced. You know what they didn't tell you? That little shoe-sock/cover actually makes that shoe slower. I've tested it likely more than they have on both their shoes and others in both the tunnel and on the track, and it has made every shoe on every rider slower. Every single one. That's pretty rare in aero testing. I'm sure Chris has all the numbers, but what you posted a link to was a commercial, not a test.

I had a rider who cut up a plastic milk carton to fashion a cover over the top of his Boa shoe, but under an actual shoe cover (which no one could see since this would not be UCI legal). It appeared to smooth out the surface area quite nicely over the boa retention system on any shoe without, seemingly (I use that word a lot for a reason), increasing surface area. We tried it on him and another rider; both were slower with it than without it. Overall surface area did likely increase despite that area being smoothed.

If we really want to get an idea of how much drag Boa's create, and I do believe it's a lot, we'd need to test several riders with several shoes: laces, buckles, and Boa's, and let the data tell us which shoes are slower or faster. My guess is any shoe with a Boa will be at the bottom of the list, buckles in the middle, and laces all at the top. That would actually be a fun test, but controls would be tough. You'd have to be very careful with cleat placement and stack height.

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Jim Manton / ERO Sports

My public aero testing on the track has been on hold for awhile as there just simply is no track time, nor have I had any time to test. Most of my test time has been in the tunnel of late. I'll contact you next week when I return from Kona.

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Jim Manton / ERO Sports

I talked to Castelli today about the socks. They told me the bottom is like a regular sock and the upper part is the aero piece. They said it's easy to get on and you can use them in triathlons. It was co-developed with Team Sky. Regardless of any aero benefit, I think they look cool. I'll get some to try out in 2018 and see how they feel. It would be interesting if anyone wanted to test them in a tunnel/ERO and see if it lowered drag or not.

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

Yup, that's right. The one thing I would note is that because the lycra top needs to be stitched to the knit sock bottom, that creates something of a seam at that point. Wearing them with my Giro Empire shoes, that seam sits right about the shoe's heel cup, so it doesn't dig into the back of my heel. But if another shoe were to have a higher heel cup, I could see where maybe that seam could be caught between the back of your heel and your shoe and that might be irritating. No issues for me with my Empires though.

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Amateur recreational hobbyist cyclist
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