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.
Jim Manton /
ERO Sports