What is your average speed on the bike section ?

I rock the Castelli. Haven’t tried the others. But the Castelli chamois is great on the bike and it’s both comfortable and aero.

Ultimately it's going to come down to the one that fits the best & meets all your performance requirements, or at least as many of them as possible.

FWIW I tried the HUUB Anemoi and it was decently fast in a size too big, surprisingly so.

But it was still significantly slower than the Roka & Kiwami Spider 2 LD Aero which was the suit I choose for last season and choose for this season

Now had the suit fit.......who knows how fast it could have been. The game you're playing unless you plan on testing is how fast does this suit make me look/feel/seem to be.

If you don't plan on testing then see my first sentence

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Of course, prob need testing to decide which one is going to be fastest and which one fits the best and all that. But, one thing I really like about the castelli all out speed (and appears preserved on the PR) is the fact that the one-piece zipper goes rather far down past the navel and that the suit is open at the base of the attached "jersey" portion. When fully unzipped it is more like a open jersey and bibs -- quite easy to get the arms out. This seemed like a good feature for me for long course, its almost a transitional one-piece/two piece in that regard. Race bathroom breaks might be a bit quicker and easier compared to the other options.

I have both HUUB Anemoi and Roka but I have to admit that I don't feel any difference. My Ironman bike leg time is about 5 hours (average speed is about 36/37 km/h)

yes, this is potentially very relevant
castelli pr:
It's optimized for high speeds — top age groupers or pro athletes, or anyone looking to set a new PR.
castelli free san remo:
This suit benefits from the aero research of Castelli's Pro PR suit but is tuned for speeds ranging from medium to high.


the implication being that although the pr is the top suit, it may be slower for most people

These two brands fit very differently, so I agree with others. Buy both, try them on, keep the one that fits better, all other features being the same (and they may not all be the same, because, as one person pointed out, the style of the jersey attached to shorts is quite different than a traditional one-piece). You can eyeball aerotest them based on how it fits and the feel of the material.

Just curious, where did you get the PR from?

There are so many variables in an IM bike leg that trying to glean the difference between one suit and the other is nearly impossible if not impossible during the race. You have to control things when testing prerace so that you can make the best decisions for racing based on solid testing data.

We've had people ride as much as 12 minutes faster on 17-19w less after testing. It would be hard to tease those differences out in a race, even a 40k.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Which kind of tests did you do?

Several hundred hours testing a multitude of people, equipment & clothing mostly in the wind tunnel and some on the velodrome

happy to help you or anyone test, shoot me a message as we may be back testing in April at A2.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

When you reccomend a suit and a certain size, are you assuming the arms are on under a wetsuit, that is a person is swimming with the tri-suit already over their shoulders?

Thanks

As the the importer of Fusion to the Americas, I have to agree with desertdude.

If you are not going to do controlled testing in a velodrome or tunnel, then you are going to have a very hard time really determining "faster". Also, keep in mind what is fast for one person is not necessarily fast for another person.

Finding a suit that fits you and is comfortable for the entire day (bike and run) is where I would start, even if I was going to test. Then I would take the suits which fit me the best and were most comfortable and split the hairs in the tunnel.

Also, I launched a new brand last year called Reăl and we will be focusing on custom tailored fit for suits.

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Chance Regina
President
AVC Enterprises

Are you saying that the difference between a poor fitting skin suit and the “best” was 12 mins over 112 miles?

What makes one faster than another? I wonder if mine are fast ....

Thanks all for the many replies. The problem with testing is that I dont have the option to try them like that since they will all come from a different store. I might even have to order from the internet, and not even be able to go to a store to try them on.
I am a 'big' guy with 80 kgs or just under on race day with 1.81m. The bike is my stronger portion, where I will finish just at or under the hour on a Olympic and an FTP from 300 to 350 depending on where I am in the season.

I plan to do 70.3 Mallorca at around 270-300 Watts and Challenge Roth at around 230? (might change this later)

So I guess I am ok for a 'fast' suit.

I hoped some of you had the change to compare any of these 3 suits and give me a THIS ONE IS BY FAR THE BEST :))

The suits using boundary layer control (Castelli PR, Huub Anemoi, ...) bring some good value if you reach the "drag crisis" speed window.

At 230w (38km/h on a flat course, assuming you are aerodynamically relatively efficient), you are probably having no gain.
At 270w (40,x km/h on a flat course), maybe you have some limited gain.
At 300w (42km/h), ok, some measurable gain.

Then, at 42km/h, each suit is probably delivering a different gain depending on your morphology and position on the bike (changing the place of the vortex generators, ...).

Then, some other parameters need to be taken into account : chamois (depending on your saddle, ...), color (mmmmhh, this one look better with my hemet and bike....), ....

So, even if someone else was lucky enough to test all 3 in wind tunnel and velodrome, his/her answer would be useless for you.

If you want to optimize your performance gain here, test all 3 on your body, your position, in wind T or serious velodrome test. Cost is high, but it is always the case with these kinds of marginal gains. You can probably make use of these tests to improve your position (don't forget bike fit). Probably these will bring higher gains than the suit.

Or....
heads or tails
or
stick with good basic suit at 150 USD

You are right.
I did have a bikefit. I use a Giro Air Attack helmet. Unfortunately my speed is too low for the watts I put in. Not sure yet why. The wattage is correct so I think maybe my CDA.

Most important here is probably that it really doesnt matter speedwise which suit I choose since the speed is just too low.

We will just go for the nicest colour then i guess...

I’ve never validated this or anything in the wind tunnel, but I am a big fan of the Fusion suits. It is a Danish manufacturer. Anecdotally, when you are at a race like Kona or 70.3 WC with a lot of Europeans, these suits are heavily represented.

I can’t address the speed or cda question with the Castelli but can report per my use (of last years model) in Ironman races that it’s convenient to get on, the chamois is substantial yet stays out of the way, and one can actually pee pre-race without disrobing full skin-suit style...

Honestly mate, if you are worried about the cost of acquiring multiple suits you are not realizing that total cost to really figure out which is faster. To truly find which suit is faster you are looking at spending several thousand dollars in testing. Which means, unless you are at the very pointy end of the race or have so much cash to burn that you don't know what else to do with it...then it probably isn't worth the expense.

As mentioned by others, using someone else's testing data is useless. Here is a little anecdote for you. When I was at Blue Competition Cycles we took athletes to the tunnel regularly. On one occasion we had two very similar athletes in regards to height, weight and bike position. Athlete A tested several different helmets to find the fastest one. Then athlete B headed into test and everyone there was saying "start with the helmet that was fastest for athlete A. We all would have bet $100 it was going to be fastest for athlete B as well. We would have been broke. It ended up being the slowest choice for athlete B. Looking at the two athletes you couldn't see much, if any difference in position. But there was something really small that was causing a drastic difference in the way their bodies and position interacted with the helmet choice.

I tell that to emphasis how you can only tell what is "fastest" for you by testing it all and often you need to repeat those test several times, over different sessions to really validate.

Find a suit you like. One that is comfortable for the day and fits well. No bagginess anywhere and feel fast.

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Chance Regina
President
AVC Enterprises

We've had people ride as much as 12 minutes faster after testing. I don't remember how much the suit contributed.

The biggest difference I can remember between the same suit on 2 different people was 13 watts. Same exact suit, same body type very, very different results

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

If you can’t test, opt for the one with the least wrinkling. Sags and wrinkles will significantly impact the aerodynamics of a suit...and not in a good way, and are likely to have more impact than this or that fabric choice.

There’s a recent GCN video where the presenter was 12W faster in a custom skinsuit (at 50kph) than in the off the rack version of the same suit (and that suit looked fairly well fitted). Done at the Boardman tunnel.

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

3 things

1 you sure you are a 2XL?

I’m 10kg heavier and 5 cm taller and am an XL sometimes Large

2. As for you can’t try before you buy I buy online and try and return for refund. Do they allow that where you live?

3. FTP of 300 - 350 and your Olympic time is less than an hour?

In a flat half My normalized power is 230 and an average of 24.1 MPH. Maybe spend time getting more aero?

To the forum is 350 FTP usually equal 25 MPH?

Somehow the focus here shifted to which suit would be marginally better saving watts or whatever. That was not my question. I just asked which is the best suit according to the users. If someone has owned one or more then he would be able to say this suit was good/ bad for these reasons.
Like I raced in compressport and I know now what the strong and weak areas of this suit are.

But you are all right in the end saying its just the one that fits you best, since at the speeds I ride the wattage difference will be negligable. Thank you all.

@mr tri123 I am not 2XL, dont know where you got that info, I normally do L and even try to get in M. I dont quite understand the question about the FTP. You think I should go slower with that FTP?