Geraint Thomas once made headlines for forgetting to remove his gilet before the Tour de France stage one time trial in Copenhagen in 2022, in what became affectionately known as ‘gilet gate’ but at Tuesday’s Giro d’Italia time trial, Lorenzo Milesi may just have topped it with a 'hold my beer' moment.
The Italian rolled down the start ramp wearing an ice vest – used to pre-cool the body's core temperature in a bid to find a few extra watts – over his time trial skinsuit.
But rather than an attempt to take 'pre-cooling' marginal gains a step further, he later told reporters in an interview put out on Cycling Pro Net, that he simply forgot to take it off before he rolled down the start ramp.
"When I started, I realised I couldn't take it off anymore," the Movistar man said with a self-deprecating laugh. "I noticed it right at the start, but by then it was too late. From that moment, I just had to ride my pace and see how it went."
Movistar's kit sponsor, Gobik, will no doubt have spent countless hours honing the aerodynamic performance of its time-trial skinsuit, so it's safe to assume the ice vest would have added some drag to the Italian's setup.
Milesi confirmed as much too, adding, "It would have gone better without the cooling vest, so that’s a lesson to take with me."
Despite this, he clocked a respectable time of 48:33, landing 9th place, 20 seconds ahead of GC favourite Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike).
That was still 2:40 behind his compatriot Filippo Ganna (Netcompany-Ineos), though, who blew away the field, winning by 1:54 ahead of his own teammate Thymen Arensman.
Milesi's performance raises an interesting question that, no doubt, teams have already pondered: Did the continued cooling effects of wearing the vest offer a benefit that negated some – or all – of the aero penalty?
If in the next few years we start seeing time-trial skinsuits with integrated cooling vests, we'll know the answer.
Amusingly, this isn't the first fashion faux pas we've seen from the Spanish team this Giro. Enric Mas was spotted wearing a kit from the Movistar women's team, his kit emblazoned with the 'UCI WWT' logo of the Women's WorldTour.
He brushed it off as just a simple mistake, telling Spanish newspaper AS, "Maybe they made a mistake when distributing the clothing, but it doesn’t matter. I didn’t notice, I just wore the clothes. Everything was my size, and the shorts too; the only difference was the logo."
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