It’s taken 17 stages for the 2015 Tour de France to flicker on to Stylewatch’s radar. But on Wednesday, German rider Simon Geschke and his neatly groomed beard climbed into view taking the stage and the fashion points on offer. In real life, beards and cycling are happy bedfellows – the cornerstones of the urban commuter who definitely thinks he’s cooler than he is. But in professional cycling they are a rarity. Possibly because they’re not very aerodynamic: two-wheeled facial hair poster boy Bradley Wiggins shaved his off before he broke the one-hour cycling record in June. In context, Geschke’s beard has to be read as a serious bid for aesthetic points in the Tour (come on, it does). It’s a fact that the hipster beard is long dead, but in sport beards still have traction. Modern cycling isn’t like football – the helmet covers the rider’s main outlet for style idiosyncrasy and the team jersey is about someone else’s message, so all that’s left is facial hair. With the only other cycling beard in the Tour this year, Luca Paolini, standing out for other reasons, Geschke’s facial hair is the breakaway star of the Alps.
