The Tour de France has started, and American Lance Armstrong has won the Prologue. Aside from human horsepower and endurance, technology, particularly aerodynamics is of grand importance.
The bicycle manufacturers worry about the aero effects of every little piece of the frame, and certainly everything is being done to improve the aerodynamics of the rider-bicycle combination. Even seemingly minor considerations like the effects of stitching in the riders' uniforms are checked in the wind tunnel.
According to U.S. Postal aerodynamics advisor John Cobb, "The suits were made by Giordana, who makes clothing for Nike, with some stitching instructions from me. I was at Lance's house in May, and he told me that Giordana was making him some new suits. I had been working for years with Nike in the wind tunnel on some new super-fast clothing designs, and I told Lance that if he was having some new suits made, that he ought to include some of the work we had been doing. I sketched out where they should put the seams so it would be fastest and how to orient the fabric.
The short, 7.3-kilometer prologue course was something else, though:
Cobb chuckled, "He could have been wearing a sandpaper suit on that short course today and it wouldn't have mattered - it was just horsepower today."
11:30:43 AM 
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