Jonas Vingegaard had a very successful day on stage four of Paris-Nice, winning by 41 seconds, moving into the race lead, and surely securing at least a top-two position overall.
However, the Visma-Lease a Bike rider went viral not for his performances on the bike, but his attire, which was unorthodox to say the least.
On a torrid day of inclement weather in the centre of France on Wednesday, riders were dressed in waterproof jackets, gloves, bib tights and overshoes; the kind of kit you might wear in deep winter, rather than in a WorldTour race.
However, as the race was full-on, and various layers were taken off, it became apparent that Vingegaard had gone a step further, and put his bib tights over his jersey.
The Tour de France winner was in fact wearing a second pair of bib tights over his normal ones, but with the chamois pad removed and the waist cut in order to make them fit over his, well, base bib tights. According to Sporza, the bib tight-surgery was done by Victor Campenaerts, Vingegaard's teammate, piece-by-piece, in order that the Dane's saddle height wouldn't have to be adjusted due to the extra padding.
"I think a lot of guys were freezing today. I personally didn't freeze because I had a lot of clothes on, that was also maybe the reason I couldn't take it off," Vingegaard said post-stage.
He added: "It was just full gas racing, there was not even time to take clothes off. So maybe you can call me a trendsetter with the long pants, but there was just no time to take them off."
"To keep me warm in the beginning, I wore the extra-long pants," the Dane explained further on Thursday. "We prepared the bibs so that two teammates could easily rip them off.
"After that, I could just take the parts on my legs off like leg warmers. In the end, the race was so hard that there were never two teammates around to tear the bibs off," he explained.
It was not only the bib tights which were novel, but Vingegaard was also wearing an extra jacket backwards underneath his outer one. One could speculate that this was to introduce an extra barrier, a move done out of a desire to just be a bit more warm and dry.
In the chaos of stage four, it appeared there was no time for Vingegaard to take all of his innovative clothing options off – not that it mattered in the end, given he won the stage and is now the overwhelming favourite to win the race overall.
Whether Nimbl, Visma-Lease a Bike's kit sponsors, will now introduce the Vingegaard hacks for deep winter, time will tell.
