Ian O’Riordan: Shaved legs for men no big deal in athletics world

He stands naked in the mirror and runs his fingers down the soft forest of hairs on his legs. They’ve been trimmed back already, the Remington contour deftly clipping the dense overgrowth and sizing up the skin for the root and branch investigation that follows.

He’s given them a good soaking and bathing too, lathered in Dr Brenner’s pure castile soap with the ritual deliberation of a high priest.

Then his shower cubicle turns operating theatre, his face wearing a blended expression of vanity and innocence. Starting around the ankles he applies a liberal splashing of Nivea sensitive gel and a few squirts of King of Shaves oil, before, like the surgeon reaching for his scalpel, he slowly advances the bladed instrument towards his legs.

Gillette – the best a man can get – now serve this need, the Body model their first razor built exclusively for male terrain, designed to go where facial models aren’t. He holds it as if the stem of a daffodil, not gripped nor squeezed, but lightly, with the tips of his fingers, then slowly draws across the first lines of hair, like the first gentle brush stroke of Michelangelo over his blank ceiling.

So the razor rises and falls, against the grain of hair and then with it, played out with the regular rhythm of the cello. The skin is kept strung and taut, while the blade quietly presses. Any vulnerability is returned with trust, especially the unfamiliar terrain behind his knee, his lateral thigh, up to the underside of his hip.

On completion the fresh dawn-coloured skin, that magic tissue that protects against all seasons, is lavishly moisturised, the final cleansing and anointing, ready now to perspire and glow, not tingle nor itch.

Shaving legs

There is a scene in

Breaking Away

, that old triumph of a cycling film, which helps explain why some people may be utterly bewildered by that hair-raising description: in males, of course. Dave Stoller, the central character in Peter Yates’ 1979 coming-of-age classic, has become obsessed with all things cycling, especially the Italian tradition, from his Masi bike frame to the Rossini opera that provides the magnificent soundtrack.

His father Ray is having a hard time understanding this obsessive cycling behaviour until he walks in on his son shaving his legs, when he gives up altogether. That’s because in some ways the shaving legs part is unexplainable: except to most cyclists, of course. Or indeed most distance runners, swimmers, and certain other male athletes who see leg and other body part grooming as mere etiquette, no more or no less than a female would.

Still, Peter Sagan provided another reminder of this bewilderment by showing up for last week’s Tirreno-Adriatico spring classic with unshaven legs, at least until one of the stages was cancelled, due to snow. With that Sagan, Slovakia’s reigning world road race champion, lathered up his lower limbs and got himself properly groomed again, although not before raising some hairs above the eyes.

“He’s wearing the world champion’s jersey,” said our own Stephen Roche, “and he owes it to be respectable and to be clean and presentable. Okay, you might say, ‘well there is no law that says you have to shave your legs’. But then why have we been doing it for the past 100 years? It is because it doesn’t look good.”

Rainbow jersey

For Sagan however good looks weren’t the only thing at play: it’s more likely he simply wasn’t bothered, as least not at this time of year, when some cyclists still wear full-length tights to protect against the cold. This is also the cyclist who after winning the world title in Richmond, Virginia last September dedicated his rainbow jersey to the fight against human suffering, particularly the refugee crisis in Europe.

If any cyclist could make a statement of originality against otherwise uniform limbs then it’s Sagan, although don’t expect unshaven legs to ever become the norm in the peloton, nor indeed among those increasingly dedicated amateurs.

The 100-year-old tradition that Roche spoke about is just a small part of it. Fausto Coppi fussed over his shaved legs as much as any component on his bike, as did Jacques Anquetil, for whom proper racing weight could only be completed by the razor.

Some more practical reasons are given: according to the soigneurs, shaved legs are more readily and thoroughly massaged, compared to hairy legs, which in some cases are like massaging a cactus; grazes and road burns are more easily cleaned and dressed on shaven legs, and far less painfully removed.

Prohibited substance

There is also more recent scientific evidence of an aerodynamic advantage. Major bike brand Specialized tested six cyclists of varying pre- and post-shave hairiness inside wind tunnels, and for one, the post-shave test showed an 82 second improvement over 40km (the average being 50 shaved seconds). If that was a drug test then Wada would have to consider making it a prohibited substance.

Still some people, even some cyclists, find leg shaving oddly and lastingly prohibitive. They may not get the tradition nor indeed see it as the sort of badge of honour that most cyclists do, and that’s okay, but nor then will they get the liberating and therapeutic sensation of freshly shaved legs, and how that feels to both males and females, of course.