I had thought that it was already established by swimmers that hair was a detriment to speed. Why would it be surprising to cyclist? I do ride, but not competitively so I will keep the razor to my face only, thank you.
Exactly this, its already well established that skin hair causes drag. Firstly it acts as insulation. Secondly, it works remarkebly well to evaporate sweat and being originally savanna dwelling primates that endurance hunted our pray it would only make sense that drag not only exchanged for, but contributes directly to our ability cool our body temperature.
> The tests showed that shaving his legs reduced Thomas’s drag by about 7 per cent, allowing him to exert 15 watts less power and still go at the same speed. In theory, that translates to a 79-second advantage over a 40-kilometre time trial that takes about one hour.
Shaving reduces the drag, but the originally study measured the reduction around 0.6 percent while this one found a 7 percent reduction. So, about 10 times bigger than anticipated.
When I read this "Even more confounding was that the results contradicted earlier findings" it totally colored my reading of the article. (Emphasis mine.)
