Test day for the Skärvatten and Skärvatten Pro Tri Suit

From the creators and owners at BornBound, this is their account of the day they were able to validate the aero abilities of their Skärvatten suit, and their new collaboration suit, the Skärvatten Pro.

“At BornBound, we never set out to become an out-and-out aero tri product brand, and we put as much into our running clothing and other accessories as we do anything else. We are also, by our nature, very conscious about our footprint, and our future plans are very much focussed on ensuring we develop products that both help athletes achieve their goals and dreams but at the same time are kind to our environment and the people that are employed to make our products. But, with our BornBound mantra, we did set out to help triathletes achieve their dreams in particular, so that required us to not only produce tri suits that last, are supremely comfortable, keep an athlete cool and provide both compression and freedom where it is needed, but we must also ensure that our athletes are not wasting watts on their bike.

This is why when we sponsor triathletes to help us communicate our brand and our values, we must ensure that they are confident in our products and be assured, and that they are not disadvantaged on the bike.

in March 2024 we arrived at Geraint Thomas Newport Velodrome after many weeks of planning and product development, to conduct rigorous scientific testing of our tri suits using some state-of-the-art aero-test equipment, with a protocol and methodology set out and managed by scientists of the highest reputation. With us on the day to help us with our tests was British long-distance triathlete Kieran Lindars who was crowned European Challenge Long Course Champion in 2022 but most recently finished a career defining 2^nd to Kristian Blummenfelt at the Ironman Frankfurt European Championship, August 2024. We also had with us a successful AG female triathlete who is a junior doctor with a growing reputation and meticulous approach to training and preparation. Both place a very high emphasis on science in their training and racing, and they were perfect testers for us on the day.

To conduct the tests for us were Winspeed, an aerodynamics testing protocol consultancy and Dr. Barney Garrood PhD, the founder of Aerosensor along with Marcus Bridgland, also of Aerosensor. With their credentials we felt assured that our test day would give us valid results. We were keen to verify some preliminary tests conducted in 2023 by using a stringent protocol that involved multiple repeated tests at carefully selected speeds and we were at the Velodrome from 8am to 8pm to ensure that there was enough repeats and returns to benchmarks to validate our findings.

Our test team came with vast experience in working the field of aero testing apparel using our test methods, with Winspeed having a background of working at a well-known aerodynamic testing facility looking at products from several leading cycling and triathlon brands over the years, with expertise in exploring various textiles and construction methods to ensure coefficient of drag is minimised. We commissioned Winspeed to help us with our tests because they were always going to be paramount to us testing our BornBound products against some well-known product benchmarks so that we would know our position in the marketplace for aerodynamic tri-suits. 

Dr. Barney Garrood (PhD) of Aerosensor came with 20 years of experience under his belt in the world of Formula 1, with his PhD funded by Ferrari. He has industry leading experience both in the wind tunnel and in real world tests on the track with teams like Ferrari, Mercedes and BrawnGP. He is a very keen cyclist and his development of the Aerosensor technology is proving extremely useful in real world tests for cyclists and triathletes because valid testing can be carried out within closed settings like velodromes, where conditions can be fully controlled.

Gaining accurate results involved repeated tests at various stages of the day to account for fatigue, variations in head position, changes in barometric pressure, familiarity with riding the line in the velodrome and other factors, and after 12 hours of testing and suit changing from a tent in the centre of the track, we had got our raw results.

The test suits themselves were a selection from a market leading aero triathlon and TT suit exponent and BornBound’s original Skärvatten suit, Nalini’s TT suit collection, and a collaborative development tri-suit between BornBound and Nalini to create a ‘stripped-out’ racer, now named the Skärvatten Pro. With plans for Kieran Lindars to race in this ‘collaborative’ suit experiment in 2024 it was essential to corroborate our earlier (but less scientifically rigorous tests) that told us our new suit was fast compared to the competition. We were blown away by the results however, and Kieran left the velodrome shattered after spending more than 2.5 hours at up to 50kph, but extremely happy knowing he will race in what we now believe to be the fastest single layer fabric tri-suit on the market, that keeps him comfortable and cool throughout the swim, bike and run.

What was as equally satisfying however, was that the data validated our knowledge that our original Cadillac of tri-suits, the Skärvatten, also gave both testers CD values lower than those shown when wearing the claimed fastest commercially available suit in the world from a well-known competitor. We now know that we can give our consumers the utmost confidence in that whichever of our Skärvatten suits they might choose, depending on which they feel best suits their needs, they get a suit which gives them the lowest of CD values.

As said, BornBound set out to help triathletes realise their born bound dreams and when wearing our suits, you are born for speed!”