In bike racing’s earliest days, some riders used to pop a piece of steak down their cycling shorts and sit on it to prevent saddles sores. It’s even been claimed that they’d then eat said steak afterwards as it’d been nicely tenderised by their pounding bot (now there’s a sentence we never thought we’d write!). Then, in the 1940s, someone had the idea of adding a soft leather pad (or a chamois) to the inside of cycling shorts to prevent chafing. Because this pad was prone to harden with use, chamois creams were concocted to ensure they stayed soft. The synthetic chamois pads of the type you’ll find down your shorts today debuted in the 1980s, and should have spelt the end for chamois creams. Except they didn’t. These days,…
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Bikes Etc (Digital) - 1 Issue, May 2019