[music] Ollie: Welcome to the
next part in my quest to take on Eddy Merckx' our record and see if I can ride 49.5 kilometers in an
hour. This challenge is all about seeing if modern science technology and equipment can propel me,
someone remarkably average physiologically to the level of Eddy Merckx, the greatest of all
time. The single most important piece of equipment is going to be what I wear. This is because the
biggest force I need to overcome is aerodynamic drag. The biggest source of drag is me, my body.
What I cover it in becomes phenomenally important, but consider it I've come to see Nopinz.
Fortunately, specialist aero clothing and skinsuit manufacturer, Nopinz, has agreed to support my
challenge. Nopinz is an industry leader in aerodynamic clothing with a big emphasis on
custom. They make skin suits for World Tour teams, Olympic federations, and a plethora of champions.
In case you are wondering why Nopinz is called Nopinz, it's a cool story. The company began
with the simple but brilliant idea of the speed wallet. A transparent pocket that could be used
to display race numbers, stopping them flapping around in the wind and not requiring pins. Before
we go any further to demonstrate to you guys just how much difference clothing can make,
I've visited the Boardman Performance wind tunnel. I wanted to see the aero advantage between
standard road kit and an off-the-peg aero skin suit. I'm going to do some
tests with doctor Xavier Disley to find out. Xavier Disley: What we're doing now is taking
a baseline for Ollie, where we're going to be testing him in bibs and jersey. We're doing the
wind speed at 50 kilometers an hour, because that's the speed that he's going to need to
do if he wants to break Merckx's record. Ollie: I've now changed into the premium
off-the-peg Nopinz flow suit. Let's see how much difference it makes.
The results show the Nopinz flow suit was around 12 Watts faster at 50 kilometers an hour than the
standard road kit. Just knowing that, I'm excited to see how much more aero we can get with a fully
custom one. Time to head back to Nopinz. Up here is where I'm going to get measured
up by Nopinz. Pretty excited, to be honest. Pretty cool. There's two ways that Nopinz can create your
tailor-made bespoke skin suit. You can either send them 22 individual measurements and they'll use
those to create the suit, or you can do what I'm going to do, which is a full 3D body scan in your
pants. That said to be even more accurate, getting all your measurements so the suit fits perfectly.
Seriously, cool bit attack. This is the 3D body scanning equipment. There's 12 individual cameras
for each one of these pillars. Then there's infrared distance sensors on them as well. Then
this thing, that's not a piece of trendy Ikea furniture. Oh no, that's just the calibration
tool for the cameras. Then you stand here and it scans you. There's nowhere to hide on this thing.
Just hope I haven't had too many mince pies over Christmas, but it'd be a really good tool. It's
for like Savile Row tailors, wouldn't it? Amazing. This is Katie. She works in product development
and is a seamstress as well here at Nopinz. She's responsible for making custom suits like mine.
Katie got to work scanning me for my custom suit. Now I've been scanned. We can see my suit being
made, which is really exciting. It's the first step is the designers in that room
there. They draw up the panels, and then the fabric gets cut out with laser precision,
literally with lasers downstairs. We're going to go see that. It's walking through Nopinz
HQ in this room through here is where all the profiling and the cutting of the fabric happens.
This is Tom. He's going to be cutting out the bits of my suit on the CNC laser. I've got some fabric
on the machine now. What fabric is this one? Tom: This is our aero stripe
fabric. Ollie: All
right. The one that goes on the side of it. Tom: This is giving you your side panels.
Yes. We got your file here. Ollie: Let's get my suit cut.
Tom: These are your component parts for the aero stripe fabric. We're going to pair them
up and we're going to add the next parts of your flow suit, which is from this one here.
Ollie: The speed. This is speed scale fabric. Tom: That's right. This is our laser proprietary
fabric and speed scales. Yes, we're having this made, it's only available through us,
and we're going to load that up and cut out the next parts of your suit.
Ollie: These are the really, really fast bits of the suit.
Tom: Yes, this is the stuff that's been- it's all been wind tunnel tested. This is
the very latest test on this. It shows as being the fastest fabric we've got.
Ollie: Nice. The more complicated graphics are applied using dye-sublimation. According
to Xavier, it will make the suit more aero. Nice. The process of sublimation begins by
printing out the patterns and graphics onto this big sheet of paper. Then that's passed
through the heat press there. That's at 200 degrees with the fabric next to it.
The combination of heat and pressure forces the ink from the paper on to the fabric. The rise of
sublimation was responsible for all those rather brightly colored jerseys that you saw in the '90s,
covered in lots of logos. Now it's time to add all the graphics, and this is done using a process
called "Thermo printing." The graphics are cut using a printer. Heat and pressure is then applied
onto the custom-cut graphics to bond them onto the material. This is going to look really cool.
I'm going to leave the guys down here to carry on with that job,
but here in this bag is the kit required to build my suit. I'm going to take it upstairs to
seamstresses and they're going to work the magic. This is where the seamstresses do their magic and
put all the parts together to create the finished suit. It's a bit different from
most clothing manufacturing setups. They normally have like a production line where one person does
just one seam, and then passes it onto the next person. Here, each seamstress is responsible for
creating the entire suit. This is great because it ensures higher quality, and people just take
more pride in their work because they're making the whole suit. I can't wait to get mine now.
Here is my finished custom-made tailored Nopinz skin suit. Check this out. It's all black,
because I like black. It's stealthy and cool. Also, it's slimming. Now, on here, you've got
a cool little note as well, a little card that says, "Your suit was made by Katie." That's the
seamstress, just put it together. Nice. We've got personalized "Ollie versus Eddie" graphics
on there and the hashtag "SUFhourofpower." That's on the back too. Nice, I like that. You may notice
it's got a number pocket on the back, and you may be wondering why, because I don't need to
wear a number in the hour record, but there's a good reason for that. I spoke to Nopinz.
They said that the suit's actually a little bit faster, a little bit more aerodynamic
with the number pocket. It's staying on there, but now we're going to head off to the Boardman
wind tunnel. I'm going to put it on, and we're going to see how fast the suit is. I can't wait.
We're just headed up to Evesham to the Boardman wind tunnel to test, the new custom tailor skin
suit. It's just incredible thing, how far technology has moved and how much faster this
clothing is now compared to what Eddy had in his day. Also, just the fact that then you can
test something in a wind tunnel or on a velodrome, and you can get digital feedback straight away as
to how it affects you, your drag coefficient. Technology is just incredible what it can do.
What's special about the state-of-the-art skin suit? What makes it cutting edge? It features a
new proprietary speed scales fabric which was developed with aero coach, and is designed to
reduce drag. You've also got special seams and trip strips which do a similar thing, tripping the
air from laminar to turbulent flow and encouraging it to stick to the body longer before separating.
By having a suit custom made, the placement of the trip strips and the stretch of the
different textured fabrics are better optimized. We're now back in the Boardman Performance Centre
wind tunnel. I'm going to test out the new skin suit. The new Nopinz flow suit. Before that,
we're going to retest the off-the-peg suit again to get an accurate comparison and a
baseline. Hopefully, the custom one that I endured the 3D body scan for will be faster.
The moment I've been waiting for. Trying on my completely custom Nopinz skin suit.
I can't wait. I'm trying new suit system. Xavier: [unintelligible 00:11:22] You were
brilliant. Do you want to hear the good news? Ollie:
Yes, what is it? Xavier: 8 watts faster.
Ollie: 8 watts faster? Xavier: 8 watts faster. Yes. That's a lot.
That's overlap. It's overlapping. Ollie: Whoa. 8 watts. Yes, yes. See, the people at
home will be watching this and going, "8 watts." Within the context of this, 8 watts is massive.
Xavier: Absolutely massive. Ollie: Because to get 8 watts on my FTP,
basically the power I can do for now, that's- Xavier: It's a lot of training.
Ollie: -like another three months training probably to get that.
Xavier: Yes, exactly. The good thing is as well is that we're testing this at the race
speed. The thing to bear in mind is, when you're testing clothing and things you've got to have
the speed that you need to, and the data was really consistent. The way you're pedaling and
everything, the way you're holding yourself on the bike that was good, which means we
can kind of get those margins. I'm really happy with that. That's really good. That's awesome.
Ollie: Let's recap, at 50 km/h the off-the-peg flow suit was 12 watts faster than the aero
jersey and shorts. The custom suit is 8 watts faster than the off-the-peg suit,
which means I'm saving a crazy 20 watts from just clothing, where a standard jersey and shorts,
not aero ones, the gap would be even bigger too, and that's just mind-blowing. I can't
believe how much difference clothing can make. I knew it made a difference, but the difference
between a skin suit and a jersey and shorts is massive. Then, a custom suit to make that much
difference. I found it absolutely fascinating. It's just incredible to see modern technology,
the limits being pushed, and what people are doing now is just amazing. Also, how much faster
it is than what Eddie Merckx had to use, but I'm feeling confident after today. It's good. I've
got a few more gains I could make. Custom cockpit, custom chain rings, a few more watts I could save,
so I'm feeling good. I hope you enjoyed this vid, and please give it a thumbs up, and I'll see you
next time as I continue my quest. [00:13:38] [END OF AUDIO]