away sweat and wayward snot rockets.
The more important thing the Zeros provide is
an annual ritual. Some people mark the start of
serious cycling season with Milan-San Remo or a
training camp in Tucson. I do it with a new pair of
gloves. I wait for the weather to turn and for my
winter training to start showing up in my power
data. Then, I buy a pair of Zeros. That’s my marker.
IN THE WORLD OF CYCLING APPAREL, WHERE
everything can be polarizing—socks outside of leg
warmers, glasses under helmet straps, the old AG2R
kit (which was objectively awful, BTW)—gloves
get a big shrug. Even the Velominati, cycling’s
self-appointed style enforcers, who have a rule for
everything (most of which should be enthusiasti-
cally ignored), say gloves are optional.
Historically, when the choice of bar covering
was leather or none, gloves no doubt provided a
welcome extra layer. Still, there’s not an era for
which you can’t find images of both gloved and
gloveless riders. Major Taylor? No gloves. Fausto
Coppi? Usually gloves. Tom Boonen? Blasting across
the French cobbles with nothing between him and
his brake hoods.
It is absolutely a choice—one that cyclists,
shockingly, seem happy to let you make on your
own. If you feel like you need gloves, fine. If you
want to leave your paws naked to the world, hey,
you do you. I posted a question on Twitter asking
cyclists about their glove habits. (Don’t do this
unless you want to have strangers talk to you
about “degloving.” Also, please don’t do an image
search for “degloving.”) I, barely more than a
cycling nobody, received more than 80 replies. At
every level, from weekend club rider to pro, there
are plenty of cyclists who ride gloveless (almost
always for comfort or “feel”), plenty who won’t
ride without gloves (almost always for grip or
crash protection), and those who are 100 percent
kinda sorta maybe sometimes.
Denver magazine editor Geoff Van Dyke eschews
gloves for anything except descending, “just in
case I hit the pavement,” while David Thompson,
a cyclist from Nanaimo, British Columbia, wears
gloves only for climbing. “I find the extra grip that
gloves offer to be useful,” he wrote. “Usually pull
them off for the descent.”
Even if you change your mind on where you
stand, you’ll be in good company. American road
and track star Chloé Dygert Owen avoided gloves
until a crash made her reconsider. “I am definitely
not a fan of wearing gloves,” says Owen, who won
the junior road race at the 2015 World Champion-
ships sans gloves and continued the look after she
turned pro the following year.
That changed after a massive spill at the 2018
Tour of California. “That was my first race wear-
ing them. [Judging by] the damage, I can’t imagine
what would’ve happened if I hadn’t had them. Since
then I’ve worn gloves at every single road race.”MY REASONS FOR WEARING GLOVES ARE LESS
pragmatic. At first glance, they don’t change much
for me—a bit less feel here, a bit more grip there,
new tan lines. But the ritual act of buying them is
important to me. I wear gloves because, for some
weird reason, that’s now how I tell myself that I’m
in the thick of my cycling season. I used to have a
race calendar and coaching plans for that. Now Ihave a desk job and preschool drop-offs. So buying
those gloves is my new way of establishing an annual
rhythm. The first time I slip them on, I know it’s
time to ride hard. And while buying new gloves
each season may be my own personal ritual, when
I look at the number of responses I got to my query,
it seems that the act of putting on gloves at the
start of each ride signals a shift for others as well.
Yes, it seems silly. Here’s the thing about ritu-
als, though: They work. If you think performing
a certain act will settle your nerves or help you
focus, it probably will. As the study of rituals has
moved out of anthropology and into psychology and
neuroscience, we’ve come to understand that they
affect performance in measurable ways.
This is true for superstitions, as well. In broad40 BICYCLING.COM • ISSUE 5