On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 6:18 AM, James Swan <jswan@optonline.net> wrote:
> Some guys wore a T shirt underneath. The idea was that if you went down the
> lycra would slide on the cotton.
>
This works pretty well, although it takes a thin T shirt to not bunch up under a skin suit. Have had falls where my jersey had a slight pilling where I fell and I had a buise on the shoulder. But without the T-shirt the same kind of fall resulted in a shredded jersey, and lots of torn up skin on the shoulder on top of the bruise.
In Europe, once skin suits were around, you saw them at the track but usually for time trial-style events (or high profile match sprints) on special bikes. On regular track bikes for ordinary events (points, devils, handicaps, hare and hound, low profile match spints and pursuits), you saw pocketless jerseys, usually fairly shiny which I learned was supposed to look like the silk jerseys they wore in the old days, which in tern were supposed to resemble the jerseys jockeys wore. Sometimes a well funded club or team would be in skin suits for ordinary events if that's what they had, but most clubs had regular jerseys and you supplied your own skin suit. Pros in Six Days wore jerseys for madisons and regular events and put on skin suits for the Derney paced TTs.
Mitch Harris
Little Rock Canyon, Utah