road.cc
When Alberto Contador visited London earlier this week for a meet and greet at Herne Hill velodrome, he remembered one vital thing: his mudguard. However this isn’t any normal mudguard, look closely and you can clearly see it’s a repurposed water bottle, a Tinkoff-Saxo branded one at that.
We can’t say we’ve ever seen a water bottle mudguard like this before. Correct us if you have. It’s similar in purpose to the Ass Saver mudguards, which fit to the saddle in the same fashion, and have been spotted in some of the wetter professional road races, such as Milan-San Remo last year.
We’re not sure why Contador hasn’t used a purpose built mudguard like an Ass Saver, and instead opted for the homemade approach? We’d speculate it’s the handiwork of one his team mechanics too, and it does look very neatly made, with the team branding central on the mudflap.
You don’t see this sort of homemade tinkering in professional cycling as much as you used to in the old days, but spot a pro cyclist out winter training and you’re quite likely to spot something non-standard like this.
So got some old water bottles going spare? I have and I’m heading out to the shed now to fashion my own mudguard – I’ll let you know how I get on.
Kite*Surf*Bike*Rambling 