During yesterday's team time trial at Paris Nice, every athlete from the XDS Astana Team raced with gloves and socks in different colors. This sparked curiosity, prompting the Kazakh team to post an explanation of their unusual choice on their social media.

"The team time trial involves intense effort and the big problem in team time trials is that all athletes look the same. The first thing you notice about a rider doing a time trial is their hands. So we thought, what would happen if we made gloves in different colors for each of our athletes? We wouldn't need to look at the person or their way of riding, or start counting, but simply remember the color of their gloves. We also did the overshoes. It's a minimal advantage, it's not an aerodynamic advantage, but it's something useful for the athletes and also for the sports director following the team from behind in the team car who doesn't have to memorize race numbers but can simply follow the race and understand how things are going." explained former professional Alex Dowsett, who is now the team's performance engineer this year.