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The ‘Skärvatten Pro’ is here, it is born for speed and it is SIMPLY FAST. BornBound are committed to helping you achieve your dreams by adding this supplementary suit to the range. Built upon the success of our existing Skärvatten suit we have developed a no-nonsense PRO version for out and out marginal gains junkies through continued wear testing with our pro athletes, all in collaboration with the famous Italian brand, Nalini*.
In fact, everything about this suit is simply designed to help middle to long distance triathletes feel unhindered through the swim, save power on the bike and give maximum comfort and breathability on the run.
The Skärvatten Pro achieves this simply through the right combination of best in class woven polyamide and polyester fabrics, both 3D textured and smooth, that gives a creaseless second skin like fit and an optimimal boundary layer of air molecules around body during the bike to minimise form drag and the vortex created behind. 3D texture where you need it, smoothness where air has to glide, utilising Kinetech’s Dragzero and Clima textiles.
This is also all achieved with lightness and superb breathability for thermal regulation because we don’t forget that there’s still a long run after the bike. We have produced a suit that our pro athletes have all said is unfussy to wear, giving them speed on the bike with superb comfort on the run.
Superior comfort and performance is achieved using a single-fabric layer construction. Our collaboration with Nalini allowed us to tap into their pattern engineering expertise and 50+ years of experience in suppling World leading pro-cycling teams, whereas several competitor tri suits produce multi-layered suits which in combination reduces form drag. But, we believe this is done at the expense of comfort and temperature regulation. Single-layer fabric construction, makes our suit feel lighter, less restrictive and gives an unhindered feel throughout race, especially when wet and sweaty.
So how we know our suit is just as fast as the claimed ‘fastest’, or even faster?
Using a rigorous aero testing protocol on the bike, we wanted to cement our early findings with the strongest possible evidence that our Pro suit lowers CD values at a variety of race speeds as well as any other suit on the market, specifically for our athletes. For this reason, we conducted comparison tests using a pain-staking methodology using 1 pro-male and 1 pro-female triathlete across multiple repeats in real-world tests in highly controlled conditions. Both our Skarvatten and Skärvatten Pro suits were benchmarked against the considered market leading aero tri suits at speeds between 34kph and 44kph for our women’s suits, and between 40kph and 50kph for our men’s suits. Our tests gave us striking results for our wearers. For Kieran Lindars, 2022 European Long Course Champion and our male athlete on the test day, our Pro suit gives him a 14 Watt saving at 50kph compared to a well-known and much acclaimed men’s aero tri-suit that boasts strong aero test credentials. Extrapolative software estimates this gives a saving of 263 seconds at 40kph, and 151 seconds at 50kph over a full Ironman bike distance. Our female tester gave similar results against a well-known and acclaimed women’s specific suit.
Our Pro suit was also 4 watts better at 50kph for Kieran Lindars than our original and brilliant Skärvatten suit making both BornBound’s Skärvatten suits notably better than the claimed ‘fastest’ suit’, which gives BornBound consumers’ confidence whichever Skärvatten suit they feel is best for them. The power savings will be considerably more over most aero-based tri suits on the market, enabling athletes to hold higher speeds with less power.
With our athletes praising the suit’s comfort and ease to wear, somehow confounding the belief that such results are achieved without the need for double layer fabrics, we have achieved a suit that is Born for Speed. By using decades of testing experience to make an exceptionally well-crafted suit using premium Kinetech fabrics, designed to help you achieve what you were born bound to do. BornBound tri suits are born for speed and available at a great price-per-watt saving in our distinctive Kryptek prints.
- Kinetech Dragzero and Clima woven fabrics from Taiana.
- Kinetech woven fabrics are also naturally extremely lightweight, highly compressive for good blood flow, and naturally repel water due to the tight weave and structure
- Super flexible single layer textured shoulder fabric for maximum arm efficiency under the swim-wetsuit or swim-skin
- Semi-lock YKK zip with zip garage for assurance and comfort
- Easy access and ergonomic rear pocket to keep your fuel safe and easy to reach
- Laser cut sleeve ends with silicone dimples for superior aerodynamics and fabric positioning
- MOA Sport / Nalini’s own premium tri and gender specific pad
- Fast dry treatment
- OEKO-TEX certified fabrics
*Nalini’s expertise to pattern engineer suits for pro cycling teams has been gathered through 50+ years of fitting out some of the biggest teams in the pro-peloton, making them arguably the most knowledgeable in the business. Their ability to pattern engineer suits with carefully chosen textiles is second to none, such as those that create optimal boundary layer transition for reducing form drag on the shape of a bike rider for example. Their work within Triathlon has also been exceptional, with a history of developing tri suits for NOCs and NGBs. Nalini have partnered with BornBound’s slave to detail philosophy to evolve a tri-suit that prioritises fit through tailored state-of-the-art textiles and the triathlete’s needs. This has helped us create a suit that in aero-tests gave our athletes the confidence that they not only have a suit with the lowest drag but that they could combine this with the greatest levels of comfort and breathability throughout with swim, bike and run. For more details on our testing of this suit, please see the link here.
If you’re a marginal gains nut, then you’ll know that minimising drag is essential for maximising your speed on the bike or minimising the amount of power required to maintain that speed before the run, depending on which way you look at it. We invest our time in tri suit aerodynamics to help our athletes be the very best they can be because aerodynamic drag forces square proportionately with an increase in speed! In other words, if you want to double your speed at speeds above 25kph you’re the force you put through the pedals will need to increase four fold. And how important is it to manage how air flows around your body vs. your bike and wheels? Just 20% of your form drag will be created by bike and wheel components, but your body shape and position will be responsible for the remaining 80%. The energy saving per buck that you get from your BornBound tri suit is the greatest by far.