You might have noticed, maybe only in close-up shots or podium presentations, that some riders at the Tour de France are wearing small strips of tape on the arch of their noses.
Certain names in particular might spring to mind: Lidl-Trek’s Mattias Skjelmose, for example, Netcompany-Ineos’s Kévin Vauquelin, or Visma-Lease a Bike duo Victor Campenaerts and Jonas Vingegaard, whose bright pink bands are among the most visible in the bunch.
But what are those little strips of material? What do they do? And, if riders at the Tour de France are relying on them, do they really give a marginal gain in performance?
Nasal strips are no new phenomenon in cycling. Used previously in the 1990s, they’ve seen a resurgence in recent years, thanks to the commercialisation of a number of brands, selling them at £1 a pop.
The claim behind them is that they facilitate breathing by opening up the airways and increasing oxygen intake to the lungs.
Some brands, like HiStrips, who provides nasal strips to Visma-Lease a Bike, go as far as to say their products allow “up to 40% more airflow” through the nose. But the science is less convinced; a study of literature on nasal dilators published in 2023 found the devices tend to have “no effect” on respiratory function or exercise capacity.
Campenaerts said he epilated his nose at last year’s Vuelta a España.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
So why do riders wear them? Campenaerts was one of the peloton’s early adopters of nasal strips – he’s even been known to epilate his nostrils. “When you’re really suffering, you normally start to hyperventilate through the mouth,” he told Het Nieuwsblad at the Vuelta a España last year. “If, in those moments, you force yourself to breathe through the nose, you give your body a signal to relax.”
Similarly, Pinarello Q36.5’s Fred Wright wore a nasal strip when he won the British National Road Championships at the end of June. “I feel like nose strips were a thing back when I was racing as a youth,” he told Cycling Weekly. “It does feel like it opens your nose up, but I do think if you’re really heavy breathing, your body knows how to take in as much oxygen as it can, [especially] for a trained athlete.”
So is there a significant gain? “I don’t really think so,” Wright said. “To be honest, I guess it’s more of an aesthetic thing… What I’ll say is that, now that I’ve won a race with one, I can’t not have one now, can I?
“If I was giving advice to an amateur or someone that was getting into cycling, I think [nasal strips] would maybe be one of the last things I would tell them to buy. There are lots of things that help you before a nasal strip – it’s definitely one of the lowest items on the list.”
Wright wore a nasal strip when he won the British Road Championships in June.
(Image credit: Olly Hassell/SWpix)
It’s telling that riders who wear nasal strips are a minority at the Tour de France.
Within WorldTour team EF Education-EasyPost, the doctors see such little gain from the products, they don’t ask their riders to wear them in races.
“At high intensity, when you’re mouth breathing, [a nasal strip] is not going to make a difference,” EF head doctor Jon Greenwell told Cycling Weekly. “When you’re riding at high intensity, there’s almost zero airflow going through your nose; more than 90% is going through your mouth, and only 10% is going through your nose.
“Generally, the science says that oxygen transfer from air into your lungs isn’t the limiting factor; it’s actually the oxygen going from your lungs into your bloodstream, and then going around your body. Generally, you never struggle for oxygen because you can’t get enough air into your lungs.”
EF do, however, ask their riders to wear nasal strips when they’re sleeping. “Ideally, at night time, you want to be breathing through your nose. You don’t want to be breathing through your mouth,” says Greenwell.
The reason for this is that nasal breathing increases blood oxygen absorption, and cleans the air of pollen and dust. Meanwhile, mouth breathing can dry out saliva, which is important for protecting against infection.
The only question that remains, then, is: should you, like Campenaerts, Vingegaard or Vauquelin, wear a nasal strip when you ride a bike? Well, probably not, especially if you’re hoping for significant performance gains. It might be a good idea to wear one to bed, though.
