‘Riding my old long-sleeved jersey was like riding in a dressing gown – but in a good way’

I’ve always liked long-sleeved jerseys. I have weirdly long arms that I’ve never really liked, and I enjoy my riding more if I can’t see them.

In winter, it’s fine. Winter jerseys have long sleeves. In summer, it’s harder. The vast majority of modern summer jerseys are short-sleeved, and the handful of properly light long-sleeved ones are never really comfortable because the arms are weirdly stretchy. So that means the irritation of arm-warmers, and the annual spring ritual where I lose my grip on an arm-warmer as I’m pulling it on and smack myself in the face.

It never used to be like this. I’m always a bit self-conscious about how long I’ve been a bike rider but I’m not ashamed to admit to being old enough to remember that perfectly normal, usable, long-sleeved and lightweight jerseys definitely used to exist.

Last week I punched myself in the face for the second time this year and decided that enough was enough. Down I went to the bottom of my kit drawer and found a couple of old long-sleeved jerseys. I put one on. In disbelief, I took it off and tried the other one. It was the same. They were so big I could have set myself up in there with a pair of binoculars and a packed lunch and used it as a bird-hide.

That at least solved the mystery of why the sleeves used to fit better, but it left a lot of other questions – did I really race in one of these things?

Both horrified and curious, I watched some old bike-racing videos. And, right enough, all jerseys used to be much, much baggier. I found some footage of Marco Pantani wearing a skinsuit so generous he could have turned around inside it and looked out of his own backside to see if Jan Ullrich was sneaking up on him, and no one would have noticed. Magnus Backstedt won Paris-Roubaix in a jersey he and both his daughters could wear at once.

So, anyway, I went for a ride in my bird-hide. And it was just lovely. There was a delightful current of air that could drift through. A wasp that flew in just turned around and flew out again. I could get things in and out of my pockets so easily that at one point I fished out a gel just so I could read the recycling information on the packet. It was like going cycling in a dressing gown, in a good way.

I’ll admit there are downsides. Some bits of flapping feel like they add to the ventilation, but some bits are just irritating; I don’t need the ability to assess the angle of a crosswind from the flags on my arms. And I remember that a baggy jersey stretches over time, so that the pockets gradually stop being on your lower back, and creep ever downwards to create the sort of lumpy-buttocked silhouette more normally associated with an iffy Turkish cosmetic surgeon.

And of course it’s slower. Ultimately, that’s why it all changed. Mark Cavendish won the Worlds in 2011 in a skinsuit, and suddenly jerseys got tight. They also got more expensive – you can make a baggy jersey out of anything and be a bit slapdash about it. To make a good tight one, you need to buy better fabrics, make more sizes, maybe do some aero testing, and use some more-considered seam patterns.

It’s been a classic great-leap-sideways. Less comfortable, more expensive, slightly faster. It feels like an odd set of trade-offs for 99% of us, 99% of the time.

If you’ve got a big old jersey sitting in a drawer, or you can find one second-hand, give it a go. You might like it.