Cycling team bans riders from growing 'unhygienic' beards

Simon Geschke of Germany and Team Giant-Alpecin celebrates winning stage seventeenth of the 2015 Tour de France. Photo / Getty

A professional cycling team has banned its riders from growing beards and told them to find new employers if they won't shave.

Belgium's Sport Vlaanderen-Baloise has imposed the crackdown on facial hair to protect "the elegance of cycling".

The Flemish team's sporting director is Walter Planckaert, a former champion of the Tour of Flanders.

He used a regular column in newspaper Het Niewsblad to blast beards as "unhygienic".

"We are a cycling team, with riders, not motocross riders or rugby players," Mr Planckaert wrote. "The snot and the leftover food in the beard of a rider in the middle of the race is dirty."

At a push Mr Plackaert would tolerate a short beard or if, in the middle of a hard classics season, his riders were simply too exhausted to shave.

However, any rider planning on growing a full bushy beard or an ignoring the rule would have to find another team, he said.

Sport Vlaanderen-Baloise race at the Professional Continental level, the second division of road race cycling when given wildcards at higher level road races as well.

The team is a Belgian sporting institution and has a reputation for talent spotting the best young Dutch-speaking talent and giving them their first professional contracts.

At the end of each season, many of its young cyclists join leading professional teams riding in the first class World Tour events.

Mr Planckaert singled out the full beard of German Tour de France rider Simon Geschke as an example of unacceptable facial hair. The winner of the Tour, Chris Froome, is clean-shaven.