With Orbea-Danena, an amateur team that would eventually move up to the pro ranks, they tested lighter, stretchier, more aerodynamic jerseys and shorts.

“We made skinsuits for Cabestany and Lekuona for track racing, and they won the Six Hours of Euskadi against professional pairs from several countries. That was a huge moment for us.”

“We were one of the few pairs riding in skinsuits,” recalls Peio Ruiz Cabestany—a stage winner at the Tour and Vuelta, winner of the Tour of the Basque Country, and riding for Orbea-Danena at the time. “We were still amateurs, but Etxeondo dressed us in kit the pros weren’t even using yet. Paco was always experimenting with fabrics, creating new pieces, using trial and error. Sometimes it was error,” he laughs. “But he’d convince you. He’d put a cap on you because it improved aerodynamics, because it had tested well in the wind tunnel—and you’d head out with a technical edge and, above all, a psychological one. You believed you had the best kit, that you were going to be faster than everyone else.”

“I grew up with Etxeondo and constant innovation. I signed up for every new idea. The older riders couldn’t believe it. We’d roll onto the track in a full black skinsuit that covered even our hands, with our names in yellow on the back and a black Lycra cover over the helmet… Paco did whatever he wanted—and I was always up for it.”

“There were three of us sisters who raced. When we were kids, our father would take us from Tolosa to Hondarribia for the day by bike. Proper cycling shorts were expensive, so we made do with athletics shorts. All the way to Hondarribia in those little things… brutal. One day our father took us to Villabona, to the Etxeondo farmhouse, and we bought our first real cycling shorts. They were still wool in those days.”

When she travelled to races, Artolazabal says, one item was never missing from her luggage. 

“A tin of Nivea. The chamois pads were natural leather—hard and rough. We had to soften them with cream, because the chafing was torture.”

“We used to call Paco ‘Paco Chamois’,” Cabestany laughs, “because he was obsessed with them. Always testing them, always improving them. He made the first synthetic chamois, and things improved drastically after that.”

Much of the suffering endured by those pioneering women came not from the brutal gradients of the Basque climbs but spending hours sat on bikes designed for men, on saddles designed for men, wearing clothing designed for men.

“You can’t imagine how many problems we had with boils and sores,” Orbegozo says. Four decades later she still rides, happily with saddles and shorts finally designed for women. “The clothing has improved enormously. Paco always helped us—during the Orbea years and later too, when he supplied kit for our winter expeditions by kayak or bike in Lapland. Back then, for the cold, we’d wear five layers of shirts and jerseys, two pairs of shorts over long tights—we looked like onions. Now you put on one thermal base layer under your jersey and you’re warm. It’s incredible.”

In recent years those Orbea pioneers have been honoured at events like the Clásica de San Sebastián and major sportive rides in Segovia and Ordizia.

“It really surprised me,” Orbegozo says. “We spent our whole youth hearing, ‘Shouldn’t you be working? Shouldn’t you be having children?’ People looked at us like we were mad. And then, thirty years later, we’re being paraded everywhere as role models. It moved me deeply when Leire Olaberria said that without us as role models she wouldn’t have become a cyclist.”