Peter Sagan's world championship-themed Specialized Tarmac

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (CT) – In years past we’ve often had to wait until the new year to get a glimpse of what the UCI road race world champion will be stretching his legs on throughout his season in the rainbow stripes. But this year we are being treated to seeing the new world champion Peter Sagan racing for four straight days at the inaugural Abu Dhabi Tour on a shiny new Tarmac that celebrates his win in Richmond two weeks ago.

Specialized had lead road designer at the company, Ron Jones, come up with the eye-catching design. Jones described the ideas that guided the design process.

“The first, of course, is Peter’s panache and flair on the bike. I’ve translated this into the rainbow effect paint, camouflage, and gold head badge on the bike,” Jones said. “Second is his respect for the sport, which is represented by the placement of the names of all winners of previous world championships in the downtube logos. I felt it was important for both past winners and our newest champion to be represented in this way.”

“And then there’s his Slovakian heritage, a design cue which I added by applying elements of the flag in the graphic, as well as transitioning the rainbow camouflage into the Slovakian flag colours on the fork and seatstay,” Jones continued. “I didn’t want to be creatively limited by adhering rigidly to the traditional rainbow stripes, so avoiding them was a definite design choice for me.

“I choose a black and rainbow base over a more traditional white, and my goal was for this to be disruptive – kind of like Sagan’s personality and style is.”

The bike doesn’t differ in any way from Sagan’s previous Tarmac. Traditional bend FSA bars are propped up by a Zipp SL Sprint stem, an item that deviates from the team’s usual sponsored product. The forks turn on a silky Ceramic Speed headset.

Prologo is the team’s saddle sponsor and understandably has not produced a matching rainbow-schemed version yet. The saddle is propped up by an FSA K-Force carbon seatpost, again another team standard colour version. Specialized Roval CLX 60 Rapide wheels shod in Specialized Turbo tubulars keep Sagan rolling. Power is put down through an FSA SRM-compatible K-Force carbon chainset with Look Keo Blade 2 pedals.

Shimano’s ever-dependable Dura Ace Di2 takes care of shifting and braking. Tacx’s Deva carbon cages round out the build.