New kit day: a look at the new national jerseys in the women’s peloton
With #Natsweek now a month behind us, some new national champions were crowned while others prolonged their titles. The reshuffling of titles means that there was a lot of new kit to be made, and each team has its own take on what a national jersey should look like. Here…
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With #Natsweek now a month behind us, some new national champions were crowned while others prolonged their titles. The reshuffling of titles means that there was a lot of new kit to be made, and each team has its own take on what a national jersey should look like. Here are some of the new national jerseys we’ve spotted in the women’s peloton since June.
Which is your favourite?
National kits of the 2017 peloton
BOELS-DOLMANS
The list of champions within the Boels-Dolmans squad is impressive. The roster features the European, Olympic and world road champions as well as national road racing champions from The Netherlands, Britain and Luxembourg. There are also Canadian, Luxembourgian and Polish time trial champions. And finally, national cyclocross champions from Britain and Luxembourg. That’s a lot of special kit to be made!
We don’t know yet what the time trial skinsuits of Karol-Ann Canuel (Canada) and Kasia Pawlowska (Poland) will look like, so we’ll have to wait for an individual time trial for them to debut their new skinsuits — maybe we’ll see them in the La Course time trial in Marseille?
TEAM VÉLOCONCEPT
Team VéloConcept’s two new Scandinavian road champions received similar looking jerseys. Sara Penton of Sweden wears a blue one with a yellow cross, while Camilla Møllebro of Denmark sports the same design in red and white. The jerseys are accompanied by black bibs instead of the blue and red team bibs.
Team VéloConcept’s Amber Neben took both the road race and individual time trial title at the USA Cycling national championships this year, but we’ve yet to see VéloConcept’s take on the stars and stripes. In the time trial, however, Neben’s rainbow stripes will trump the national skinsuit, so we’ll have to wait until after September to see what the US national skinsuit looks like, that is if Neben doesn’t claim a third world time trial title in Norway.
| Related: Two for two: Amber Neben backs up TT title with a win in national road race
ORICA-SCOTT
Annemiek van Vleuten (Orica-Scott), or ‘Vleuty’ as she’s known among her Aussie teammates, prolonged her Dutch individual time trial title in June. But where we’ve previously seen her wear a skinsuit with black bottoms and the Dutch tri-clours on top, this year’s skinsuit is fully coloured.
FDJ-FUTUROSCOPE-NA
The only French women’s UCI team gained a significant sponsor in Française-des-Jeux this year, who also is the title sponsor of a French men’s UCI team. The kits of both teams are pretty similar, with only team-specific sponsor logos setting them apart.
The men’s and women’s FDJ teams both now have the French road champion within their ranks. But where Arnaud Démare’s national champion jersey doesn’t contain any sponsor logos, Charlotte Bravard’s kit does contain all of the women’s team’s sponsors on a red, white and blue outfit. The kit matches that of her teammates but does stand out due to the solid red shorts. With a limited amount of blue, Eri Yonamine sports a white-and-red kit to identify her as the Japanese champion.
Nos 2 championnes ???????? ???????? pic.twitter.com/tB4SPKvplC
— FDJ NAquitaine FUT (@FDJ_NAqui_Fut) 29 juni 2017
TOP GIRLS-FASSA BORTOLO
Ana Covrig has been the Romanian road champion for the past three years, but this year, Top Girls Fassa Bortolo has given her the most noticeable national jersey yet. Solid blocks of blue, yellow and red in addition to striped piping makes her easily recognisable.
WIGGLE-HIGH5
A six-time national road race champion, Belgian Jolien D’Hoore spent the past 12 months in the regular black Wiggle-High5 colours. She rectified that this June, however, when she took back her title and returned to the Giro Rosa in the tri-coloured kit.
Italy’s Elisa Longo Borghini finally claimed the Italian road championships title in 2017, for the first time in her career. Similar to D’Hoore’s jersey, Longo Borghini’s jersey sports three horizontal bars across her middle. Keen observers will note that this is actually the Hungarian flag, however, as the Italian flag actually features the tricolore vertically. Longo Borghini was among the first to point this out and we are told that a new kit is in the making.
For the national time trial champions, Wiggle-High5 has two different designs. Audrey Cordon-Ragot (France) wears a white skinsuit with the French flag across her chest (which is awfully similar to the British national champion’s kit, which will be worn by Claire Rose of Visit Dallas-DNA), while Longo Borghini’s skinsuit looks similar to her national road kit.
RALLY CYCLING
Talk about national pride. Rally Cycling did an amazing job with this jersey for the Canadian road champion Allison Beveridge. Or more correctly: Borah Teamwear did. They made this maple leaf covered jersey which perfectly matches Rally Cycling’s team outfit, but still stands out an is definitely national champion-worthy.
CERVÉLO-BIGLA
New Swiss road champion, Nicole Hanselmann (Cervélo-Bigla), clearly stands out in her bright red kit. The regular team-issue Kask helmets match her outfit perfectly, as it does for German road champion Lisa Klein and Danish time trial champion Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig. Finnish road and time trial champion Lotta Lepistö meanwhile was given a blue Kask helmet to match the blue cross on her jersey.
Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig looking great in her new ???????? national kit today #GiroRosa pic.twitter.com/GVX49uKmTM
— Cervélo Bigla (@CerveloBigla) 4 juli 2017
CANYON-SRAM
From four national champions in 2016, Canyon-SRAM’s roster is down to only one national champion in 2017. Mieke Kröger (Germany), Elena Cecchini (Italy) and Hannah Barnes (United Kingdom) all had to hand over their national road jerseys to compatriots in other teams in June. Trixi Worrack was the only rider able to defend her national time trial title, continuing to wear the Rapha skinsuit with the German flag instead of the multi-coloured regular team outfit.
TEAM HITEC
The Norwegian road and time trial jerseys have been in the hands of Team Hitec’s Vita Heine for two years now. It’s the second year in a row for Heine to be wearing the Norwegian flag instead of the blue Hitec-outfit.
CYLANCE PRO CYCLING
With her development over the past two years, Sheyla Gutierrez went into this year’s Spanish road championships as the top favourite. Even the well-represented Spanish UCI teams Bizkaia-Durango and Team Lointek weren’t able to keep Gutierrez from taking the win. Following her win, her green and black Cylance outfit got adorned with the easily recognisable Spanish flag, which she showed off proudly at the Giro Rosa.
The Spanish time trial title did go to Bizkaia-Durango, and rider Lourdes Oyarbide will be rocking a special-issue skinsuit in time trials to come.
DROPS
The new skinsuits of time trial champions Ann-Sophie Duyck (Belgium) and Martina Ritter (Austria) are clean and simple with black bottoms and a coloured top. The colours resurface in the piping of the shorts.
The vertical stripes that define the regular Drops kit are gone, making the national champions stand out significantly from their teammates.
Ritter is also the Austrian road champion and wears a similar outfit on the road.
ALÉ CIPOLLINI
Acknowledging the contrasting colours between the fluo yellow of the regular kit and the yellow from Davia Tuslaite’s Lithuanian flag, Tuslaite was given a special-issue kit with white as the base colour and the Lithuanian tri-colours around the middle.
BTC CITY-LJUBLJANA
Mia Radotic has held the Croatian road and time trial titles for the past three years. She has also represented BTC City-Ljubljana during this time, but while the team kit has barely changed in those years, her national jersey has varied from a complete red and white outfit to just some red and white details on the jersey and bibs. With the distinct design of the national flag, look for a plaid-like pattern to detect the Croatian national champion in the peloton.
The national jerseys of Jelena Eric (Serbia) and Polona Batagelj (Slovakia) are very similar in design, the only difference being the order of the coloured stripes. For Eric, they are (from top to bottom) red, blue and white, while Batagelj’s stripes are white, blue and red. Easy to confuse!
GIUSFREDI-BIANCHI
The Italian team Giusfredi Bianchi gained a national champion when Omer Shapira won the Israel national road championships this year, after she finished on the podium in the race in the last three years. She finally gets to wear the star of David on her cycling kit.
ASTANA WOMEN’S TEAM
Remember this moment? Arlenis Sierra was so excited about her second place at the 2017 Trofeo Alfredo Binda that she threw up her hands in the air alongside winner Coryn Rivera (Team Sunweb). It did show off her Cuban national jersey, which she’ll continue sporting after prolonging her road title at the Cuban nationals in June, along with taking the national time trial title.
Related: Coryn Rivera wins Trofeo Alfredo Binda in historic bunch sprint
TEAM TIBCO-SVB
Mexican champion Ingrid Drexel stands out from her teammates at Team Tibco-SVB, donning a white, green and red outfit instead of the blue and bright yellow team kit. No matching helmet though.
SERVETTO-GIUSTA
All three of Servetto-Giusta’s two national road champions were both part of the Giro Rosa squad. The celestial globe and green shorts clearly mark Clemilda Fernandez’ Brazilian road title. You probably won’t recognize the flag of the other road champion in the team. It’s Antri Christoforou’s outfit as the Cyprian road champion.
Natalya Sokovnina received a white skinsuit with the Kazakhstan flag on it to signify her national time trial title.
BEPINK-COGEAS
While the red, white and blue Czech flag on Nikola Noskova’s BePink-Cogeas kit makes her stand out, it also clashes heavily with the pink team-issue helmet, bibs and accessories.
Unchanged: the Rainbow & European Jersey
Two important jerseys that haven’t changed shoulders (yet) are the rainbow jersey of the world champion, and the white-blue-and-gold-starred jersey of the European champion.
The rainbow jersey stayed within the Boels-Dolmans team after the 2016 season, transferring from Lizzie Deignan to the young Danish sprinter, Amalie Dideriksen. American Amber Neben (Team VéloConcept Women) sports the rainbow skinsuit in the individual time trial.
The newly designed jersey of the European championships was awarded to Olympic road race champion Anna van der Breggen (Boels-Dolmans) in 2016, and compatriot Ellen van Dijk (Team Sunweb) wears the European champion skinsuit in the time trial. The European champions have the honour of wearing their jerseys for just one more month, while the world road championships aren’t held until the end of September.
Also unchanged: national jerseys of Australia, New Zealand & South-Africa
AUSTRALIA
Katrin Garfoot (Orica-Scott) took the double at the Australian nationals early this year. She prolonged her national time trial title, but won her first Aussie road title. The German-born 35-year-old has proudly been showing the green and gold in both disciplines since the beginning of 2017.
SOUTH-AFRICA
The South-African national championships took place in February, and while Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio (Cervélo-Bigla) held the national road title for four years straight from 2012 to 2015, injury and illness have prevented her from taking the road title for the last two years. Heidi Dalton (Aromitalia-Vaiano) is the current South-African road champion, wearing the South-African flag on her chest.
Moolman-Pasio did take back the national time trial title this year, so she’ll be donning the South-African flag on her skinsuit.
NEW ZEALAND
Rushlee Buchanan is one of three foreign riders on the UnitedHealthcare roster in 2017 and this year, she won’t be donning the newly designed blue outfit of the American team. As the New Zealand road champion, her kit sports the striking fern on a black and white outfit. A matching white helmet completes the outfit.
Jaime Nielsen is the New Zealand time trial champion and announced to have set her sight on the one-hour record two days ago.
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Which are your favourites? Tell us in the comments below.