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This piece stems from an ‘After Dark’ discussion at the end of Escape Collective‘s weekly Spin Cycle podcast (week beginning 9th September) – the last-ever ‘Placeholders’ before the name change – in which the team debated the kits that should make the four-jersey selection and be immortalised on Mount Rushmore, or the cycling-centric mountainside of your choice.
Let’s get it over with, shall we? The Mount Rushmore of team kits according to Escape Collective is as follows: Mapei, La Vie Claire, Molteni and Canyon-SRAM.
The first question to ask on narrowing down contenders for a Mount Rushmore of team kits is: what are the criteria? Are we talking visually appealing or effective as a distinct livery? In this instance, we’re looking for the most ‘iconic’, as in symbolic of a certain rider, race, era, and in the spirit of the real landmark being mimicked, the selection doesn’t have to be likeable. That said, we are also encumbered with our own preferences, acknowledging that while team kits have a job to do, we’re dealing in the subjective. We shall not agree.
If you think about it, a team kit can be any of many things: a uniform, a billboard, a collector’s item, etc. With philosophies of kit design varying wildly, there are clear examples for each of these categories, and the very fact that a kit is primarily meant to signify a particular team and their sponsors should be enough to give even the messiest drag-and-drop billboards the benefit of the doubt. Maybe.
The debate over best kit, like the list of nominations, is never-ending, and naturally there will be some that we miss – in fact, as soon as we opened up the discussion to Escape Collective members on Discord, it was abundantly clear that “some” is a woefully inadequate quantifier.
While one valid selection might comprise simply the yellow, pink, polka dot (Tour’s Version) and rainbow jerseys, it was decided that only basic team kits would qualify, which also meant no national champions – with apologies to the most perfect of kits that is the FDJ French national champion’s jersey. Eventually a consensus was found, with a few meandering detours. Here are the finalists, including the story behind some of them, and one or two stories of what happened in them.
Thank you, Jonny Long, for your services.
Once upon a time, team kits were a delightfully simple affair. Take a wool jersey, ideally of a different colour to your rivals, maybe incorporating a couple of coloured bands on the sleeves, and stick on some hand-cut stencils of your title sponsors. Ford? Hutchinson? Job done.
As time passed and technology developed, jerseys got progressively more colourful, and the ’60s and ’70s gave us some of the most ‘iconic’ and memorable jerseys to date. Think Brooklyn, Peugeot, Mercier and, of course, Molteni, the jersey immortalised and synonymous with the inimitable Eddy Merckx.
Merckx celebrating his seventh and final Milan-Sanremo victory in 1976 (I think). Note the rainbow bands on the cuffs of his jersey.
Step forward into the ’80s, then, and the choices ripen considerably. From the bold to the downright ridiculous, the whole colour spectrum was satisfied by the final decades of the 20th century.
Ask a cycling fan about their favourite jersey designs, and the chances are at least one of them will come from this era, whether it’s Z-Peugeot – which replaced the oft-mentioned black-and-white checkerboard strip design – Renault Elf, Système U, Carrera Jeans, Raleigh-Banana or La Vie Claire.
It’s the latter that we settled on to go under the chisel. The Mondrian-based design was unique – although it bore a striking resemblance, especially in a riding position, to the Tour de France combination jersey that was awarded between 1968 and 1989 – and with Bernard Hinault and Greg Lemond among the many top-tier riders to wear the colours, it’s for so much more than the aesthetics that La Vie Claire takes the prize.
Greg Lemond and Bernard Hinault show off the iconic La Vie Claire kit.
Seeing as we’re trotting through history one decade at a time, more or less, up next come the nineties, the decade of Indurain, Virenque, Riis, Ullrich, Jalabert, Zabel, Museeuw and Pantani. And, you guessed it, Mapei.
Perhaps the most adored and derided kit in equal measure, the Mapei livery and its cascading coloured cubes is the marmite of cycling team kits. But love it or hate it, you can’t deny that the Italian team’s various iterations weren’t collectively a landmark in cycling history.
The Mapei cubes were first seen in the peloton in 1993 and the team soon became known as one of the top Classics squads. The peak of that specialism came in 1998 when they swept the podium of Paris-Roubaix, Franco Ballerini winning solo by over four minutes ahead of Andrea Tafi and Wilfried Peeters, his two teammates separated by just a few seconds. A couple of minutes later, Bart Leysen crossed the line eighth to make it four Mapei-Bricobi riders in the top 10.
The all Mapei-Bricobi podium of the 1998 Paris-Roubaix – winner Franco Ballerini, second Andrea Tafi and third Wilfried Peeters – and a beautifully modelled kit.
On the subject of landmark kit design, we fast forward to much more recent history, all the way to 2016. Regrettably, that skips almost two decades of solid contenders, but with only four spaces to fill, the spotlight moves to contemporary offerings.
There were some great kits early in the 2010s, but a truly groundbreaking kit arrived in 2016 as women’s pro team Velocio-SRAM underwent a rebrand that included a switch to Rapha for apparel and German bike brand Canyon as title sponsor. The London-born cycling lifestyle brand was already onboard with Team Sky, but with Canyon-SRAM, Rapha designed a splashy and bright kit that has become one of the most sought-after collector’s items of the modern era.
While so many team kits are understandably sponsor-forward, Rapha and Canyon-SRAM went design first, making use of what designer Ultan Coyle described as representative of warning tape wrapping around the body. The unique boldness was apparently in part for a practical racing reason, that is, to make it nice and easy for the riders to pick one another out in the peloton.
The Escape Collective members seem to agree, Canyon-SRAM deserves a place on the mountainside nine times over, one for each year of operation.
Canyon-SRAM’s debut kit was a real landmark moment in modern cycling kit design, but any and all of their iterations since 2016 are worth mention, including this 2021 number.
So, there we have it, our Mount Rushmore of cycling team kits is, in no particular order: Molteni, La Vie Claire, Mapei and Canyon-SRAM.
Now, as we ponder which of cycling’s iconic mountains they should be calved into, here is an exhausting gallery of other contenders, outsiders, vintage favourites and detours into the obscure.
Dutch rider Arie den Hartog models the Ford France-Hutchinson kit and “casquette”, circa 1966.Gilbert Duclos-Lasalle in the storied Peugeot kit at the 1982 Tour de France – the burly Frenchman was a very versatile rider, winning Paris-Roubaix twice (and twice runner-up) towards the end of his career, 12 years after winning Paris-Nice overall.Eventual winner Phil Anderson (Peugeot-Shell-Michelin), Joop Zoetemelk (Coop-Mercier-Mavic), Jan Raas (Ti-Raleigh), Etienne de Wilde (La Redoute-Notobecane) and others during Amstel Gold 1983.Peugeot, that is all. (Pierre Danguillaume pictured winning a Roubaix stage during the 1977 Tour de France).Raymond “Poupou” Poulidor and Mercier, a historic pairing.A very young “Poupou” wins Milan-Sanremo in 1961, a month before his 25th birthday and in only his second year pro, much to the delight of his team car (whose presence in this mantel-worthy photograph we’ll gladly forgive).Poulidor’s grandson Mathieu van der Poel and his Alpecin-Fenix team unveiled a tribute jersey at the team presentation of the 2021 Tour de France, marking Van der Poel’s debut 45 years after his grandfather’s final appearance, and two years after his death. The team was allowed to race in the kit on stage 1, but from stage 2 onwards, they were back in the familiar navy blue – in which Van der Poel promptly won in thrilling fashion on the Mûr de Bretagne.Another popular favourite: Brooklyn Chewing Gum, modelled here by Ronny de Witte in 1976.7-Eleven is always popular. That bold lettering and the striking colour combination. Some daring eyewear on display too…In an image full of iconic kits, Jeff Pierce shows off his ever-popular 7-Eleven jersey at the front of the 1986 Tour peloton, back when there were ten riders per team. His fellow American Lemond is slightly obscured behind him, wearing what looks at first glance like his team issue La Vie Claire jersey, but which is actually the now long-gone combination jersey.La Vie Claire … (Kim Andersen at Gent-Wevelgem 1985.)… not La Vie Claire. Ok, now it looks pretty obvious. This is in fact Steven Rooks (PDM-Ultima-Concorde) winning in the combination jersey on Alpe d’Huez at the 1988 Tour de France.A nostalgic scene of the kind that gets cycling fans frothing at the mouth. Left to right: Gert-Jan Theunisse (PDM-Ultima-Concorde), Andy Hampsten (7Eleven-Hoonved), Pedro Delgado in the yellow jersey he’d wear to the end of the 1988 Tour (Reynolds), Steven Rooks in the polka dots (PDM-Ultima-Concorde) and Luis Herrera (Café de Colombia).Back to black and white and la Flèche Wallonne 1985. Have a look at this and note how easy it is to distinguish the jerseys from one another even without colour – there’s no coincidence there.Bernard Hinault in the bold kit – and headband – of Renault-Elf with whom he rode until 1983, when he left to help La Vie Claire get off the ground.And in colour, worn by another familiar face to the modern cycling fan: Marc Madiot, now boss of Groupama-FDJ.Now we see kits begin to move into a new era as children’s clothing company Z joined Peugeot for 1987 and completely overhauled the French team’s distinctive checkerboard design. The Z-Peugeot kit ripped up the rulebook with its gradient fade (sigh) and the comic-inspired ‘Z’ splashed on the chest and shoulders. With Jérôme Simon are Luis Herrera for Cafe de Colombia and Marc Madiot, now in the Toshiba kit – which kept the Mondrian-inspired design until 1990 even after they evolved away from La Vie Claire – he raced in from 1988 through 1990.You can’t tell me that’s not Matthew Modine dressed up as Laurent Fignon in his Castorama era, circa 1990.Prints got bolder and bolder into the ’90s – well, maybe never more so than with ‘Z’ – with Gewiss-Ballan a striking example, even if it does look like the packaging for a computer programme, back when such things came in bulky boxes with multiple discs and manuals.Team Polti (no relation to Alberto Contador’s ProTeam Polti-Kometa) went through several distinct evolutions until its dissolution at the close of the 2000 season, pictured here at the start of Rheinland-Pfalz-Rundfahrt 1998.The late Davide Rebellin spent three years in Polti kit in the first decade of his three-decade career.Recognise the guy on the left? That’s UAE Team Emirates GM Mauro Gianetti in the 1996 Polti kit – thumbs up! – with Liège-Bastogne-Liège 1996 winner Richard Pascal (MG Maglificio-Technogym) and a Motorola rider.There were plenty of votes in the Escape Collective Discord for the ever-so bold Kelme kit, modelled here by Fernando Escartín at Paris-Nice in 1997.Two very different and very memorable kits in one image, Laurent Jalabert’s O.N.C.E. and Paulo Lanfranchi’s Mapei-GB at the 1997 Giro di Lombardia.Speaking of Mapei … (That 1998 Cofidis kit is tasty too.)The bug-eyed sunglasses are on the face of Wilfried Peeters, with Bart Leysen and Belgian Tom Steels (yes, that Tom Steels who is now one of the peloton’s more recognisable sports directors at QuickStep) in a jolly good national champ’s jersey, though he loses points for the mismatched team-issue shorts.A few honourable mentions as suggested by members: first, for Jan Ullrich’s Adidas T-Mobile kit …… next: Italian team Saeco, whose bold Cannondale bikes also draw attention …… and – oof – Footon-Servetto, which is certainly memorable.Escape‘s Caley Fretz initially divided the crowd on mention of early Team Sky kits, but their minimal design did add a certain je ne sais quoi to a busy peloton.A switch to Rapha made the Sky kit even more restrained, shown off here by Rigoberto Urán at the 2013 Vuelta a España.Lampre-ISD, which is now UAE Team Emirates, was always easy to spot in the peloton with their loud colours (the late Michele Scarponi pictured here in 2012). How times have changed.Here’s one that really divides the crowd, but which has a fascinating story whichever way you look at it. With the withdrawal of Rabobank from the team now known as Visma-Lease a Bike, the top Dutch outfit raced as Team Blanco in 2013, with Rabobank still offering up sponsorship until new funding could be found, as long as it happened by the end of the 2013 WorldTour season. Belkin came on board that summer.The Belkin kit also proved popular, notwithstanding the mismatch between the greens of Belkin and Bianchi’s distinct brand identities.There’s been an increasing interest in “throwback” kits in recent years. Lotto Soudal did a great job of vintage styling in 2016.But that same year, everyone was overshadowed by Canyon-SRAM with the launch of their ambitious new kit, which Tiffany Cromwell is showing off here at the 2016 Tour of Britain.2016 was a good year for funky kits (and car wraps). Lachlan Morton propelled American Continental team Jelly Belly p/b Maxxis to multiple wins that year, which led the Australian pro back to the WorldTour.Some things will never change though, namely the “sponsor spaghetti” of Italian ProTeams in particular. With greatest respect to Gianni Savio, his Androni-Giocattoli team’s jersey circa 2021 was iconic for the wrong reason, and illustrative of the difficulties in attaining and keeping sponsors in cycling. The team was sadly forced out of the ‘professional’ ranks at the end of 2022 due to insufficient funds.As mentioned on the podcast, the Tour’s polka-dot jersey and black shorts combo takes some beating, as demonstrated by Warren Barguil at the peak of his powers in 2017. Though being a classification kit, it sadly doesn’t qualify.Speaking of Frenchmen at the top of their game – and in the same year, as it happens – Arnaud Démare won stage 4 of the 2017 Tour in the bleu, blanc, rouge, just one example of Groupama-FDJ’s national champ’s jersey design that is practically perfect in every way. (But which also does not qualify … )Parkhotel-Valkenburg (2019) got points for boldness.Few kits have ever stood out as brightly as the Alé-BTC Ljubljana kit of 2021, worn here by Marta Bastianelli. The team became UAE Team ADQ in 2022.A year earlier, EF Pro Cycling broke the internet with their 2020 Giro change-out kit in collaboration with Palace. Ruben Guerreiro was the second EF rider to win a stage at the Italian Grand Tour with ducks emblazoning his highly sought-after limited-edition kit.And one for Escape‘s Dane Cash who said of Euskaltel-Euskadi’s orange livery: “there’s no kit that’s ever been so clearly one team.”And finally, one last nod to what has been consistently the best-looking team of the past decade with their latest entry into the archives, now in kit made by Canyon.
