I’ll begin with a caveat. I am no fan of Red Bull, the drink. It’s just not for me.
The €3 billion they spend on marketing each year, however, has convinced me the brand itself is desirable and cool. The blue and silver of the cans contrasted with the striking red bulls locking horns over a setting yellow sun. Nice.
Their stand-out helmets in the peloton, their winning Formula 1 team, the various skateboarders, surfers and what have you all chasing the dream of an endorsement deal, even the guy who jumped from space down to Earth. It rocks.
“Is Red Bull … bad?” I type into Google with some trepidation, before deciding against sending my request to the internet. I’ll come back to it later. For a moment, I’d rather not know. Give me the blue pill for five minutes, I’ll learn to lean backwards and dodge bullets Matrix-style in a bit.
That’s because the kit the riders of Red Bull – Bora Hansgrohe might be wearing when the revamped team is launched this summer may have leaked. Austria’s biggest newspaper Krone Zeitung says they’ve been passed images of what the jersey will look like when Bora-Hansgrohe relaunch pre-Tour de France following Red Bull acquiring a 51% controlling stake in January.
The kit itself is wonderful, a branded-to-the-hilt mish-mash of everything capitalism – as it should be. The maintenance of the Bora-Hansgrohe logos that has been a mainstay for so long now; the unapologetic introduction of the Red Bull imagery front and centre; the elevation of BOSS to the front shoulders (definitely don’t google their founder, Hugo). Close your eyes and picture Primož Roglič crossing the finish line of a Tour stage first, claiming the yellow jersey that slipped so crestfallingly through his fingers at the last in 2020. Front and centre there is just the descriptor BOSS adorning his arms. All we’re saying is it beats having ‘splunk’ written across your arse à la Trek-Segafredo.
Forget about the collective, slow, relentless doom march toward last-stage capitalism that this busy jersey represents and let the the deep blue base colour pull you in close, all cosy, and tell you everything is going to be okay.
Will this turn out to be the real kit? We’ve asked the question of Bora-Hansgrohe but understandably they’re remaining tight-lipped about the whole thing.
All we know is that Roglič, Jai Hindley, Jungle Bob and the rest of the Bora Bois might look ridiculously good this July. Especially if they all get those Red Bull helmets too. They might even finally make the final edit of the Unchained Netflix documentary series after the entirety of their three weeks was left on the cutting room floor in the first series.
Final thing: the fact this purported Red Bull kit is so nice only makes me clasp my tin foil hat even more firmly to my scalp and cement my belief the repulsive neon number Bora-Hansgrohe originally revealed for 2024 was nothing more than a psy op designed to pave the way for an aesthetically optimum Red Bull takeover later in the year. You can’t prove I’m wrong!
Anyway, even if Roglič doesn’t live up to his yellow jersey hopes, or if Remco Evenepoel doesn’t for that matter, or even if Jonas Vingegaard doesn’t fully recover in time and Tadej Pogačar eases to a third title, at least we can spend three weeks marvelling at the Red Bull kit. That’s a literal silver lining to look forward to.
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