Best and Worst National Champs jerseys

[Libertine Seguros]

A few from the Giro Rosa:

Alena Amialiusik, Belarusian champion (kit full of WTF):

Shara Gillow, Aussie TT champion (kit full of class):

Mieke Kröger, German TT champion (kit decent but needs a bit more adornment I think):

Anna van der Breggen, Dutch TT champion (kit pretty par for the course):

Anna Sanchis, Spanish RR champion (what the hell is this? A Spanish champions' kit that actually looks quite good and isn't by Caisse d'Epargne?!)

 

[mr. tibbs]

Wiggle's kits are always classy.

No wonder that SRAM-Velocio managed to ham-up that Belarus kit to hell, though. If you're into the all-black look, Velocio's normal consumer kits are sharp, but the team stuff is atrocious. Remember how good Lululemon looked in 2012? And now they've degenerated to this. Ugh.

 

[TMP402]

Re: Re:

...but I'm wondering if the UCi rules were different back then and world champions of any discipline were able to wear the rainbow stripes after their win. Obviously rules now are that you can only wear rainbow either as the reigning or former world champion in the discipline you won it in. A track sprint WC doesn't wear rainbow for a BMX race, etc.

Either the rules were different back then, or there were effectively no rules about former world champion stripes. It's a pretty recent development, though - Danny Nelissen, amateur world champion in 1995, wore the stripes as a pro, and so did Michael Rasmussen as a former MTB world champion, or Thor Hushovd as... huh... u23 ITT world champion I guess? It was clearly optional, though. Back then things were simply less regulated, so you had things like Pascal Richard getting a custom Olympic champion jersey that would be all sorts of illegal now.

Thanks. The Rasmussen thing - you can see him with rainbow in a preview of the 04 TDF, but seemingly no photos of it in more recent years so it must have been changed in the last 10 years or so.

 

[Gigs_98]

Re:

IMO the Austrian jerseys look boring. I really liked zoidls jersey from last year:

 

[Ricco']

Re: Re:

Not good.

I like it.

Otoh, the Portuguese one is kinda lame. Not horrible, but rather meh

The first sentence explains your second.

 

[Aapjes]

Re:

The Luxembourgish flag is pretty straightforward.

Just an old Dutch flag that has been washed too often

 

[jaylew]

NICE!!!

Beautiful jersey! One of the nicest national jerseys in a very long time! Nicely done Bora!

No creativity. Same with Luxembourg. Seems like most people are traditionalists and very conservative when it comes to kits, particularly Nats kits. Everyone wants them plain and basically the exact same thing every year. I guess I'm the odd man out as that stuff is way too safe for my liking.

 

[aarnold517]

Re:

A few from the Giro Rosa:

I've noticed that most national jerseys in women's cycling are pretty traditional, and thus good in my opinion. I'm sure there's examples of non-traditional jerseys (like the current belorussian for example), but on average it seems the jerseys are all full jerseys for traditional full jersey countries (like italy or the spanish one) and smaller for those countries (such as germany). I really wish the men's teams would take a lesson from the women's teams with regard to national jerseys

 

[Alexandre B.]

 

[lemon cheese cake]

Re:

Nice. I like the big, bold, italic, plain and simple Auber93 in the centre. Nothing that can go wrong when a french champ's jersey is done by a french team.

I also like the out of the ordinary Belarussian jersey. Defineately something that can be spotted easily when womens cycling is actually shown on TV.

 

[Aapjes]

No creativity. Same with Luxembourg. Seems like most people are traditionalists and very conservative when it comes to kits, particularly Nats kits. Everyone wants them plain and basically the exact same thing every year. I guess I'm the odd man out as that stuff is way too safe for my liking.

Nothing wrong with using a classic tried and true design. I'd wish that more designers admitted that they couldn't improve on the classics and just use that.

 

[RedheadDane]

No creativity. Same with Luxembourg. Seems like most people are traditionalists and very conservative when it comes to kits, particularly Nats kits. Everyone wants them plain and basically the exact same thing every year. I guess I'm the odd man out as that stuff is way too safe for my liking.

Nothing wrong with being creative when it's still clear what country the rider is national champion of.

 

[aarnold517]

Chris Anker Sorensen's new danish jersey, IMO much better than valgren's with the cross going all the way to the collar and no fluo yellow on the shoulders:

 

[RedheadDane]

Back to a proper Danish National Champ's jersey.
Now they just need to remove that silly fluo band on his sleeves.

 

[Pierrot le Fou]

The new French kit worn by Steven Tronet of Auber 93

 

[jaylew]

That's awesome. Always best to me when they tie in the bibs.

 

[avanti]

Slight departure from the thread but I have been watching the Pan Am Games from Toronto. The Colombia national team has great looking kit. The USA national kit is among the worst.

 

[TMP402]

Re: Re:

...but I'm wondering if the UCi rules were different back then and world champions of any discipline were able to wear the rainbow stripes after their win. Obviously rules now are that you can only wear rainbow either as the reigning or former world champion in the discipline you won it in. A track sprint WC doesn't wear rainbow for a BMX race, etc.

Either the rules were different back then, or there were effectively no rules about former world champion stripes. It's a pretty recent development, though - Danny Nelissen, amateur world champion in 1995, wore the stripes as a pro, and so did Michael Rasmussen as a former MTB world champion, or Thor Hushovd as... huh... u23 ITT world champion I guess? It was clearly optional, though. Back then things were simply less regulated, so you had things like Pascal Richard getting a custom Olympic champion jersey that would be all sorts of illegal now.

Further to this: Credit Agricole seem to have been fans of the rainbow - as you say Hushovd wore rainbow as a former u-23 TT world champion, and he's here with Wiggins in 2004, a year after the latter became individual pursuit WC:

 

[mr. tibbs]

Oh dear CA's green shorts...

 

[aarnold517]

A couple of national champion jerseys that have just popped up:

The Good:

Preben Van Hecke's Belgian Jersey, complete with bibs:

Saramotins Latvian jersey, much better than his last one with iam:

The Bad:

Luka Pibernik's Slovenian, just like Grmay's awful lampre jersey:

 

[jaylew]

Re:

Oh dear CA's green shorts...

I had a pair of those.

 

[blutto]

Re: Re:

Oh dear CA's green shorts...

I had a pair of those.

....I offer my most sincere condolences ....were the fashion police kind when you were apprehended or were you pilloried mercilessly....

....full disclosure, I own a complete Kelme kit (including socks....what can I say, I really got into the sauce one night, and woke up in a dark alley wearing this, uhhh, outfit ), so believe you me I can feel your pain....

Cheers

 

[nobilis]

Re: Re:

Oh dear CA's green shorts...

I had a pair of those.

....I offer my most sincere condolences ....were the fashion police kind when you were apprehended or were you pilloried mercilessly....

....full disclosure, I own a complete Kelme kit (including socks....what can I say, I really got into the sauce one night, and woke up in a alley wearing this, uhhh, outfit ), so believe you me I can feel your pain....

Cheers

I actually used to like that kit, mainly because I used to like the team and the way they raced. But when they became Communidad Valenciana, the kit looked much better.

I also remember when watching on EUrosport, the commentators used to always say Kelme - Costa Blanca - Eurosport Team, even if Eurosport was actually a secondary sponsor and not a title sponsor.

 

[jaylew]

Re: Re:

Oh dear CA's green shorts...

I had a pair of those.

....I offer my most sincere condolences ....were the fashion police kind when you were apprehended or were you pilloried mercilessly....

....full disclosure, I own a complete Kelme kit (including socks....what can I say, I really got into the sauce one night, and woke up in a dark alley wearing this, uhhh, outfit ), so believe you me I can feel your pain....

Cheers

I liked the Kelme kit as well and also had a pair of those bibs way back in the day. I've never liked the plain black ones.

 

[TMP402]

Boivin's Canadian kit is quite good. Can't find a proper photo but one from twitter and one from today's race: