Bag_O_Wallet said:
Toward the start of the season, I was pleasantly surprised to see Big Thor wearing what appeared to be normal, team-issued shorts with his World Champion's jersey. I've also noticed during the Giro a number (if not all?) of the classification leaders have been wearing what appeared to be standard, team-issued shorts with their respective jerseys.
I'm very happy to see this happen, but I'm wondering if it's just a shift in style, or if there have been rules put in place. Mind you, Giovanni Visconti's matching Italian champ shorts would suggest there hasn't been a change to the rules.
Nevertheless, I happy to see team shorts and leader's/champion's jerseys together again!!
There has been no change in rules.
With some teams with standard, simple national jerseys and plain black shorts in the team uni, it's simple enough to do it that way (see Knees and Thomas at Team Sky, for example). Other teams with different colour schemes will see the national jersey clash with theirs and therefore integrate the full uni of the national champion (eg Sousa, Kolobnev, Stangelj). For some, there is no clash but they make the stylistic choice (Visconti), or there is a clash, and they make the stylistic choice to waste the national champion's jersey altogether (Gutiérrez). The only recent example of somebody wearing their national champion's jersey and it clearly not matching their team issue shorts is Kushchynski at Liqui last year:
With regards to the race leader's jerseys, of course this is par for the course in most races - only occasionally do non-Grand Tours merit this, such as for example Alejandro Valverde's awful all-yellow ensemble in the Dauphiné:
For the most part, unless that person is somebody who really didn't expect to get the exposure of the jersey and goes haywire with the everything-in-that-design style (such as Brice Feillu in the polka dots in 2009), the riders won't go for the all-in style early in the race, and only do so when they've had the position for a while. It was only several days into his stint in the maglia verde last year that Matty Lloyd decided to add more green to his ensemble; Arroyo went for the all-pink approach because he was scoring an unexpected success and was super-proud. The other thing is budget - if they're still in pink and white in a few days' time I wouldn't be surprised to see Contador and Kreuziger modify their uniforms to include pink and white shorts; a team like Colnago-CSF Inox may not think it worthwhile to make Savini up a special all-green ensemble, especially considering he only has a one-point lead in the standings. For smaller teams, doing an everything-in ensemble like Cavendish's green gear from '09 or Arroyo's all-pink kit from last year is probably not worth it especially if they then lose the jersey - CSF-Navigare never made up any special gear for Sella in '08 despite his holding the mountains jersey from day 1 to day 21.
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