Teams & Riders Team Visma - Lease a Bike

[RedheadDane]

You could see this coming from when his ban was announced. He wasn't gonna be part of the Tour squad anyway

Could you? They announced a good quiet schedule a while back. Seems like a part of it was a health-issue from Chris Harper - as in, the actual Chris Harper - which forced him to skip it.

 

[Red Rick]

Could you? They announced a good quiet schedule a while back. Seems like a part of it was a health-issue from Chris Harper - as in, the actual Chris Harper - which forced him to skip it.

Just better PR to not announce he's going to the Giro when his ban is announced to finish right before.

 

[RedheadDane]

I just have one question:
Van Emden; great Dutch TT champion jersey.
Bennett; great New Zealand RR champion jersey.
Jansen (in 2019); great Norwegian RR champion jersey. (And Danish too, but he wasn't too happy about that... for some reason...)
So why the feck can't they give their arguably biggest star a proper national championship jersey? At least have the flag band on a white background, and be more than 2 centimetres wide.

 

[bajbar]

Well, there might be two reasons - first, Jumbo apparently gives riders a lot of freedom when designing national champ jerseys. Now Roglič wanted to have "Triglav" on it (the name of the "three headed mountain" that is one of the most recognizable Slovenian symbols) plus I guess jersey designs aren't really his thing. Second - as their biggest star, Jumbo probably wanted to make the jersey as "Jumbo" as possible - meaning yellow collor had to remain there. When you put those two reasons together... you get the jersey he has.

 

[RedheadDane]

Second - as their biggest star, Jumbo probably wanted to make the jersey as "Jumbo" as possible - meaning yellow collor had to remain there. When you put those two reasons together... you get the jersey he has.

And that's the thing I don't get. I'd think being the biggest star would mean he'd earned the right to be given a distinct jersey. Are they afraid people are gonna randomly forget he rides for the team otherwise?

 

[BlueRoads]

And that's the thing I don't get. I'd think being the biggest star would mean he'd earned the right to be given a distinct jersey. Are they afraid people are gonna randomly forget he rides for the team otherwise?

Random Tour viewers might not be very familiar with teams and riders...

 

[Rackham]

Well, there might be two reasons - first, Jumbo apparently gives riders a lot of freedom when designing national champ jerseys. Now Roglič wanted to have "Triglav" on it (the name of the "three headed mountain" that is one of the most recognizable Slovenian symbols) plus I guess jersey designs aren't really his thing. Second - as their biggest star, Jumbo probably wanted to make the jersey as "Jumbo" as possible - meaning yellow collor had to remain there. When you put those two reasons together... you get the jersey he has.

It's better than George Bennett with his New Zealand national champ jersey looks like a Qhubeka rider.

I always found the Roglic Slovenia jersey very elegant tbh, i.e. easily distinctive but not disassociated from JV.

 

[RedheadDane]

Random Tour viewers might not be very familiar with teams and riders...

Not like he's had much of a habit of wearing regular Jumbo jerseys in the Tour - or indeed most stage races - recently...

 

[Carols]

It's better than George Bennett with his New Zealand national champ jersey looks like a Qhubeka rider.

I always found the Roglic Slovenia jersey very elegant tbh, i.e. easily distinctive but not disassociated from JV.

I like it! He is easy to pick out from his teammates, especially with the different colored helmet. The jersey isn't overdone and depicts one of Slovenia's greatest landmarks. Not that he wears it often, he's usually in one of the competion leaders jerseys.

 

[Red Rick]

I just have one question:
Van Emden; great Dutch TT champion jersey.
Bennett; great New Zealand RR champion jersey.
Jansen (in 2019); great Norwegian RR champion jersey. (And Danish too, but he wasn't too happy about that... for some reason...)
So why the feck can't they give their arguably biggest star a proper national championship jersey? At least have the flag band on a white background, and be more than 2 centimetres wide.

Pretty sure Bennetts is due to really strict national rules on the nats jersey

 

[RedheadDane]

Pretty sure Bennetts is due to really strict national rules on the nats jersey

And that just shows how all nations should have strict rules.

It's just... between Roglic's RR jersey, and Pogacar's ITT jersey, it's like they're having a competion about who can have the worst Slovenian jersey.

 

[BlueRoads]

Apart from jersey questions...
this was an incredible showing today.
I know Foss is a strong guy, but while the high placed DQS riders, Cavagna, Evenepoel and Almeida are definitely among the strongest riders/ time trialers of the team, Foss, Affini and van Emden are, sorry for the expression, second-rate, compared to Roglic and van Aert.
I certainly would not have expected this.

 

[bNator]

And that's the thing I don't get. I'd think being the biggest star would mean he'd earned the right to be given a distinct jersey. Are they afraid people are gonna randomly forget he rides for the team otherwise?

Well the biggest star is going to have the most media exposure. His photo will be frequently in newspapers, websites etc. The loss of opportunity for having JUMBO logo printed in media is more significant the bigger the star. It has nothing to do with his right to wear his design, and most likely he doesn‘t even care about the design anyway as long as the sponsors are happy. He is not payed by Slovenia but by Jumbo...

 

[RedheadDane]

Well the biggest star is going to have the most media exposure. His photo will be frequently in newspapers, websites etc. The loss of opportunity for having JUMBO logo printed in media is more significant the bigger the star. It has nothing to do with his right to wear his design, and most likely he doesn‘t even care about the design anyway as long as the sponsors are happy. He is not payed by Slovenia but by Jumbo...

You can still have the team sponsor logo on top of the national champs design. Not expecting every team to go full FDJ.
But wouldn't most sponsors be proud that they have a national champion? Like "Look at this guy! He rides for our team, and he's earned the right to wear a special jersey for a whole year!"

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

You can still have the team sponsor logo on top of the national champs design. Not expecting every team to go full FDJ.
But wouldn't most sponsors be proud that they have a national champion? Like "Look at this guy! He rides for our team, and he's earned the right to wear a special jersey for a whole year!"

It varies a lot. Some sponsors like everything and everyone in standard corporate livery, more of them like the idea of associating their brand name with a nation they are selling stuff in.

 

[Bonimenier]

JV should clearly send Foss to the Tour to keep the streak of riders winning Tour de l'avenir and 2 years later winning the Tour alive.

 

[johnymax]

Apart from jersey questions...
this was an incredible showing today.
I know Foss is a strong guy, but while the high placed DQS riders, Cavagna, Evenepoel and Almeida are definitely among the strongest riders/ time trialers of the team, Foss, Affini and van Emden are, sorry for the expression, second-rate, compared to Roglic and van Aert.
I certainly would not have expected this.

It was a great performance, but I'd say nothing out of the ordinary. Foss is a surprise, yes. But not so much today as he's been a surprisingly strong TT rider since he turned pro with Jumbo. Don't forget he was 5th in the opening Giro ITT last year already and 4th in Itzulia a month ago.

Van Emden has been one of the best riders on flat and short ITTs in the last decade. He's not getting any younger, but I wouldn't call him second rate to Roglič in a TT like today.

Affini is an interesting one. A big TT talent who was 3rd at the EC ITT in 2019 (short and flat) behind Remco and Asgreen, while beating riders like Ganna and Kung for example. He's been actually a slight disappointment with Jumbo so far. It was only a matter of time for him to show something and he delivered today (well almost).

I was actually disappointed in Bennett's performance. He can do a good TT on his day, but today he lost some time to many GC contenders I thought he is a better time-trialist of.

 

[BlueRoads]

It was a great performance, but I'd say nothing out of the ordinary. Foss is a surprise, yes. But not so much today as he's been a surprisingly strong TT rider since he turned pro with Jumbo. Don't forget he was 5th in the opening Giro ITT last year already and 4th in Itzulia a month ago.

Van Emden has been one of the best riders on flat and short ITTs in the last decade. He's not getting any younger, but I wouldn't call him second rate to Roglič in a TT like today.

Affini is an interesting one. A big TT talent who was 3rd at the EC ITT in 2019 (short and flat) behind Remco and Asgreen, while beating riders like Ganna and Kung for example. He's been actually a slight disappointment with Jumbo so far. It was only a matter of time for him to show something and he delivered today (well almost).

I was actually disappointed in Bennett's performance. He can do a good TT on his day, but today he lost some time to many GC contenders I thought he is a better time-trialist of.

It's not that they don't have the ability to do a great result, but for all them three to have it click like this on the same day, when I wouldn't have rated any of them among the top 3 favourites for this, is very surprising to me.

 

[TJV-SK]

Interesting opinions here. As I work for the team I like to share some insights how this process works for us.

First of all, the UCI regulation states that the national union has to approve the national champion jersey design. Some unions are very strict, others aren't too bothered.

We always listen to the riders opinion as he's most of the time incredibly proud to be the champion of his country. Next to that we have to make sure that the interests of our team and our partners are covered as well.

Please bear in mind that a main sponsor of a cycling team has two main rights:

• Naming rights
• Coloring rights

And take into consideration that we as a team want that a rider is recognizable as a member of our team for the TV audience, but also for our coaches watching the race on TV, for our soigneurs providing bottles along the road and last but not least for the rider himself and his teammates. Amund Grøndahl Jansen, George Bennett and even Dylan Groenewegen experienced this already. Missing bottles, being bumped out of our train etc. are things that happened.

Now back to Primoz, this was the official champions jersey when Primoz won the race last year:

As it's important for our team that Primoz is recognizable as member of the team and the main color of Jumbo's biggest competitor (Albert Heijn) in The Netherlands is (light) blue, we decided to swap the upper part (light blue) for our yellow. Could you imagine a sponsor paying a lot of money to have naming and coloring rights and then have the #1 rider of the world in your team riding in the colors of your main competitor? Or having the #1 rider in your team missing important bottles or is 'overseen' by his teammates?

Then the Triglav (three mountains) remain in the Slovenian colors, but Primoz thought it would look like the French champion because they are in that order from left to right.

To resolve that issue we included the Slovenian flag in a band around the chest and back. This could not be too wide, because otherwise the sponsor logos would drop to his belly. Please notice that all sponsor logo's are just in black and white to create a 'clean' jersey without too much interference of other colors.

Primoz, the team and our sponsors are happy with the result. Normally our champions always stick to the regular black bibshorts, but Primoz will soon wear a dark blue one.

So in the end we basically changed two parts of the 'official' champions jersey and the Slovenian union was fine with that:

• swapping the light blue for yellow
• in stead of the colored 'Triglav' we included a Slovenian band around the jersey

I hope you guys like the insight of this process for a team like us.

 

[Netserk]

Thank you for the explanation, SK.

 

[bajbar]

Primoz, the team and our sponsors are happy with the result. Normally our champions always stick to the regular black bibshorts, but Primoz will soon wear a dark blue one.

This part got me slightly confused. I have seen him wear blue bib shorts (on Instagram while in Gilbert's bike store in Monaco). But he never used them in a race. And it seems unlikely he will wear them any time soon, seeing that he is not going to do the national road race, thus not being a national champion anymore...

Unless he plans to wear the blue shorts with the new black and grey TDF jersey... he does seem to have affinity for MANY colors at the same time (see: Roglič in green/yellow/blue/black aka. Ninja Turtle Roglič)

 

[Logic-is-your-friend]

...
Could you imagine a sponsor paying a lot of money to have naming and coloring rights and then have the #1 rider of the world in your team riding in the colors of your main competitor?
...

Thanks for explaining the process and how the design comes to be, who decides and how a consensus is reached between parties.

But as for your question, there is a long and rich history of famous national champions wearing their flags, that have nothing (or little) in common with the kit of their sponsors. So yes, i could imagine that. Boonen wearing full black/yellow/red which came much closer to Lotto, than it did the kit of QuickStep. Two years ago, half the DQT team was wearing a full national kit. Morkov, Asgreen, Alaphilippe, Viviani, Jungels... no colors were replaced with blue iirc. I also don't think i agree that DQT is the main rival of TJV, especially not in the races where Roglic rides. That would be either UAE or Ineos, unless you were referring to the latter. By that argument you could scratch any color off your list, there's always a color in use by any of the other teams, which you could call a direct competitor.

Also, what happens when a TJV rider becomes EU or world champion? It was my understanding that you didn't get any say in it, and that those sponsor rights aren't as absolute as you say they are.

Anyway, good for TJV, Roglic, the sponsors and the Slovenian union all agreed on the design and if everybody is happy, all the better. But it certainly is possible for a sponsor to agree to different colors, even when it concerns a high profile rider.

 

[eric_vv]

I also don't think i agree that DQT is the main rival of TJV, especially not in the races where Roglic rides.

He's not talking about DQT being the main rival to TJV, but Albert heijn being the main rival for Jumbo in the Dutch market. They are the 2 biggest supermarket chains in the Netherlands. AH has light blue branding, where Jumbo is obviously yellow.

 

[Logic-is-your-friend]

He's not talking about DQT being the main rival to TJV, but Albert heijn being the main rival for Jumbo in the Dutch market. They are the 2 biggest supermarket chains in the Netherlands. AH has light blue branding, where Jumbo is obviously yellow.

Ok, that went right past me. Sorry.

Still, the point stands though. Plenty of sponsors don't go checking if a national kit has colors of their market rivals. Albert Heijn is famous in the Netherlands, but i don't think they are that big in the rest of Europe? I think they've opened the branch in Belgium since a few years, but other than that? Maybe Denmark? Anyway, i think every cycling fan knows AH isn't sponsoring a WT team.

 

[Sciatic]

He's not talking about DQT being the main rival to TJV, but Albert heijn being the main rival for Jumbo in the Dutch market. They are the 2 biggest supermarket chains in the Netherlands. AH has light blue branding, where Jumbo is obviously yellow.

Indeed, and the explanation about the colors really makes sense when I think about the thousands (or tens of thousands) of euros that big companies spend on consultants for their branding, including the specific color selection!