The 2008 Team Jersey designs are percolating out. There is a trend and as Michael Jackson says “It don’t matter if your black or white” since every jersey for 2008 seems to be either black or white.
Team CSC have gone from a very cool kit design that was somewhat consitent and evolutionary to a completely different look that is strong on white. The 2008 design is different since the team switched clothing sponsors from Descente to Craft. No, not the processed cheese company with a K, but the Scandonavian company with a C known for some classy clothes.
The new design is based on a concept about teamwork. Team CSC is known for it’s teamwork and cohesion. What better way than to show something of each rider in the design itself. This idea came to the kit designer and the idea basically flowed out.
”The Team CSC 2008 uniform is a tribute to the team itself. A uniform, which represents each rider and at the same time also representing them all as one unit. The idea comes across in the new “signature pattern.” A pattern created from each individual rider’s signature in a graduation from black to white. Where black is a pattern created from all the signatures and white is an open light pattern, which enables you to see the individual signatures. In this way each rider “signs himself on” to the team and at the same time signs his commitment to Team CSC’s beliefs and values,” says Inger Tanderup Klixbull, who has also designed the team’s previous uniforms.
If you look closely below the signatures show up in the detail. Nice touch for a kit to have intricate detail on close view. From TV and far away you see the overall design, but in pictures and closeup view you get some fine details.
I am not expert designer, but I did design Maxpowercycling.com’s team kit last year and I am sending out the 2008 design. As a designer you have to take a step back and do the squint test. See what type of impression the design gives. The signatures with the black lines and random curls give off a hairy look. If you do not notice the signatures up close the design looks like clumps of pink and black hair.
The overall look is like a hairshirt that is neatly cropped.
Maybe the design needs a few more iterations to cut down the hairiness aspect and emphasize the signatures.Until then all I am thinking is that I need to get my back waxed and my legs shaved before spring.
Active.com takes a quick look into the team buses. Team CSC looks clean and modern, Scandinavian style. Stuart O’Grady’s number is up as a homage to the hurt racer. Saunier Duval seems to have a mor eluxurious bus with a built in espresso machine, various sodas on tap and a swanky second level. By contrast the Predictor Lotto bus is utilitarian. The bathroom and shower areas look like someones utitlity basement. Maybe they glossed over the cool parts.
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After the late crash on Stage 2 many racers were staying up late tending to wounds. After such a long stage and late night many of the racers felt a bit lethargic. You know the feeling you wake up sore and just don’t have the same intensity. Most of the peloton felt this way and was more than content to let a French duo go for a long breakaway while the rest of the racers took a “working vacation” day. Sometimes going slow on a bike is not too much fun especially when you end up riding for seven hours. The lethargy turned into a grueling march into Compeigne. Whether the group is riding fast or slow, it is still painful.
More painful was the heartbreaking finish for the lead four Frederik Willems, Matthieu Ladagnous, Stephane Auge, and Freddy Bichot who were working hard in the break only to watch the pack swoop by in the final few hundred meters. If they just kept it together a little longer….
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Tom Boonen was the name on everyone’s lips of potential winners as the Tour hit Belgium. Boonen managed to escape a crash and had most of his team still in tact driving a sprint train to the finish. The timing was all set except for the last leadout man Geert Steegmans who was told not to sprint until the final 200 meters because of the uphill nature of the finish. The last second sprint was too much for Boonen to come around giving the domestique a rare moment to shine. Quick Step can take solace in a One-Two home soil victory. Boonen seemed just as happy for Steegman’s win as Steegman’s himself. So Quick Step should not mind too much of the last secong blunder. For a few moments it looked as if the Yellow Jersey might be up for grabs as a crash on narrow road looked to have injured several racers and held back most of the peloton. However, the whole group was marked as finishing at the same time since the last kilometer rule was used.
One by one racers limped into the finish with Alexandre Vinokourov signing the cross on himself thanking the man upstairs for saving him from getting injured. Not that God cares more about a Tour victory or Super Bowl Touchdown or any of those things. Vino is happy that he escaped one dangerous moment unscathed. In the first week of the Tour you take each day as it comes and try to stay away from crashes and try not to lose any time before you hit the mountains.
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(AP Photo/Michel Spingler)
The prediction here last night was of a Fabian Cancellara repeat. The only repeat was that a CSC riders rode everyone off his wheel to win. This time the man in the CSC kit was Stuart O’Grady. The Aussie was in an early breakaway probably doing the work of setting things up for his teammate. O’Grady was able to keep ahead and counter attack when he was caught. He entered the Roubaix velodrome with over a 50 second lead which allowed him to comfortably take the lap and one half around and savor the victory.
Boonen looked stronger on the day, but could not do much to get away and catch O’Grady. Quick-Step is suffering a poor year for performance in Classics. The team is under-performing this year.
Juan Antonio Flecha gets a place on the podium again after missing out last year.
Fabio Baldato the old man of Lampre was in the mix for a while and finished in tenth place just behind Cyclocrosser Enrico Franzoi.
He is known as Mr. 60 Percent in some circles and was a member of the notriously doped up Gewiss-Bianchi teamof the 90s. It was the high flying 90s and who wasn’t on something? But the past is the past and Bjarne just wants to move on. This is just one more reason why cyclist from the 90s and any other time should get some type of amnesty.
“I have never had a particularly close relation with Jef d’Hont and he has no validation for the allegations he is making. There will always be some one out there trying to make money by talking about the past and in my opinion that is probably, what he is trying to do here,” Riis said. “This is probably not the first nor the last time these kinds of stories surface. To me, it’s all in the past and I do not wish to be held accountable every time some one finds it interesting to bring up some ten-year-old story. I truly believe the future is much more important than the past. I want to be judged on the work I’m doing with my team today, and the results we achieve – that is what’s important to me.”
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(Levi warming up from flickr)
The Tour of California is the dominant cycling news at the moment. The second edition of the race is a mix of excitement and controversy. There was great action on stage 3 with breaks happening all day, and a great victory by Jens Voight who was in most of those breaks. Small controversy arose with the Stage 1 crash and the decision to neutralize the race since most of the field was caught up in a freak crash.
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CSC is putting some of its technology on display at the Tour of California. Several riders will wear an OmniLocation device that can track the racers in real time. As WIRED News reports the device is more than a GPS:
“This is more than just GPS,” says CSC’s Identity Labs chief technologist Dan Munyan. “This is object field tracking. We want to be able to focus on a field of objects in motion, looking not only at where they are on the route, but also where they are relative to each other.
“It’s much cooler than the nüvi in your car telling you when to turn left and right,” he says.
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Black appears to be the new blue for 2007. Team kit designs for the pro peloton seem to follow common trends as each team has their own variation on a popular theme. The previoulsy trend was a blue team kit that started getting popular in the 1990s when cyclist realized they did not always have to wear black shorts. For a while it seemed as though just about every team sported a mostly blue colored team kit. It was tough to tell some teams apart. The most confusing moment came in the 2005 Paris-Roubaix when Juan Antonio Flecha (Fassa Bortolo), George Hincapie (Discovery Channel) and Tom Boonen (Quick-Step) where in a final break away. Their respective team kits looked so similar that it was tough to tell the riders apart from the helicopter. Now the team kit designers love affair with blue has come to an end as black seems to be the new popular color.
With Caisse D’Epargne and Team CSC daring to sport the almost all black look, many teams are following through and going dark too.
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“We are not looking for another leader, we are already strong” explains Bjarne Riis manager of Team CSC. After the departure of Ivan Basso due to the fallout of Operation Puerto Team CSC was left without a main man for the Grand Tours. Bjarne is not really looking for Ivan’s replacement.
Carlos Sastre had a very good year and I am convinced that Frank Schleck is the man of the future.
Bjarne Riis will be counting on a four pronged approach next year with Sastre, Schleck, Cancellara and Voight being leaders for various races throughout the year.
Frank Schleck had a very good 2006 winning the Amstel Gold Race and the L’Alpe D’Huez stage in the Tour de France. Fabian Cancellara won Paris Roubaix and the World Time Trial Championship. Carlos Sastre found himself in the unexpected role of leader for the Toru de France and finished fourth. He followed that up with another fourth in the Vuelta while riding all three Grand Tours. Jens Voight looked unstoppable for a stretch winning just about every race in site. So this core of riders are probably balanced enough to keep CSC near the front of the peloton.
