In a glass-walled office, high up on the umpteenth floor of the HQ of Gobik, Ineos Grenadiers’ kit supplier, a hotshot designer is smiling at their computer screen. “We’ve done it,” the designer says, slapping their hand down onto their thigh. “We’ve broken the internet.” But at what cost?
The notifications keep counting up, like the score on a boxing machine. Together, Gobik and Ineos have dealt the knockout blow. The new kit is the most talked about thing in cycling; fans are sharing images across every social media; no, you don’t get any UCI points for fashion, but it’s a big win for the sponsors, whose logos are everywhere.
As Jeff Goldblum’s character says in Jurassic Park, “your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should”, and from the uproar online, anyone would have thought Ineos and Gobik had just built a terrifying theme park of murderous dinosaurs.
“Wow, that is truly awful,” one X user responded to the kit announcement, deploying an adjective that would come up again and again. “Unbelievably bad,” another said. Tens of others chimed in: “Worst kit ever, and that’s quite an accomplishment.”
On Instagram, the same feelings were echoed – “horrifying”, “an absolute crime”, “G [Geraint Thomas] is retired on time”. While on Facebook, users were equally as unforgiving – “white shorts are a big no no,” one said.
One Facebook user spelled out the issue plainly: “Whenever a race is dirty or wet your riders will all look like they’ve crapped their pants. They’ll definitely stand out, and not in a good way.” Commenters on Cycling Weekly’s Instagram post were more euphemistic about it: “With those shorts, they’ll be streaks ahead,” wrote one. Another simply said: “marginal stains.”
However, among all the green-faced, vomiting emojis, some fans leapt to Ineos’s defence. “Bold design, should make the riders easier to spot,” said one X user. Another praised the kit as being “clean and simple with a good colour palette – it will stand out in the blue peloton… shame people prefer the dullness of kits like Groupama or Decathlon.”
“Quite honestly, best kit in years,” said another.
As always with the internet, it was a tale of two sides. Through it all, there was one comment that summed up the split in opinion best: “It’s actually so bad it could become legendary.”
This, perhaps, is where the legacy of the light grey shorts will lie. People loved to hate AG2R’s brown bibs, until they were replaced with a more widely accepted black, and almost instantly the revisionist nostalgia took hold.
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