Bahrain Victorious has a new limited edition jersey for the Vuelta
Bahrain Victorious has a new limited edition jersey for the Vuelta
Cast your mind back to the start of the Tour de France. Feels a while back, doesn’t it?
For Bahrain Victorious, it’s been a busy few weeks: they picked up three stage wins at the Tour, were the subjects of a police raid midway through, bounced back with an overall victory for Mikel Landa at Vuelta a Burgos, and scored a sprint win at Tour de Pologne. BIG few weeks.
But before all of that, the reason all eyes were on Bahrain Victorious was a little stunt that they pulled at the Tour de France teams presentation.
There, the team wore a special limited edition jersey, designed to draw attention to the global obesity and diabetes epidemic. The team then destroyed the jersey – because, ‘art’ – and auctioned an NFT (the digital rights to ownership) of a picture of the jersey as a fundraiser.
If I was to, hypothetically, present the situation as a pie chart, it might look something like this:
Well, folks: Bahrain Victorious has just announced a limited edition new jersey for the Vuelta a España, and it has … a bit going on.
The team, in conjunction with its apparel partner Ale, has taken elements of its normal team kit – which has been uncharitably described as “a cursed hellscape of a bicycle jersey” – and merged it with the Tour de France crypto art one.
Does it look good? What does ‘good’ mean? Do we deem it ‘good’ to enter a hallucinatory fever dream? Is that off-centre blue/red 3D effect thing that makes your eyes hurt considered ‘good’? Do you want a lot of sobering stats about type two diabetes and the global health costs of obesity scattered across your sports clothing? Visually, do you like fossil fuel smears of smoke mixing with an oil slick? Do you like the sound of a jersey that represents the very collapse of humanity’s health and habitat?
I guess if those things are what you’re after, this is not just a very good jersey, but maybe the best ever jersey.
Unlike the Tour de France version – which existed in the real world for but a fleeting flash – you can buy this one and wear it. It’ll cost you $141 Actual American Dollars via all4cycling.com.
And what of the Tour de France NFT one? An excellent question. Someone called ‘schnorkiller’ paid 0.2 WETH tokens for it, which I am depressed to confirm actually looks like something approaching a good investment. At the time of purchase, that converted to slightly more than US$400. Now it’s worth more than US$600.
