It has been widespread information for a while now that Bora Hansgrohe could be welcoming Purple Bull on board as a brand new key sponsor simply earlier than the Tour de France. The Purple Bull Bora Hansgrohe sponsor launch is going down this week within the run-up to the Tour kicking off on Saturday and contains the creation of a brand new U23 staff.
New sponsors usually imply package design modifications, and sponsors as large as behemoth Purple Bull proper earlier than the world’s largest bike race undoubtedly imply new package and bike designs.
Cyclingnews has unique entry to pictures of the brand new Bora Hansgrohe race bike forward of the race. The bike’s official title is, look ahead to it, deep breath, S-Works Tarmac SL8 LTD: Purple Bull-BORA-Hansgrohe Version.
If you wish to be taught in regards to the different bikes and tools within the Tour, head to our Tour de France bikes information for a full breakdown of each staff’s machines.
In essence, this bike is a custom-painted S-Works Tarmac SL8 in a Purple Bull / Bora color scheme that is known as ‘Sticker Slap’. It is a large departure from the inexperienced color scheme we’re used to seeing at Bora and has been designed by Tom Briggs, the Lead Idea Graphic Designer at Specialised.
The bike hooked up press launch states that this specific mannequin is an ‘actual reproduction of the bike the staff will on the 20204 Tour de France’ Will probably be restricted to 500 individually numbered bikes worldwide. Worth-wise, the brand new mannequin will set you again $16,000 in order for you one (take a look at our piece on how a lot Tour de France bikes value for extra eye-watering value tags). We hope that the bike, no less than, comes with a complimentary can of Purple Bull or two.
At first look it is easy to dismiss the bike as merely ‘pearl white, with Purple Bull color accents’ however upon closure inspection, there are certainly dozens of smaller graphics hiding in plain sight. The design is made up of ‘S-Works’ and ‘Bora Hansgrohe’ and repeats. That is the ‘Sticker Slap’ design which Lead Designer Briggs expanded on;
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“The design was impressed by youth tradition and 90’s skateboarding aesthetics. The clustering of logos on boards and different objects within the type of stickers confirmed authenticity and connectedness to one thing counter-culture.”
We aren’t specialists on Skateboard tradition right here at Cyclingnews, however it appears skateboard stickers shaped part of the artwork and tradition across the sport again then. Specialised as a model has its headquarters in California the place loads of surf and skateboard tradition initially flourished and celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this yr, so will definitely have lived by a few of these occasions. The model mentions this and its ‘need to maintain innovating’ within the bikes press materials.
The bike’s spec naturally is a high one. It is fitted with the most recent Sram Purple AXS groupset and Hammerhead Karoo laptop, Roval’s Rapide CLX II Crew wheels that are additionally restricted to 1500 units. Then there’s the Roval Rapide cockpit and Specialised Turbo cotton tyres as well. Specialised additionally claims a dimension 56cm bike weighs in at 6.66kg.
We are going to quickly see if staff chief Primoz Roglic pilots the brand new bike to success within the Tour. 500 bikes worldwide make this machine a uncommon one, however additionally they characterize a extremely public big-money sponsor getting into the street biking world in a transfer which ought to be good for the Bora Hansgrohe staff and sport.
