Another 'wicked smart' decision from marketing centraal

Black Blue and White.  It'll sell like hot cakes.

Hey cafesupporters... as if you needed more evidence that those in a position to make decisions within professional cycling don't have a clue, here's the latest gem.

Today's presentation of the new kit from the team 'formerly known as Rabobank.'

Blanco Giant?  

A giant blank all right...

Blanco, Black and Blue is more like it.

Ta da!!!    You got it cycling fans, another team kit in a peloton filled with 'Blanco' differentiation.   I've ranted on this before, but today's roll-out just supports my point.   They just don't get it.

Dutch corner at Alpe d'Huez?  Rabo Orange no more...  

Oranje?  Nee meer meneer. the Dutch have joined the mass of fashion-lemmings who've wisely decided that a serious professional sport is just way, waaaay better for everyone when all your participants are free to wear the same colors.  When you can't tell the teams apart.

"But blue and white is in this year... it SELLS..." says the marketing genius from behind his occular jewerly and tailored suit...

"Who'll pay $100 for a turquoise Astana, or lime green Liquigas jersey?  Who wants to wear that?"

Overheard in Holland:
"Tacx went with Blue White & Black.
It sold well for them didn't it?"

They're all the same, cause that's what sells identikit to supporters.  A small example of what we get when a sport lets commercial interests override sporting ones.

They tell us cycling is 'moving forward', becoming a 'modern sport', 'making progress.'   Assertion unsupported by evidence from where I'm sitting in the cheap seats.  Team kit color is a little decision perhaps, but a visible one that speak volumes about the cumulative effect of commercially oriented decisions:  Adverse sport quality.

Like when you squint, and every team kit looks about the same.

2013.

"Chase him down....no not him you chowdah-head, the guy in blue... no no no... not him.. the one with the the black shorts... NO! the one with the white...white back, not sides..."

Black blue and white clad radio controlled riders.  Behind dark helmets and glasses.  Hiding out in team buses till the start.  Spinning safe platitudes to the media afterward.  Then jetting off to China and Qatar to race on empty roads.  The future of 'Gran Ciclismo.'

Let's flashback 50 years.  To 1963:

1963 Tour de France peloton.   Color as a differentiator. 

I think people in charge were smarter back in the those days.   There were a lot fewer of them for one thing. And they definitely had more common sense.  

All that time looking at digital screens and sending social media messages and tweets must be short-circuiting their brains.

Can we change cycling now?   Please?