Why is it considered wanky to wear sky kit

CapriciousZephyr you nailed
CapriciousZephyr you nailed it and the ONCE jersey is here:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=111066838458&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:GB:1123
I have the very same sitting on my shelf for the sunshine. I also cycled all the way from Manchester to Chester in 1999 to pick up the black TDF version and buy my first ever road kit. On a mountain bike it took 10 hours. I have no idea who on ONCE raced clean or not, I just wanted to be in yellow.

I am amazed this thread is still going! but it seem the ‘wear what you want or what inspires you’ are clearly in the majority on the road and on this forum. Maybe the naysayers have good reasons (and I am no fan of Murdoch) but there are definitely some that are snobs, you know who you are.
Take a look at the Funicular climb video and you will see all kinds of kit, pro teams, clubs, plain, bmx baggies, skinsuit and good old hoodies. They all rock and the variety adds to the gaiety of the nation. Get yourself down to a sportive and you might beat a few Sky guys but there will be someone else with Fizik written on his arse disappearing in to the distance leaving you in the dust.

Pretty sure that when I go
Pretty sure that when I go out in my Vo2 kit I get more space on the roads.

Simon E wrote:This is not a

Simon E wrote:

This is not a pro rider. He was wearing a Sky jersey in local club ’10’ last night:

Would you tell him to his face that he looks wanky?

It is not the jersey that makes the guy look funny, the proportions of the bike looks like a pennyfathing. And the 80’s helmet with the cap under it has to go.

It seems I have been sticking to Rule 17 very closely without knowing it. I have always had team kits but must have the matching shorts and socks and mitts and long sleeved jersey, etc. It is a very expensive hobby; but red Saeco or blue Gerolsteiner shorts get you noticed.

I seldom see anyone else on the road who is wearing anything else but a plain jersey with black short, so if you want to be anonymous good for you. I too don’t like the mahoosive Sky logo on the kit, but if I saw someone in matching Sky kit I would at least know they think they look fly in their kit and I am all for that.

A wise man once said ‘Collars and cuffs; they’ve gotta match, gotta match.’

I found the picture of the
I found the picture of the individual that was posted to be a little cruel. He obviously enjoys the sport and has worked hard to get his kit and bike up to a standard to enable him to compete. If he is into cycling there is a strong chance he reads this site or will stumble across it in the future. I know I would be gutted and annoyed to know that others are publicly making fun or laughing at me for the who world to see just because he has chosen to buy a specific design on cycling top and because of his appearance.

I find a lot on here are ‘more holy than thou’. Opinion is good, cruelty is not!
Shame on lots of you![/quote]

Exactly what I thought on reading this thread.

I hope it was his first 10 and he did a 22:00, discovered he had a massive talent for TTing, went on to win a national title, then turned up at his next club 10 deliberately looking as wanky as possible and put three minutes into the second placed rider, then rode home into the sunset laughing to himself without bothering to check the result board.

Charlie96 wrote:Does no one

Charlie96 wrote:

Does no one ride in their club colours? Looks way better than anything you’ll buy in a shop!

+1. Even when not in full club kit I use the club gilet.

How to look non-wanky in
How to look non-wanky in someone else’s kit:
wearing a CCCP vest and No. 5,
Mr Steve Ovett.

Municipal Waste

Municipal Waste wrote:

Charlie96 wrote:

Does no one ride in their club colours? Looks way better than anything you’ll buy in a shop!

All the clubs in my area are full of idiots, that’s why.

We had a brief spate of some
We had a brief spate of some people wearing their uniforms in a slightly slovenly way on my old school softball team many years ago. Our coach laid down the law and boiled it down to this: “If you look good, you feel good; if you feel good, you play good.” (He appreciated that it’s sometimes worth sacrificing grammatical accuracy for rhetorical effect.)

Applying this maxim to cycling, and acknowledging that everyone has their own individual sense of style, one could rephrase this as: “If you think you look good, you feel good; if you feel good, you ride good, or at least enjoy it more.” (I accept that I don’t have such a good turn of phrase.)

That about sums it up for me. Wearing something I consider nice, in looks, feel, function, whatever, makes me feel good. It makes me more likely to get on my bike and have a better time while I’m on it. Someone else might not agree that what I’m wearing looks good, but I don’t go riding to get others’ approval of my fashion sense. I imagine everyone I see on a bike has made a choice about what clothes to buy and then wear (pros excepted, of course, but I don’t think I see any of them around), so one has to assume they like it. Why anyone feels they need to criticise someone else’s taste, particularly directly to them when out riding, is beyond me. Are people still so pitifully juvenile that they feel the need to derive satisfaction from ridiculing someone else? On the odd occasion, I might let someone know I admire their jersey or bike, or, as happened some months ago, remark that they’re commuting on the same old mtb as I am. But go out of my way to be negative to someone? That’s pretty twisted.

I loved the anecdote about the three-year-old and his Superman shirt. It’s wonderful for adults sometimes still to be able to tap into that childlike exuberance, and if it takes pulling on a rainbow-striped jersey to imagine you’re Mark Cavendish, or a Sky jersey so you can pretend to be Brad Wiggins, or a GB top to picture yourself as Laura Trott, I really don’t mind. If the fat guy in his polka-dot jersey is panting for breath at the side of the road half-way up the climb, so what? Donning that jersey might have been the thing that gave him the mental strength to get that far in the first place.

Would I go around in a world champion’s jersey myself? Probably not (although having written all this out, I’m less sure of that now!). I’ve never had much objection to the idea of wearing a yellow, polka-dot, pink, etc. jersey, though. I don’t believe they get worn officially outside of the competition of which they are a part, and it’s pretty obvious whether a cyclist is in the middle of riding a grand tour stage or not.

And I, too, really liked the ONCE logo; I even have a quick look on the ‘bay every now and then to see if one of their jerseys is available, to make a change from my old Telekom one.