Trek just rebranded its mountain bike teams to look like its new fishy energy drink sponsor. Finn Iles and the Specialized Gravity Team are pushing canned sea food. Remco Evenepoel is celebrating Pizza Hut Belgium’s birthday. The holiday season is serving up some weird food sponsors for cycling.
This, it turns out, is nothing new. Cycling’s always had rotating cast of snackable sponsors that wouldn’t necessarily be appetising mid-race. Here’s a brief, but not exhaustive list of some of the odder edible endorsements, from pescatarian practicality to luxury aprés.
And, just a note, we’re leaving out the list of booze sponsors that make a splash at podium time. UCI forbids athletes from promoting alcohol (and OnlyFans), but is fine with taking money from various brands for beer gardens and champagne celebrations.
Other snackable sponsors aren’t so weird, even if the actual endorsement takes an unexpected form. Mark Cavendish pushed pistachios, Peter Sagan supported Sunchoke/Jerusalem Artichoke brand Sunroot, Colavita and Italpasta have sponsored teams with their olive oil and pasta profits. Roland, sponsor of a team and individual athletes like Jolanda Neff, is a Swiss cookie brand.
When does recovery become aprés?
When Katusha inked a sponsorship deal with Caviar de Riofrio, the Russian squad did so under the auspicies of nutrition. I don’t know how much caviar the Spanish brand was making but, given the number of athletes and number of race days and training rides that a World Tour team covers in a year, I can’t imagine there’d have been much of the “ecologically pure sturgeon caviar” leftover for consumers to actually buy if all the riders were eating it as a recovery food.
The sauciest team on any start line
Belgian sauce brand Pauwels has roots in cycling that run deep. Pauwels remains on the jerseys of one of the larger cyclocross teams, still. Why? While it’s team riders aren’t likely to be sloshling mayo on their post-race snacks, Belgian ‘cross fans are known for their love of frites. Specifically, frites and mayo. We’re guessing a lot of that mayo is from Pauwels.
Would you like fries with that?
The other half to Pauwels, in a sense, is the short-lived Domo-Farm Frites team. The road team was formed by outspoken Belgian manager Patrick Lefevere for the 2001 season. Farm Frites is a Dutch company making potato fries for those Pauwels sauces. Domo, if you’re wondering, was a carpeting company. The team…
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