Ineos Grenadiers have today revealed their 2024 kit design, announcing with it a sponsor switch away from Bioracer in favour of the small Spanish brand Gobik, and confirming the validity of speculation that was sparked after Egan Bernal accidentally leaked photos of what appeared to be a new kit on his Instagram account last week.
Described merely as a “long-term partnership”, there is no set duration to the partnership agreement, and it will see Gobik supply the British outfit with all on-bike racing apparel.
Despite the sponsor switch, the Ineos Grenadiers DNA remains largely unchanged. The jersey bears a strong resemblance to designs seen in recent years, with the orange tones from the 2023 kit paired with a horizontal fade-to-black design not dissimilar to the vertical fade used in 2020.
It marks the third kit supplier in four years for the team, who also saw a big management shakeup recently after they switched from Castelli to the Belgian brand Bioracer in 2021. Again, there was no set end date to that partnership, and the two sides looked set for a long-term partnership, working together closely on specific items including both Dan Bigham and Filippo Ganna’s Hour Record kit. But the two sides parted ways after just two years, and it appears the decision came from Bioracer, rather than the team.
It comes amid a “scaling down” of sponsorship commitments from Bioracer after a challenging few years.
“As the post-covid situation has challenged not just us but our whole industry, we took hard decisions to strengthen our business,” read a statement from the brand. “That meant a revision of our operational costs, capacity and with that scaling down our sponsorship engagements as well.”
The statement continued to explain that the decision was taken “in close collaboration” with the team, and the parting of ways was described as “amicable.” Despite this, Cyclingnews understands that Bioracer will continue to work with Team Uno X.
Gobik, meanwhile, has seen its fair share of movement in the past few years too. The brand was founded in 2010 and has already worked with three different WorldTour teams since.
In 2023, the brand sponsored Movistar, taking over from Alé. Before that, it worked closely with UAE Team Emirates for two years, claiming a Tour de France win with Tadej Pogačar in its first season in the men’s WorldTour. It concurrently worked with Women’s WorldTeam FDJ Suez in 2022 and 2023.
Naturally,…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CyclingNews RSS Feed…