Team Sky came into being in 2010, with the expressed intention of producing a British winner of the Tour de France within five years and of being successful in the big events without resorting to illegal methods.
The kit was an adidas creation – but was it was actually made by Italian cycling clothing firm MOA-Nalini and so, essentially, the German company’s logo was there as a sponsor rather than a manufacturer.
After a number of different colours were trialled, they settled on a primarily black jersey with a blue stripe across the front while, on the back, a white panel had a vertical blue line.
It was, in one sense, representative of the blue line on the outside of a velodrome but, also, the lines that the team would have to cross – and not cross – in order to achieve their goals.
By Team Sky’s third year of existence, that line had widened to a stripe in order to accommodate a poem that made the symbolism clear to anybody who had failed to pick up on it: “This is the line / The line between winning and losing / Between failure and success / Between good and great / Between dreaming and believing / Between convention and innovation / Between head and heart / It’s a fine line / It challenges everything we do / And we ride it every day.”
The placement of the manifesto on the middle of the three rear pockets meant that, in practice, it was covered by riders’ race numbers but it clearly had the desired effect as 2012 saw Bradley Wiggins win the Tour de France for Team Sky – they were two years ahead of schedule.
Further British winners followed as Chris Froome, Wiggins’ lieutenant in 2012, won four of the next five before Geraint Thomas claimed the yellow jersey in 2018, the team’s last year known as Sky.
Trading as Team Ineos the next year – with red taking over from blue as the secondary colour – they retained their grip on the Tour as Colombian rider Egan Bernal won.
That remains their last victory in the race, though Tao Geoghegan Hart did win the Giro d’Italia in 2020 with Bernal successful the year after that.
