A tier list for national pride and questionable graphic design

There is a brief, beautiful period every June when the carefully curated corporate identities of the WorldTour are thrown into a vexillological blender. It is a time of great patriotic struggle, yes, but more importantly, it is a time of profound aesthetic anxiety. For twelve months, a select few riders become walking embodiments of a graphic design compromise, their torsos a battleground between national identity and a team sponsor who really, really likes the colour teal.

This is not a celebration of athletic achievement. This is a ruthless audit of sartorial success. We are here to rank the new class of national champions' jerseys not by the watts that won them, but by their visual cohesion, their clashing potential, and their overall contribution to the peloton's delicate ecosystem of colour. We convene the emergency meeting of the Committee for Pelotonic Harmony.

S-Tier: Sublime Integration

These are not merely jerseys; they are manifest destiny. The flag and the kit were always meant to be together, two souls finding each other across a crowded peloton. The result is so natural it feels like a pre-ordained special edition.

Célia Gery (France, FDJ-SUEZ): This is the platonic ideal, the gold standard. The French Tricolore is, helpfully, composed of the exact same blue, white, and red that form the DNA of FDJ-SUEZ. You could argue they had an unfair advantage; we do not care.

The brief was to integrate the national colours, and in this case, it’s like asking a fish to integrate with water. The jersey doesn’t shout “I am the French champion”; it confidently murmurs “Bien sûr.” A masterpiece of patriotic convenience.

A-Tier: Admirable Accommodation

A solid, respectable effort. These jerseys show that with a little care and a modicum of design restraint, you can serve two masters. The flag is respected, the sponsors are legible, and the rider doesn't look like they lost a fight with a paintball gun.

Filippo Ganna (Italy TT, Ineos Grenadiers): Ineos Grenadiers kits are vessels of ruthless efficiency: black, orange, and stark, designed to convey a sense of serious, data-driven business. Adding the flamboyant Italian Tricolore could have been a disaster, like serving limoncello at a corporate board meeting. And yet, it works.

The clean, central green-white-red panel on the all-black skinsuit is powerful. It’s a statement of intent: I am here to do a job, but with a whisper of theatricality. It is the Pininfarina of national champ skinsuits – controlled passion.

B-Tier: Benign Coexistence

These jerseys are... fine. They exist. They fulfill the contractual obligation of representing a nation without causing any real offense or, let's be honest, any real excitement. The kit and the flag have agreed to a peaceful but distant separation, like a couple sleeping in separate rooms.

Dominika Włodarczyk (Poland, UAE Team ADQ): The Polish flag is a gift to graphic designers: two horizontal bars, white and red. It is simple, elegant, and hard to mess up. UAE Team ADQ’s kit, meanwhile, is a gentle, multicoloured sunrise gradient.

The result of their union is perfectly acceptable. The red and white bands sit across the chest, sponsors sit on top, and the team's gentle waves continue on the sleeves. It’s a polite handshake of a jersey where nobody is fighting, but nobody is particularly inspired, either.

C-Tier: Chaotic Clash

Here we enter the glorious, unholy mess. These are the jerseys where the colours scream at each other from across the spectrum. They are an assault on the senses, a triumph of contractual obligation over basic colour theory. We respect the chaos, even as we shield our eyes.

Jonathan Milan (Italy, Lidl-Trek): Oh, Jonny. The man is a charismatic force of nature, and now he is forced to wear a charismatic disaster. The Italian Tricolore is a proud combination of green, white, and red; the Lidl-Trek kit is a primary-coloured festival of blue, yellow, and red.

When you smash them together, you get all of the colours at once. The green stripe fights the blue torso, the red stripe gets confusingly close to the sponsor’s red, and the yellow logos buzz around like angry bees. It’s a jersey that looks like it’s shouting in five languages simultaneously, and it will be unmissable in the Tour de France 2024 sprints – which may be the only good thing one can say about it.

Mireia Benito (Spain, AG Insurance-Soudal): The Spanish flag’s Rojigualda is a powerful, demanding combination of red and yellow. The AG Insurance-Soudal kit is a dark base with a shimmering, rainbow-esque gradient on the shoulders that the team calls ‘Flow.’ The Spanish flag does not ‘Flow.’

It arrives, makes a statement, and expects to be the centre of attention. Placing the bold red and yellow bands onto this kit is like putting a brutalist concrete sculpture in a delicate water garden. Each element is interesting on its own; together, they are at war – a noble, fascinating, multicoloured war.

F-Tier: Forfeiture of Style

An abomination. An insult to both the flag and the sponsor. These are jerseys that suggest the designer simply gave up, or perhaps was actively hostile to the project. They are a crime against cloth.

(No jerseys from the current class have yet descended to these depths. This is, we should note, a good year for pelotonic harmony. But we keep this tier open as a warning. The season is long, and there is always the potential for a mid-season kit update to commit a late-arriving atrocity.)

So the champions have been crowned, their new liveries assigned. For the next year, they will carry the colours of their nation, sometimes in glorious harmony, sometimes in a state of visual shrieking. It is their burden to bear. We, the committee, will be watching. And judging.