Hot Looking Cannondale, Rapha, and Palace Collab Kits and Gear for the 2022 Tour
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With the 2022 Tour de France kicking off on Friday, July 1, teams are starting to show off their new kits and Tour-specific paint schemes. But the Cannondale, Rapha, and Palace Skateboards collaboration might be the most innovative one yet and is guaranteed to stand out in the pack.
In the men’s Tour, Team EF Education–EasyPost will be on the brightly colored Cannondale bikes with kits to match. While on the women's side, EF Education-Tibco-SVB will be rocking the same bikes and kits during the women’s Tour de France Femmes. The nineties-style bold graphics and bright designs this year aren’t just fun: There are Easter eggs hidden throughout the kit that highlight important themes in cycling—women’s cycling in particular.
The women’s gender symbol is placed prominently on the bike frame and takes up the entire front of the jersey, along with cartoon dragons and an airbrushed hot pink, white, purple and blue paint scheme that calls to mind t-shirts that you’d buy on the boardwalk at the shore in the mid-nineties. Both the men’s and women’s teams will race with the same aesthetic, with minor differences in team-specific branding, as a show of solidarity.
Palace Skateboards is no stranger to cycling collaborations: The brand worked with Team EF and Rapha for last year’s Tour, as well as the Giro d’Italia in 2020, and collaborated with Cannondale on a helmet design in 2021. As Rapha explained, Palace Skateboard is so removed from cycling that the designers can’t help but create something unique.
"In a sport renowned for its lengthy rule book and chaotic calendar, we’ve shone a light on new faces, and unorthodox races,” Rapha said in 2020. "But for a truly fresh perspective on the sport, we’ve teamed up with a company that is alien to cycling’s aesthetic, oblivious to its origins, and untrained in its traditions."
Cannondale worked with Rapha and Palace Skateboards to ensure that this year's design was consistent across the bikes—special edition Cannondale SuperSix Evo, SystemSix, and SuperSlices—and the kits for Le Tour. The bold branding celebrates the return of the Tour de France Femmes after a 33-year hiatus and amplifies that women deserve the same exposure and rewards that the men’s field has long enjoyed.
"The changeout is our way of celebrating women in sport and the Tour de France Femmes," said Jonathan Vaughters, the CEO of the EF Education-EasyPost team. "It’s wild, it’s bold, and it’s an exciting time for the cycling world and long overdue. It’s an honor for our team to race in this kit in advance of the women’s Tour de France. Both races will be incredible, and we’ll fight to keep this kit and its celebratory message at the front of the race this July."
Love the look? Good news: the Cannondale bikes in this paint scheme will eventually be available for sale, as will a limited run of the Rapha jerseys and bibs (plus a toned down ‘training’ version for those who stopped wearing neon in 1998). Get them as soon as they drop, these will sell out in minutes!
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