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Rapha Bradley Wiggins 54.5 t-shirtRapha bringing out Wiggins Hour commemorative t-shirt - and how they made jersey they gave him
A shade under 24 hours after he broke it, Rapha have confirmed that they are bringing out a t-shirt to celebrate Sir Bradley Wiggins smashing the UCI Hour Record in London yesterday evening. While they aren’t accepting orders yet, you can register your details on their website to know when it’s in stock.
Costing £25 and available in sizes running from XS to XXL, the black cotton t-shirt has the Team Wiggins roundel, plus the numbers 54.5 – rounding up to the nearest tenth of a kilometre the distance the World and Olympic time trial champion rode in 60 minutes at Lee Valley VeloPark yesterday evening.
Wiggins himself got a rather more bespoke souvenir within minutes of his record-breaking ride – a long-sleeve Japanese silk version, together with rainbow bands on the cuffs and the distance to the nearest metre in gold embroidered thread on the front.
The Rapha team had practised their skills beforehand in what they term their own “time trial” – here’s an early version reflecting the 55km-plus Wiggins hoped to ride, but missed out on, almost certainly as a result of the atmospheric conditions over east London yesterday.
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Picture credit: Rapha
The made-to-measure, one-off piece was hand-stitched by Rapha seamstresses Carla Rees and Sharon Stokes, the latter helped by the company’s product development manager Jennifer Choi in putting the finishing touches to it as Wiggins’ neared the end of his ride.
“We had to be meticulous in our preparation and set-up beforehand to make sure everything went right – the pressure on us was pretty intense,” said Choi.
“We had a table in the middle of the velodrome, upon which we laid out the jersey, all of the gold numbers and ten sewing needles with black thread all ready to go. We were both very nervous as the hour went on, and had to use baby wipes to stop our sweaty palms!
“With a few minutes left we knew that he was going to get the record, so began stitching on the first number 5, gluing it in place first. We had marked out beforehand in red thread where the numbers should be stitched to keep them aligned.
“Each big number took 1 minute 18 seconds for Sharon to stitch on and with just over a minute to go we used the final prediction on the big screen to sew on the number 4 for 54km. Thank God he didn’t speed up or slow down.”
You can find out more about the making of that unique jersey on the Rapha website, and can notify your interest in the commemorative t-shirt there too.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
Latest Comments
- Rendel Harris 14 min 35 sec ago
If you bothered looked at the link you would see that it is not one of their reflective jackets, it is fluorescent with only a small number of...
- Owd Big 'Ead 6 hours 43 min ago
You need to get out of Derby then. Go somewhere else, because while not perfect, Derby is streets ahead of the vast majority of places I've lived...
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Driver injured after car flips onto its roof https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy0g9rpp8x9o
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I don't think he wants to talk about it...
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Ach, dinnae fret...
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- eburtthebike 10 hours 5 min ago
£100 bonus.
- chrisonabike 10 hours 13 min ago
To be fair if this is our usual revenant they've got form in rewriting history...
- chrisonabike 10 hours 15 min ago
"At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them ... we have to because some numpty destroyed the roll of names"....
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29 comments
I don't want one of those t-shirts, so I won't buy one.
If you would like one, buy one.
Really not sure what the issue is with Rapha and their constant detractors. Bet they all have an iPhone though.
I think the kids of today would refer to that T-shirt as totally "wack".
Errr....the kids of 2003 maybe.
£25 for a tee isnt too bad at all. There are far cheaper brands selling far more expensive ones.
My only concern is if Dowsett does it again in the next few months !
And all this talk of pressure- I don't recall Boardman or Obree ever worrying or discussing it for their attempts ? Do we need an UCI ruling on permitted values - like athletics have for tailwinds?
I'm not sure that's correct. You've always had riders, including Moser and Merckx, attempting the record at altitude to gain the advantage there and didn't Obree achieve the hour record on his second attempt when he did it the day after in the cooler air of an early morning?
It may not have been discussed as much but I think it was always a factor/consideration. I could, with the cooler air and altitude, be confusing to wildly different things. Hopefully someone with a more solid scientific knowledge will correct me shortly if that's the case.
When he pulled on his bespoke shirt after the ride it was inevitable that Rapha would be producing a replica. Shame it's not got the record distance but it's a good idea. £25 for a Rapha product is excellent, I might invest in one.
It's within 0.05% of the distance, that's pretty close...
£25 is pretty standard for a tshirt these days and actually quite cheap for Rapha.
It's also infinitely better than many tshirts these days because it actually celebrates something instead of just trying to be humourous or smart.
It may be a long time before cycling has an icon like Wiggo and I for one will be looking to get one....... if they ever get them back in stock
rounding down surely, he did 54.526km.
I'm just waiting for Rapha to release a cycle helmet. That should sent this website into meltdown
There are some sensitive people out there, probably those who are 25 quid lighter are most sensitive!
Nah, just tired of the same whiny bollocks every time one of a few keywords pop up in a story.
Looks quite cool actually. Although 666 would have been cooler.
Noticed a rider at the Nocturne in London the other night in one of the support races had 666 on his back; folding bike race possibly (insert 'Devil's work' reference). Seemed to make it through unscathed mind.
Creepy, I just noticed the road.cc Strava stats feed just now..
..going to resist the temptation to keeping saying 'Candyman' whilst cleaning me teeth tonight.
road.cc Strava work of you know who.png
Kerching!!!
Oh do give it a rest will you ?
Sponsor making the most of their investment, shock f***ing Horror, won't anyone think of the f***ing children!
a
and you wouldn't. Why are some people so bitter? Get out more fella!
Disappointing to hear that they didn't make the jersey's beforehand, and then get Wiggo to ride the exact distance down to the millimetre
http://ragtimecyclist.com/2015/06/08/an-hour-with-bradley-wiggins-sky-sp...
That reminded me of Brian Lara scoring a world-record 501 runs while ironically being sponsored by a jeans manufacturer that wasn't Levi - pretty much any other number would have been commercially better!
I think that was pretty much bang on 60 minutes, wasn't it?
Argh. Just shoot me now. Corrected, thanks
pedantic maybe, you go round and round for 60minutes, but your distance isn't how many laps but how far you go, Any such calculation will have a margin of error. Even the timer will have a margin of error. So did he ride for exactly 60minutes, or did he ride for almost exactly 60minutes.
I could be wrong but i think you actually ride for 60 minutes and then finish the lap you're on. the total distance is calculated as the whole number of laps within the 60 minutes, plus the fraction of the last lap using the times of the start and finish of the last lap. in which case it's more than 60 mins
They're not out of stock, they haven't made them yet. As the first paragraph says, they aren't accepting orders yet.
Obviously there is a default on their website that says 'notify me when back in stock,' but that isn't the case here.
And yet again, they are completely out of stock minutes after sending out the email....
I must admit, i bought into the whole Rapha thing.....and yes, i have seen all the debates on here!....but really? This whole 'exclusivity' thing is getting pretty tiresome now.
They know how incredibly popular both Sir Brad and his Record ride was going to be.....yet they somehow seem to have completely, accidentally, whoops, run out of stock within minutes....
I respectfully suggest that they get over themselves quite quickly...or the loyal customers who don't mind a bit of bulls@*t from them will leave them with plenty of stock in the future.
..the clue is in the massive upper case text saying COMING SOON on the website...best you buy back in...or develop the perfect predictive algorithm for likely stock demand. Rapha has been left holding a lot of Team Sky t-shirts in the past, for example when Froome pulled out of the Tour. Caution is often good business. And good business means jobs. And cycling team and event sponsorship; which means great cycling.
Yep....hands up....I didn't see or notice the Coming Soon part.
My bad...