The big change comes if you enter the arena of indoor cycle racing – this is a serious decision, and one where tenths, even hundredths of a second can mean the difference between glorious gold or loser silver – and this means totally stripped down equipment as well; fixed gear bikes, so no freewheeling, just a single gear to remove all unnecessary weight and less chance of mechanical failures! And cycling shirts, in the conventional sense, may not be good enough for track racing. They’ll be okay for building up endurance, but if you want to improve on your lap times, you should think about wearing the same gear you would use for actual racing. The indoor specialists tend to wear cycling clothing that incorporates both a cycling shirt and cycling shorts into a single skin suit. Skin suits reduce the drag that would be involved when using the baggier types of cycling shirts. This can make all the difference in a competitive event.

Olympic Champion Victoria Pendleton

All the serious contenders on the world competitive stage are wearing the one piece skin suits, as well as more aerodynamic helmets, and the bikes they ride are designed to be light and aerodynamic also. Like motor racing, a lot of thought goes into the engineering of these bikes and the riders, in order to squeeze out maximum speed and power for indoor sprint racing.

The 2008 Beijing Olympics saw the GB Team flying around the track to take a record-winning haul of cycling medals. This was possible because of the rigorous training, supreme talent, hard work and the application of the right kit, and this includes the use of the best clothing – though of course, all teams do use skin suits to grab a few hundredths of a second advantage.

One of the great success stories of 2008 was the awesome Victoria Pendleton (above, photo from Wiki), who became the Individual Olympic Women’s Sprint Champion. She was already the British and World Champion for sprint cycling for 2007 and 2008, and has achieved champion status again this year!

Perhaps the biggest name to reach wide public acclaim because of Beijing is the cycling power-house Chris Hoy. He was the first British Olympian in over a century to win three gold medals at a single tournament, winning Individual Sprint, Team Sprint and Men’s Keirin golds!

So there are great rewards to be had from doing the right training and using the right equipment and clothing. Just remember though, that these guys are really travelling when they race, and a collision can mean serious injuries. Whether you’re wearing cycling shirts or skin suits, you don’t get much protection when you hit the track at upto 70km/h, as you can see from Chris Hoy’s terrifying crash at Copenhagen in February this year. Thankfully he’s fine.

Well which races should we be looking out for? I mentioned in a previous post that the most famous road tour is the Tour de France. The other important European road races are the Giro d’Italia, the Vuelta a Espana and the Eneco Tour of Benelux.

The four main classifications, each having their own distinctive cycling shirt colors, are Overall Leader, Points Leader, Mountains Leader and Young Star (awarded to the leading under-25 rider and indicating a potential future star). Here is an overview of the colored jerseys each leader wears when participating in the major tournaments.

Tour de France

Just as a quick reminder from my previous post, the jersey colors in the Tour de France (Le Tour) are yellow for overall leader; green for the points leader; red and white polka-dots for the mountain stage leader (the King of the Mountains); and white for the young star.

Giro d’Italia

When the cycle race is in Italy – commonly called the Giro – the riders’ cycling shirts change their colors. Now the overall leader wears a pink jersey. Then it’s mauve (or cyclamen) for the points leader; green for the mountains leader; and again white for the young category leader.

Vuelta a Espana

The action has now gone to Spain and La Vuelta. The overall leader’s cycling shirt is back to yellow. The points leader however wears a blue jersey; for the mountain stages leader it’s an orange jersey; and in La Vuelta there is no jersey awarded for the under-25s leader.

Eneco Tour of Benelux

In this tour, the racing winds its way through Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The Benelux tour was devised to provide a more challenging race as the Tour of the Netherlands was deemed not to be hard enough. However the separate Tours of Belgium and Luxembourg still exist in their own rights. The overall leader in the Eneco Tour wears a red jersey; the points leader wears the blue shirt; there is no jersey award for mountain stages in the Eneco Tour; and in Benelux the yellow jersey is worn by the under-25s young star.

So remember when you get excited watching the progress of the guy in the yellow cycling shirt, make sure you are watching Le Tour or La Vuelta, because if it’s the Eneco Tour you’ll be looking at the bright young thing coming through, rather than the overall leader!

Tour de France yellow jersey

The fiftieth anniversary of the Tour de France saw the introduction of a new cycling shirt color – the green jersey, or maillot vert. This shirt gets worn by the racer with the highest number of individual points, the points being awarded for sprints at the end of each stage of the Tour. There are four different types of stage, each with its own scoring system. In order of highest points on offer, they are: flat stages; medium mountain stages; high mountain stages; and time trials. Not only are the points lower for the winning rider in each of these types of stage, but the number of riders awarded points also reduces. So in flat sprints, the first 25 racers are awarded points, the winner receiving 35; but with time trials, only the first 10 get points, with the winner awarded only 15. The wearer of the green jersey is the rider with the most cumulative points. If more than one rider has the same points total, then the number of stage wins is taken into account.

The third important cycling shirt color in Tour de France racing is white with red polka-dots, and is worn by the cyclist called the King of the Mountains. Points are given to the first to reach the peaks of certain hills and mountains along the route. The climbs are divided into categories according to steepness and duration, with the easiest numbered 4 and the hardest numbered 1 – and even climbs dubbed ‘beyond classification’. As with the green jersey system, the polka-dot jersey sees more points-winners and higher points awarded for the more difficult climbs; and on the last climb of each stage, double points are earned if the hill is classed as ‘beyond classification (hors categorie)’ as well as categories 1 and 2.

So in future, when you see these colored cycling shirts whizzing past (except perhaps for the polka-dot one!), as you watch the Tour de France, you might ponder how much sustained effort these cyclists have had to put in, on their quest to win the final yellow jersey!