I have an all time favourite cycle racing jersey.
It is one of the iconic designs from the continental road race teams of the halcyon 1980's era.
I clearly recall buying it in 1984 out of my hard pressed funds as an impoverished student in that hotbed of cycling, Nottingham in the English Midlands. I may have had to give up eating for a couple of days to buy it, such was it's attraction to me as new participant in competitive bike racing.
There is always one of those essentials in life that loom up but rarely coinciding with the ability to hand over cash for it.
It is a gloriously bright and striking design with numerous panels in yellow with sponsor names picked out in black, white upper and lower panels and red sleeves with contrasting white logo's.
In this case the main sponsor Kwantum Hallen Decosol was, I think, the Dutch equivalent of the B and Q Home and DIY Store in the UK so after all, pretty mundane.
The team was formed after the European season of 1983 when the dominant TI-Raleigh team split up because of longstanding tension between former world champion Jan Raas and the fascinating and colourful team leader Peter Post.
Seven cyclists followed Post to the new Panasonic-team and six cyclists joined Raas to form the Kwantum team.
The ranks of the team were expanded into a group of all-rounders to cope with the long and arduous racing calendar which ran from the early Spring Classics to the Autumn World Championships.
The mainly Dutch but also Belgian riders included Neven, Nijdam, Peeters, Prijm, Raas himself,Van der Poel, the veteran Zootemelk, Wijnands and a rarity for that era, an American, Doug Shapiro.
In their first year, the team managed to win the red jersey for intermediate sprints and one stage in the 1984 Tour de France, the Amstel Gold Race and the Dutch national road championship.
After the 1984 season, Jan Raas retired from an illustrious career as an active cyclist and became team manager. I can say that I saw him ride in one of the Kelloggs City Centre Race Series just before he hung up his cleats.
In 1985 the Kwantum team had a successful year with two Tour de France stages, the Tour of Luxembourg, Paris–Tours, Paris–Brussels, the Tirreno–Adriatico, the Tour of Belgium, again the Dutch national road championship, and perhaps against all the odds the World cycling championship where Joop Zoetemelk triumphed aged 38 with Greg Lemond and Moreno Argentin in the other medal places.
By 1986 was the team was waning and the most important victory was the Tour of Belgium by Nico Emonds.
In all it was a brief flurry of success over just three main seasons but the prominence of the distinctive jersey at the head of a major race peleton and on the podium reinforced its status in cycle racing history.
The DNA of Kwantum Hallen has proven to be strong and there is a well defined family tree in professional cycling that shows lineage through successive teams of SuperConfex (1988) with Maasen and Van Hooydonk, the Buckler Team (1989) Vanderaerden and Rooks, the Word Perfect Squad (1993) with Bekker and Moncassin, the 1995 Novell Team with the erratic but prolific Abdujaparov, followed in 1996 by Rabobank under somewhat of a doping cloud, the short lived Blanco and Belkin in 2013 and the present day incarnation of Lotto Jumbo. .
As for my own jersey it is a bit battered after 30 plus years with a small hole in the right arm from a crash.The colours are however as bright as the day it was bought.
I am no longer compatible to the jersey size (a tactful way of saying I am now chubby) but my bike-mad son has taken it out for a few rides recently and it is a much admired bit of bike history.
In fact it is priceless (or with similar available for up to £100 on E Bay)
In their first year, the team managed to win the red jersey for intermediate sprints and one stage in the 1984 Tour de France, the Amstel Gold Race and the Dutch national road championship.
After the 1984 season, Jan Raas retired from an illustrious career as an active cyclist and became team manager. I can say that I saw him ride in one of the Kelloggs City Centre Race Series just before he hung up his cleats.
In 1985 the Kwantum team had a successful year with two Tour de France stages, the Tour of Luxembourg, Paris–Tours, Paris–Brussels, the Tirreno–Adriatico, the Tour of Belgium, again the Dutch national road championship, and perhaps against all the odds the World cycling championship where Joop Zoetemelk triumphed aged 38 with Greg Lemond and Moreno Argentin in the other medal places.
By 1986 was the team was waning and the most important victory was the Tour of Belgium by Nico Emonds.
In all it was a brief flurry of success over just three main seasons but the prominence of the distinctive jersey at the head of a major race peleton and on the podium reinforced its status in cycle racing history.
The DNA of Kwantum Hallen has proven to be strong and there is a well defined family tree in professional cycling that shows lineage through successive teams of SuperConfex (1988) with Maasen and Van Hooydonk, the Buckler Team (1989) Vanderaerden and Rooks, the Word Perfect Squad (1993) with Bekker and Moncassin, the 1995 Novell Team with the erratic but prolific Abdujaparov, followed in 1996 by Rabobank under somewhat of a doping cloud, the short lived Blanco and Belkin in 2013 and the present day incarnation of Lotto Jumbo. .
As for my own jersey it is a bit battered after 30 plus years with a small hole in the right arm from a crash.The colours are however as bright as the day it was bought.
I am no longer compatible to the jersey size (a tactful way of saying I am now chubby) but my bike-mad son has taken it out for a few rides recently and it is a much admired bit of bike history.
In fact it is priceless (or with similar available for up to £100 on E Bay)
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