Team Kit quality (not a standard team kit thread!)
Hi all,
As some of you may know, I do quite a lot of sponsored events for Breakthrough and a small group of other breast cancer charities. I find that I get quite a bit more sponsorship if I market myself as "that idiot dressed head to toe in pink"!
I've been looking for some pink gloves and arm warmers for a while and eventually decided to get over my very slight anti-team kit bias (save that for another discussion) and buy some of the ones on the Team T-mobile webiste.
They arrived today, the arm warmers seem great, but the gloves are without a shadow of a doubt the worst manufactured piece of kit I have ever seen! Cheap (in feel only), single layered, thin lycra backing, rigid bits of sharp plastic (or something like it) which digs into your skin, next to no padding, etc...
I had assumed (probably quite naively) that the kit I bought would be the same or simlar quality as worn by the team or, at worst, a sort of intermediate consumer brand level.
Does anyone know if all teams do this? Is there anywhere that you can buy the proper stuff?
Part of me thinks that I should send them straight back, but I think I could probably get the backing material sewn onto my adidas gloves.
Many thanks,
Ed
As some of you may know, I do quite a lot of sponsored events for Breakthrough and a small group of other breast cancer charities. I find that I get quite a bit more sponsorship if I market myself as "that idiot dressed head to toe in pink"!
I've been looking for some pink gloves and arm warmers for a while and eventually decided to get over my very slight anti-team kit bias (save that for another discussion) and buy some of the ones on the Team T-mobile webiste.
They arrived today, the arm warmers seem great, but the gloves are without a shadow of a doubt the worst manufactured piece of kit I have ever seen! Cheap (in feel only), single layered, thin lycra backing, rigid bits of sharp plastic (or something like it) which digs into your skin, next to no padding, etc...
I had assumed (probably quite naively) that the kit I bought would be the same or simlar quality as worn by the team or, at worst, a sort of intermediate consumer brand level.
Does anyone know if all teams do this? Is there anywhere that you can buy the proper stuff?
Part of me thinks that I should send them straight back, but I think I could probably get the backing material sewn onto my adidas gloves.
Many thanks,
Ed
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Comments
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While looking at some photos from the Tour de France last week I noticed one of the rider's gloves looked awful, didn't seem to have any padding and they looked incredibly thin on top. I wonder if some teams do just have awful gloves, for some reason :?0
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I was fortunate to win a CW competition at last year's cycle show in London and got the T Mobile kit. The jersey was OK, albeit short zippered, but the insert in the bib shorts is thin and not very comfortable. I am left with the view that the 'replica' kit only looks somewhat like the pro kit but is lacking in quality0
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You could get pink Assos gloves, if there are any pink ones.
Quality guaranteed though.0 -
Trust me, if I'd seen pink Assos gloves anywhere I'd have nabbed them already!
Just to confuse matters further, there is a mini review of the t-mobile team kit in the Tour supplement of this months C+. The review implies that the T-mobile mitts(though it could just be the generic Addidas mitts) are well made and comfy though lacking in padding.
I'd agree with the lacking in padding but the rest... diverges from my experience!
Interestingly, I can't find the T-mobile mitts on the chicken cycles webpage (as linked from the article).
I'd love to know if we've got the same ones!0 -
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Thanks! those look like the ones I've got.
The cut-off fingers have simply been chopped form a larger piece of material so it is already starting to fray. The cuts aren't even straight on mine!
Oh well, I'm probably going to stitch the backs onto another pair of gloves. I doubt these would last for a sportive and even if they did the lack of padding would make them rather uncomfortable!0
