Respect and commitment - Orbea produces custom-painted MyO bikes to celebrate Team Lotto’s 40th anniversary

Orbea and Lotto are two names that mean a great deal to cycling fans worldwide. 

Orbea can trace its origins back to 1840, when the brand was founded by the Orbea brothers in the Basque country, northern Spain, and where the company’s headquarters can still be found today. Orbea bikes have been raced at the highest level and ridden to victory on some of cycling's biggest stages. 

Team Lotto celebrates its 40th anniversary this year as the longest-running professional cycling team in the world. Sponsored by the Belgian lottery, the iconic white Lotto logo has adorned the jerseys of generations of pro riders. Over the last few decades, the team has won many of the biggest races in cycling. 

Given each brand's rich history, the current Lotto and Orbea partnership is one that feels right. 

Team Lotto riders race with the Orca and Orca Aero road bikes, and the Ordu time trial bike. Orbea collaborates closely with Team Lotto performance managers, staff, riders and mechanics to constantly evolve material and equipment. 

The team will celebrate its 40th anniversary at this year's edition of the Tour of Flanders - one of cycling's five Monuments and a very special day in Belgium. 

To commemorate the event, the team's riders will all race in a special 40th-anniversary jersey, and Orbea has joined the celebrations and produced custom-painted bikes using its MyO custom paint programme. 

The Orbea custom paint jobs draw inspiration from 40 years of Lotto team jersey designs and colours. 

The MyO custom programme 

The Orbea MyO programme, which stands for My Orbea, allows customers to customise their own bike on the brand's website MyO configurator. Fourteen different bike models can be customised in total, ranging from road to mountain bike, triathlon and e-bikes. 

Framesets can also be selected for a true custom build from the ground up. MyO stands out due to the sheer amount of customisation on offer.   

Once a model has been selected, various build specs are available to choose from as a starting point, which centre around groupset choice. For example, The Orca road frame has nine different starting options plus a frameset, customers can then choose their own paint schemes and tailor equipment and component sizing to suit their preferences. 

Choose a model, spec and frame size, and then the real fun begins. There are over thirty primary frame colours to choose from for a custom Orbea Orca, from mint green to burgundy red and even ‘cosmic carbon view’ which is one of the finishes in the special option range of paint colours. 

There is then nearly the same amount again for the secondary colour details, then there’s the frame logo and so on. In total, there are six different paint option steps to work through. 

Orbea even provides the ability to add your name or slogan to the top tube. There are an awful lot of paint options, and it’s possible to customise to your heart's content to arrive at your ideal design. 

Image 1 of 3

Another strength of the Orbea MyO programme is the amount of component customisation on offer. Customers can choose pretty much every spec option themselves, resulting in a customised bike from the start, without the need to change out components to suit later on.

Crank length, seatpost setback, handlebar width and stem length can all be specified in the configurator, something that isn’t included everywhere. 

What's more, using an Orbea Orca as an example bike, customers can choose between five different pairs of Oquo wheels of varying rim depths, and tyres from Vittoria or Pirelli. 

Next, the cassette, chainring, power meter crank arm options, even disc rotor size can all be selected. There are even different thru-axle options. Orbea offers the Mavic Speed Release thru-axle as an alternate option. 

Custom MyO bikes are then shipped to an Orbea dealer for final assembly and build, to ensure everything is perfect.

Orbea and Team Lotto both share a commitment to strive for the best, and this surely generates mutual respect between the two brands. The exclusive 40th anniversary Orbea MyO team bikes have all been painted at the brand's Mallabia headquarters. The bikes feature a range of colours used on Lotto cycling jerseys over the years to produce exciting-looking paint schemes that celebrate the history of the Lotto jersey.

The custom-painted bikes raced by Team Lotto at the Tour of Flanders will use cutting-edge technology to represent 40 years of effort and work. Things move fast in the modern era of road cycling, but it’s just as important to celebrate history and heritage.

Image 1 of 3