Tour de France: New national champions kits on show

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As ever, the 2021 Tour de France comes hot on the heels of 'nationals weekend', meaning plenty of new colours in the peloton as the new champions fly their respective flags. 

Despite some disruption due to the ongoing pandemic, a large chunk of countries held their national championships last week, with the time trials in mid-week followed by the road races at the weekend. 

The winners are entitled to wear a special custom kit for the next 12 months, although the exact designs depend on their trade team, with some generously giving the jersey over to the national colours while others allow only minimal adjustments. 

Plenty of the winners are lining up at the Tour de France, meaning a quick turnaround for teams' kit suppliers to get the new gear ready for the Grand Départ. 

There are nine national road race champions at the Tour de France, and we got a glimpse of most of their new jerseys at Thursday evening's teams presentation. 

While Bora-Hansgrohe are in a new darker green kit just for the Tour, Peter Sagan is back in a special jersey after he won the Slovakian road race title for a seventh time. With three years in the rainbow jersey as world champion, not to mention all the Tour stages he's done in the green jersey, he has been a stranger to team-issue kit.

Sagan has been given a full white jersey with a very similar design to when he last held the title in 2018, and indeed to the jersey worn by his brother and teammate Juraj so far this year. Meanwhile, his teammate Patrick Konrad has also been given a white jersey, with red stripes to honour his status as Austrian champion, a title he held in 2019. 

There are also two national champions at Bahrain Victorious, in Italy's Sonny Colbrelli and Slovenia's Matej Mohoric. Both have been given full space to shine, with Colbrelli wearing a full tricolore and Mohoric a white jersey with the Slovenian flag on the front, while the sponsors occupy a smaller space on the chest.

Wout Van Aert became champion of Belgian with a victory that has raised his hopes for the opening Tour stages, and he gets the full red, black, and yellow treatment from Jumbo-Visma's, whose own colours fit quite nicely with that scheme. 

Astana have essentially handed their white Spanish jersey from Luis León Sánchez to the new champion Omar Fraile, making no changes as the title stays in-house. Likewise, Toms Skujins (Trek-Segafredo) wears pretty much the exact same red jersey he wore at last year's Tour after recapturing the Latvian title. 

We'll have to wait to see Swiss champion Silvan Dillier's new kit in the flesh, since he wore the special purple-and-amber Alpecin-Fenix kit at the teams presentation as part of a tribute to Raymond Poulidor, the late grandfather of the team leader Mathieu van der Poel. 

Finally, Groupama-FDJ are once again giving full honour to their national champions, removing sponsors from the jersey entirely to give Ignatas Konovalovas full scope to show off the colours of the Lithuanian flag.

We can expect to see some different national colours on stages 5 and 20, when the race's two time trials take place. Skujins will be in red again for that one after doing the Latvian double, while Astana-Premier Tech's Ion Izagirre will be in Spanish colours, Groupama-FDJ's Stefan Kung representing Switzerland, Jumbo-Visma's Tony Martin once again flying the flag for Germany, and Israel Start-Up nation's Omer Goldstein showing off the Israeli colours.