New Water-Bottle Vest at Tour de France
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Image: Oleg Tinkov Twitter
As we tweeted yesterday during our Twitter coverage of stage 1 of the Tour de France, we noticed a Tinkoff-Saxo rider wearing what appears to be a new vest for carrying water bottles.
We hadn’t seen this exact type of vest in a road race before.
This soon caught the attention of many on social media.
Here it is in action on stage 2:
Team owner Oleg Tinkov tweeted some info about the “BAR Jersey,” which he said was invented by pro rider Michael Rogers and produced by Sportful exclusively for Tinkoff Saxo.
It appears to hold five bottles and eliminates the need for riders to stuff their already tight jerseys. The bottles appear to fit snug in the vest, meaning it’s less likely a slippery bottle will be dropped and potentially cause chaos in the pack.
It’ll be interesting to see if this catches on.
In contrast, this is currently what most pros have to do when they go fetch bottles:
