The Bahrain Victorious riders were all kitted out almost identically in the team time trial at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, but there was a flash of colour that set them apart.
All riders had a different colour bar tape on the lower deck of their time trial handlebars, with blue, white, red, orange, yellow among the colours on display.
A closer look shows blue bar tape for the front rider, then white, then orange for the second and third riders in line (Image credit: Getty Images)
This was an imaginative tweak from the team's performance engineer Alex Dowsett, designed to help the riders differentiate between each other and identify each other when locked into their time trial effort.
"The big difficult thing about team time trials [is that] from that respect everyone looks the same,” Dowsett explained at the time.
“So there could be that split second where you’re like ‘Is that Tejada or is that Teunissen?’ The first thing you see from each rider is the hands, so I thought what if we could make everyone’s gloves a different colour. So instead of looking for the person or the riding style of that person, or counting ‘one, two, three, four, five, six, I’m in’, you’re just looking for a colour."
XDS-Astana went on to employ that trick at last year's Vuelta a España, but interestingly they have decided to drop it in 2026, with the team all wearing standard gloves and socks at Paris-Nice and again this week at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.
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However, the baton has seemingly been taken over by Bahrain Victorious, whose riders lined up with their own unique bar tape on Tuesday.
TT bars don't have much space for bar tape – just a few centimetres – but the pop of colour is perhaps enough to help. There are times when the bar tape would not be visible, but there's only really a need to reach for the lower deck of the handlebar in corners or when slowing down, with the riders' arms up in the TT extension bars for the lion's share of the effort.
The TTT at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes is largely being treated as a dress rehearsal for the Tour de France, which opens with a team time trial around Barcelona next month.
It's likely, therefore, that this multi-coloured array of bar tape will be on show again on the biggest stage of all.
Astana's multi-coloured look from last year (Image credit: Getty Images)
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Patrick is an NCTJ-accredited journalist with a bachelor’s degree in modern languages (French and Spanish) and a decade’s experience in digital sports media, largely within the world of cycling. He re-joined Cyclingnews as Deputy Editor in February 2026, having previously spent eight years on staff between 2015 and 2023. In between, he was Deputy Editor at GCN and spent 18 months working across the sports portfolio at Future before returning to the cycling press pack. Patrick works across Cyclingnews’ wide-ranging output, assisting the Editor in global content strategy, with a particular focus on shaping CN's news operation.
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