‘Horrendously awful’: Steven Kruijswijk’s pink and celeste Bianchi

Not everyone's a fan of Steven Kruijswijk's bike's new paintjob

Who would have thought it? 15 stages into the Giro d’Italia and Steven Kruijswijk, a man who has never won a Grand Tour stage and has never finished higher than seventh overall, is leading the general classification by more than two minutes.

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Now, we don’t know what the future holds for the 28-year-old Dutchman, but he might not find himself in this position many more times in the future, so he might as well make the most of the rest of the race by covering himself and his bike in pink as he looks to hold onto his lead all the way to Turin.

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The bad news is that LottoNL-Jumbo seem to employ a team of colour-blind mechanics, who have been getting busy with their pastel pink paint over the rest day to prepare this custom Bianchi Oltre XR.2 for Kruijswijk to ride as he prepares to defend his lead through the final week of racing.

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Reaction to the bike on Twitter was, as you would expect less than positive, being described by various users as “horrible” and “an abomination”, while some even went as far as to say that they didn’t want Kruijswijk to win anymore because of the bike. Which seems a little harsh.

To be fair, it was always going to be tough to combine celeste and pink, so hopefully we’ll see the mechanics wheel out an all-pink Bianchi later in the week if Kruijswijk manages to maintain or even extend his lead. All we can hope is that the race leader does the right thing and switches to black shorts after rocking an all-pink skinsuit in Sunday’s mountain time trial.