Inside the collar is a quotation by Gino Bartali:
Life means riding a bike. -G. Bartali

Barely perceptible on the back are two great quotes (one per jersey) .
The bike and I are one unit. -Graeme Obree
My language is the bike. -Marco Pantani


On the left sleeve are the names of racers whose stories should know.

  • The 1899 black world (track) champion.

 

• The Tour racer who ran 6 miles carrying his broken bicycle to

a blacksmith where he welded a new fork for it. This was at a time
(1913) when Tour rules prohibited having outside help.

 

• The brilliant, self-educated engineer who is gay, attempted suicide,
imagined a better way to sit on a bike, built his own bike using
parts from his washing machine—and set the one-hour record
...only to have the UCI then change its rules in response to him.

• The only woman to race in a Grand Tour who entered the Giro

in 1924 using a gender-neutral first name.

 

• The racer who lost the Tour by 8 seconds and declined to blame

the winner's use of an illegal bike or his having had saddle sores.

 

• The Tour racer who arrived atop a mountain before the peloton
and sat and ate an ice cream cone as he waited for his support car. 

• The Grand Tour racer who carried a comb and a cologne-soaked

sponge in his back pocket and would freshen himself and comb his

hair while racing.

• The Tour racer who rode back up a mountain he had just ridden

up and down to give his wheel to his team leader.

 

• The Tour racer who, when his bike was wrecked, grabbed a
small girl's bike with lights and fenders and rode it.

• The Tour racer—a different one—who, after his bike was wrecked,

went door-to-door asking for one, then rode the one he found.

 

• The Tour racer who broke his arm and collar bone in a crash, yet

continued that stage and all the following stages...even though he

was also blinded in one eye in that crash.

 

• The youngest rider ever in the Tour (age 17) who was killed in WWI on
the Kemmelberg, the climb in the Gent-Wevelgem. He represents here 
the 65—or more—Tour riders killed in that war to end all wars.

• The 5X winner of the Tour who had a child with his stepdaughter, then
a second child with his stepson's wife.

• The German track champion  who refused to salute Hitler...and was murdered.

• The rider who tried to organize a union of Tour riders and call a workers'
strike over the bad conditions.

• The champion who was killed when he hit a dog that had run onto the road.
He represents here all bike riders, racers and non-racers, killed while riding.
t's not well known that among the former are Coppi's and Bartali's brothers.

• The Tour and Giro King of the Mountain who underwent a gender change after
s/he  retired.

• The exceptionally humble 5X Tour winner who said,
"It's just a bicycle race after all." And, "What have you actually achieved?
You've climbed a mountain and then you've descended. That's all. You
haven't actually achieved anything concrete. You haven't, for instance,
made anything with your own hands like a piece of furniture."