Peter Sagan’s World Champion Paint Scheme Stands Out in the Peloton

At first glance, Peter Sagan’s new bike—created by Specialized to celebrate his recent win at the 2015 UCI Road World Championships in Richmond, Virginia—seems like a simple black frame with multicolor graphics. A second look, though, reveals a lot more about the custom paint job that commemorates Sagan's win as well as his heritage.

“When designing Peter’s worlds bike, I took three important factors into consideration,” says Ron Jones, Specialized's lead road designer. The black paint is specked with multi-colored glitter to make it stand out in a crowd, which Jones says symbolizes Sagan’s “panache and flair on the bike.” In addition to the traditional rainbow stripes recognizing a world champion title, the main graphics showcase elements of the Slovakian flag as a nod to Sagan’s roots. Additional details include a gold head badge, and the names of every winner of previous world championships in the down tube logos.

“I didn’t want to be creatively limited by adhering rigidly to the traditional rainbow stripes, so avoiding them was a definite design choice for me,” Jones says. "I choose a black and rainbow base over a more traditional white, and my goal was for this to be disruptive—kind of like Sagan’s personality and style.”

Sagan has been excited about his new rainbow-themed kit and bike, tweeting:

If you want to adapt Sagan’s frame in hopes of getting faster, Specialized has also introduced the S-Works Tarmac Sagan Frameset with a similar paint scheme (though not in the World Champion colors!), retailing for $4000.

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