Three stunning jerseys, each telling a different story, can be ordered now from our webshop.
It all started out with a meeting in December 2002 – at a time when smartphones didn’t exist, team time trials were still a thing and the coverage of the sport was light years away from what it is today – with the riders and staff of what would be known as the Quick-Step team convening in Saint-Raphaël, not far from Nice, for the first training camp in the history of the squad.
The ambitions were big, the dreams were even bigger, but none of the 27 riders and 20-odd staff members could have imagined that in just two decades the team would become one of the most successful in the history of the sport – winner of close to 900 races in 34 different countries spread across five continents and with a huge and loyal fanbase.
Since then, for the last 20 years, we have been continuously on the road. Training, sweating, winning, meeting our supporters and creating indelible moments, which we have now captured in a special collection of six jerseys celebrating the team’s fantastic achievements over time.
In fairness, we knew that 2022 was always going to be an important year for the Wolfpack and so we decided to make it an even more memorable one, that’s why at the beginning of the season we got in touch with several Belgian designers – who ended up giving their personal interpretation to the team’s history and biggest moments – to create the Wolfpack 20 Years Anniversary Collection, which we are launching in collaboration with Castelli.
In total, six different jerseys will make up this special line, with the first three becoming available as of today, each of these having its own story: one linked to the team’s insatiable appetite for victories, and two other in deep connection with the prestigious Ronde van Vlaanderen and Paris-Roubaix, cycling’s hardest Monuments. This should not be a surprise, as both races have become synonymous with the Wolfpack in the past two decades, such is our team’s dominance there since 2003, a dominance that has so far yielded 14 magnificent victories on the rough cobblestones of northern Europe.
Three minds, three stories
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Designed by Lander Wynants, who has been working together with the Wolfpack for a number of years now, the Winning Machine jersey (a fitting name considering the team’s more than 870 victories) integrates key elements, patterns and shapes from all the 20 different kits worn by the Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl riders – from Paolo Bettini and Tom Boonen to Julian Alaphilippe and Mark Cavendish – since the squad’s inception into one big visual. At a closer look, you will notice the organic kind of pattern of the entire ensemble, where the colour blue which we have been identifying with since our first season in the peloton is highly prominent.
De Muur – the creation of Joost Jansen, another Belgian designer who breathes cycling – has a completely different tone, as it’s a more abstract explosion of colors and lines. At the same time, it can be read as a story rooted in Flanders – cycling’s heartland – featuring a cyclist who pushes through the pain while climbing a punishing cobbled hill full gas as if there was no tomorrow, at all times joined by a pack of wolves as the feverish crowds encourage him to leave everything out there in his pursuit for glory.
The third and final jersey we are launching today revolves around two texts that set the tone of the whole design, as eltipo – the mind behind it – intended: Wolves in Hell (on the front), which is also the name of the jersey, and Hell of the North (on the back). The cobble roads are prominent, and the dirty kind of textures used remind hardcore fans of the heavy dust that the riders are always caked in on that special April Sunday each year. Even the iconic velodrome, where every rider dreams of arriving alone and with plenty of time to celebrate his best day ever on the bike, has made its way on the Wolves in Hell jersey, giving it a special flavour.
