Despite not playing host to any road racing, December is usually a pretty busy month here at Cyclingnews thanks to the constant washing machine spin cycle of new kit, sponsor swaps, and general teases and releases for the 2025 season. We’re well into it now, with a tonne of new kits out, with Maap entering the WorldTour on the backs of Jayco-AlUla and Liv-AlUla-Jayco perhaps the biggest news thus far.
The big teams don’t always provide the most interesting news though, at least from a tech perspective. This year the most curious sponsor swap is perhaps from the Scandinavian Uno-X Mobility teams, which are swapping from, Belgian brand BioRacer to Danish brand Fusion, more in keeping with a team almost entirely composed of Scandinavian riders and staff.
The kit design isn’t anything new visually - the classic red with a big cheerful yellow stripe - but what is interesting, at least in the teased Instagram photos, is the lack of a zip on the men’s jersey. Zipperless jerseys aren’t new in general, and are used primarily in cross-country mountain bike racing, but those are made almost entirely of mesh for better heat management.
UAE Team Emirates has trialled a zipperless design in the past too, as far back as 2018, but the riders seem to have preferred the option of opening it up fully and it was rarely seen in use. A zipperless design precludes the use of a full skinsuit too, as there is no way to actually get into the garment otherwise.
Looking at Fusion’s sponsorship of the Danish ProContinental team coloQuick it seems that the zipperless options are used interchangeably with zippered suits and jerseys based one can assume on rider preference.
Where the Fusion Jersey seems to diverge from the norm, so much as ‘the norm’ exists, is that it isn’t fully mesh, at least not the one in the photos. The brand makes three zipperless jerseys, the ‘TEMPO! ONE’ is seen in the photos and is made of solid lycra for the body, but it also has the ‘TEMPO! HC’ made of mesh, and the more normally named ‘cycling training jersey’, for training purposes.
On the Fusion website the descriptions for the TEMPO! ONE jersey mentions improved aerodynamics with the removal of the zipper, but further digging reveals that some colour options have aero sleeves with trip-strip lines down them, and others have mesh sleeves. The Uno-X kit we’ve seen has the latter, which seems an odd choice given the clear aero intentions of the jersey, though there’s every chance the team will have access to multiple options.
Given how skinsuits are essentially the norm it will be curious to see if the riders opt for zipperless in general use, or use modified versions of the brand's long-established triathlon suits. I put this to Casper Von Folsach, the team's Performance Coach:
"It is for general use and I think it actually improves the fit. It is my to-go jersey when I'm riding in bibs and jersey. But the riders also receive a jersey with a zipper for training if they prefer this. However, for race use, we will pretty much exclusively race in one-piece suits (different suits for different conditions)."
