Having just had the honor of representing Canada at Paris 2024, Mike Woods is in the unique position where he won’t be putting his Israel – Premier Tech kit back on any time soon.
After winning the Canadian national champs in June, Mike is gearing up for his first race this weekend in his new colors. Featuring the Canadian red and white and the iconic maple leaf, it’s safe to say we absolutely love this kit.
National championship kits don’t tend to change much. Sometimes that’s because of strict national federation rules. Sometimes teams don’t want to change things up. But in Mike’s case, he had a clear idea of what he wanted.
“When I won the national championships and realised I would have the jersey, it was Toms Skujins from Trek – Segafredo who actually reached out to me and said ‘make sure you do a good job on the design as it’s something you’re going to wear every day and you want to be proud of it’”, Mike explained. “I was really fortunate that the team let me take the reins and give my input on the design.”
So what inspired Mike?
“It being a Canadian kit and me being a proud Canadian, I really wanted to draw on things that inspired me growing up in Canada. Two of those things were track and hockey. My most vivid memories of falling in love with sport and the Olympics was of Donovan Bailey winning Olympic gold in 1996 and he had this iconic Canada kit with the Canadian font logo. We have used that font now and it has been used in several editions of national cycling kit, and I just really liked it. It touches on a lot of the things that were around when I was growing up, a lot of the remnants of the centennial celebration when Canada turned 100. It was a font that was everywhere.
“And secondly, being a hockey player when I was growing up and loving the Team Canada jerseys. I obviously wasn’t alive during the Summit Series where Canada played Russia, but the jersey was iconic. I’ve always loved that jersey and Gretzky, one of the greatest players to play the game, wore it as a jersey I think in 1987. So these were the two things I wanted to have on the kit.”
Woods and the team worked with Élie Desgreniers from Premier Tech on the design, which has been produced by Ekoï.
“I feel kits these days can get really busy and overcrowded so I wanted to go back to something a bit more retro and classic, to a jersey that is simple yet elegant,” he adds. “I think we really nailed the jersey and I’m really proud of it. I can’t wait to race in it this weekend at San Sebastián and the rest of the season.”
