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Hi lainie, those are some ugly outfits!

Sadly, they are quite proud of their new kit - Footon-Servetto rolls out 2010 kit

This was posted in the letour live updates yesterday:

Only one rider on the roster of 24 from the Footon team has ridden the Tour before this year. That is Gianpaolo Chuela (but he’s not in the line-up for the race now).

If true, how the heck did Footon-Servetto get approved for the TdF?

Ick. R4R, your link says the uniforms are supposed to be gold but they sure as heck don't read on camera as gold - more like a flesh color which makes the athletes look buck nekkid & sporting reaaalllly bad tats. That's supposed to be a big footprint 'tatoo' on the front for FootOn I guess? Not exactly subtle.

The uniforms were designed by Dario Uzay who is a fine artist rather than a clothing designer and it shows. He shouldn't give up his day job anytime soon, that's for sure.

the Footon-Servetto kits (do they call them kits?) are beyond ugly. - lainie

My mom calls them "costumes". She watched the prologue and first stage in the Netherlands because we used to live there (albeit up the coast from Rotterdam.) Her favorite team "costume" is Astana (ACK!), but I set her straight that we'll both be rooting not so much for anybody in particular to win the TdF this year, but for Contador to LOSE!

That was a darned good question, so I looked it up.

http://www.bicycling.co.za/articles/tour-de-france-2010

The six [wildcard] teams join the 16 teams which were automatically selected under a September 2008 agreement with the International Cycling Union.

The 16 automatically selected teams under the 2008 agreement are: Team Milram, Quick Step, Omega Pharma-Lotto, Team Saxo Bank, Caisse d'Epargne, Euskaltel-Euskadi, Footon-Servetto, HTC-Columbia, AG2R La Mondiale, Bbox Bouygues Telecom, Cofidis, Francaise des Jeux, Lampre-Farnese, Liquigas-Doimo, Astana, and Rabobank.

Wild card invitations: Garmin-Transitions, Team RadioShack, BMC Racing Team, Team Sky, Katusha, and Cervelo TestTeam.

As of next year, the selection process will change, under an agreement between the organisers of the three Grand Tours and the UCI. The first 17 teams in the world ranking as of the end of the 2010 season will automatically be invited to the 2011 Tour de France and the organisers can issue wildcard invitations to fill the remaining places. This year, the Tour was required to invite the 18 ProTour teams from 2008. Two of those teams no longer exist, Credit Agricole and Gerolsteiner, so the other 16 ProTour teams from 2008 were invited, freeing up two extra spaces for teams to be invited.