Bianchi unveiled Team LottoNL-Jumbo’s Oltre XR.2 model for 2015 season yesterday and the new model designed for the WorldTour Dutch team features a full-celeste color (which is Bianchi’s iconic paint scheme) in the year of the 130th anniversary of the Italy based company.
Bianchi celeste is the most distinctive colour scheme in cycling, but no one is quite sure how it started. There are a number of theories.
One story goes that Edoardo Bianchi, the founder of the company, built a bike for his queen and wished to match her eyes. Guy Andrews, the editor of Rouleur magazine, had another theory and suggested that it was more likely that celeste simply reflected the colour of the Milanese sky.
The story that seems to be most likely though, is that Edoardo used surplus watered-down paint from the Italian Army after the First World War. The green was mixed with white paint in order to reduce it’s military look, and the iconic colour was born.
