Ten years, ten jerseys
The story of the Gran Fondo Boyacá Mundial told through its jerseys, from the first edition in 2016 to “la 10” in 2026.
There is a simple way to tell ten years of a bike race: line up the jerseys. Each one fixes a year and a mood. Together they say more about the Gran Fondo Boyacá Mundial than any summary could.
The mottos came later. The first two editions had none at all: they were simply ridden. The first one appears in 2018, when the event began telling its own story.
Ten editions across eleven years. There was no race in 2020, and that absence is part of the story too.
2016 — The first one
The inaugural jersey went out on the road not knowing whether there would be a second. Three hundred and seventy-five riders took on that first edition around Duitama, and the event’s financial surplus went to the Cycling Museum Foundation. From day one, this was built as something that gives back.
2017 — The second
The second edition confirmed that 2016 had not been a fluke. The design turns higher-contrast, in orange and black, and a gesture appears that will repeat for a decade: the event’s name, large, across the chest.
It is also the year the Gran Fondo adopted its emblem. Nine editions later it is still the same one, and that is why this jersey carries more weight than any of the other ten: it is where the event stops being a race and starts being a brand.
2018 — The triple crown
The motto gave the ambition a name. Boyacá was living golden years in world cycling, and the Gran Fondo was starting to read as part of that conversation rather than as one more local event.
2019 — Bicentenary Challenge
Two hundred years since the Battle of Boyacá. The edition tied itself to the anniversary and the route filled with historical weight: the Pantano de Vargas and the Puente de Boyacá stopped being scenery and became story.
2021 — The return
The motto needs no explanation. After the blank year, getting back on the road was the event in itself. The 2021 jersey belongs to a community that found out it was still there.
2022 — Miner’s soul
Boyacá is a land of emeralds, coal and salt, and its cycling has always carried some of that underground stubbornness: endure, insist, come out. The edition said so outright.
2023 — Queen stage
In cycling, the queen stage is the hardest of the race. Using that name for a whole edition is a statement: you come here to suffer a little.
2024 — Across the fields of Boyacá
A line from the Colombian national anthem, returned to its original geography. The eighth edition took the event to its most literal setting: the fields of Boyacá, once again, as the stage for something worth telling.
2025 — World championship rider for a day
The motto that best sums up the promise. In 1995 the Road World Championships were held in Duitama and the Alto del Cogollo was climbed fifteen times. Thirty years on, anyone who signs up can measure themselves against that same road.
2026 — La 10
The tenth edition puts on the number ten. In Latin American sporting culture, “wearing the 10” means leadership, commitment and collective pride: it is the shirt given to whoever carries the team.
This year’s design distils into geometric shapes the monuments and landscapes that define the region — the Pantano de Vargas Monument, the Púlpito del Diablo on the Nevado del Cocuy — and spreads them across the garment.
A decade is not reached; it is conquered. Reaching the summit of our first ten years, we reaffirm that our only competition is our own history.
What remains
Ten jerseys is also ten times that somebody decided it was worth organising again. And eleven years in which the event’s surplus — it is a registered non-profit — ended up in someone else’s hands.
The 2026 one is the tenth. Riding it is, once again, being a world championship rider for a day.