GVL RACE TEAM 2026: BEHIND THE SCENES
GVL Race Team is our collection for racing. Not for riding: for racing. Before any photo or garment, there was an idea, an obsession with racing, and a question: who were we before we got on the bike? This is the story of that idea, how it became design, and how we went looking for it in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico.
RIDING IS ONE THING. RACING IS ANOTHER.
Givelo has always been a minimalist brand. With GVL Race Team, we stepped outside of that on purpose to show the most competitive side of cycling: racing, the kind that pushes you to the limit.
There’s a moment when the bike brings out the beast in you. You no longer head out just to ride. You head out to win. That addiction to speed, to adrenaline and to competing is the heart of the collection. That’s why the name is literal: Race Team. Racing with the G on, like a team kit, and giving a skin to those who express themselves through speed.
WHO WERE RIDERS BEFORE THEY RACED?
Almost no one starts on the bike. Many of today’s racers grew up on a skateboard, on a basketball court or with a baseball glove. Skateboarding was our starting point for the 2026 collection, because it shares the same things with racing: the adrenaline, the love of risk and the stubbornness to get back up after every fall. Skateboarding had its boom. Now cycling is having its own. But we don’t forget where we came from.
The challenge was finding the balance: expressing skate culture and the aggression of racing without the collection becoming only that. The designs are made to stand out in the peloton, as a direct tribute to the rider who races. But every racer knows you also have to be technically precise, and the same goes for what you wear. Behind the design are advanced fabrics that give you what you need to compete: aerodynamics, low weight and durability. Every detail counts. Marginal gains.
Why Puerto Rico? We’re a Colombian brand, made in Medellín. We wanted to tell this story from Latin America, with Latin riders, in a country that wasn’t ours but still felt close to home.
We found it in Vega Baja, with the riders of Pedalea, who race together on the DCN team. In Puerto Rico, road cycling isn’t the norm. It’s an island of basketball, baseball and beaches. None of them started on the bike: almost all of them came from basketball or baseball, and one from skateboarding. Different ages, different stories. What they share is that they could have done anything else, and they chose to race. The question behind the collection, answered in person.
The Plan. The production was planned weeks in advance. In early September, we arrived in Vega Baja with a small crew. First came a day of scouting to ride the route and choose locations. The next day, we shot. Each day started early to make the most of the morning light and set up every scene before the sun climbed too high.
The route was almost entirely flat and, for the first time, we shot by the sea. For us it was something new. For the Vega Baja riders, it’s their everyday landscape: the beach, the courts, the parks where baseball is played. We rode past each of those places and the story told itself. All of that surrounds them, and they still chose the bike.
WHAT WASN’T IN THE SCRIPT
The route was set, but it kept changing. Along the way, places showed up that told the story better, and we went with them. The most valuable part, though, was the people who stepped into the story without anyone inviting them. The man selling lottery tickets on the road. The barbershop that opened its doors and let us shoot with the riders sitting in the chairs. People from town who came over to ask what we were doing and ended up telling us about Vega Baja and their country, with a pride that could barely fit in the conversation.
The flag showed up the same way: on its own. No one asked for it. It’s Puerto Rican pride, and it came into the frame the way it comes into everything else on the island.
THE HEAT
The hardest part was performing in that heat. And what heat. Every scene was shot under an unforgiving sun, with the riders giving everything, again and again. But that’s exactly what we wanted every image to convey: adrenaline, effort and the drive to race.
THE BOARD
The collection was born from skateboarding, so skateboarding had to show up. And it did, unplanned: in the middle of the shoot, our brand and strategy director jumped on a board, and the camera kept rolling.
WE ALL COME FROM SOMEWHERE. From skateboarding, basketball or baseball. From Medellín or Vega Baja. It doesn’t matter where you come from. What brings us together is a bike and the drive to go faster than yesterday. The most valuable connections are built around it, and in racing they’re felt even more intensely. We saw it in a barbershop, at a lottery stand and in a Puerto Rican flag.
NOBODY IS BORN A CYCLIST. YOU CHOOSE TO RACE.
That’s GVL Race Team. Watch the film, see the photos, put on the G and go race.
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