The winners of each stage and the overall champion of this year’s Czech Tour will once again take home trophies unlike anything else in professional cycling. Designer and architect Oldřich Sládek has retained the concept used over the past two editions, while giving this year’s version a striking new look. The race’s promotion to UCI ProSeries status is reflected in five colours suspended within the transparent crystal.
The four individual stage trophies form separate parts of the final design, while the overall winner receives the complete glass crystal. Weighing approximately eight kilograms and standing 35 centimetres tall, it takes the form of a three-dimensional outline of the Czech Republic. The trophy is therefore visibly connected both to the race and to the country the peloton crosses over four days. The concept of interlocking stage trophies was first introduced at the Czech Tour in 2024.
Distinctive trophies are an integral part of cycling’s most celebrated races. The winner of the Giro d’Italia raises the golden spiral of the Trofeo Senza Fine, its coils engraved with the names of past champions, while the winner of Paris–Roubaix takes home one of the simplest yet most coveted prizes in the sport: a cobblestone symbolising the decisive sectors of the “Hell of the North”. In recent years, the Czech Tour has developed an unmistakable symbol of its own. Its trophy is not merely an eye-catching object, but also tells the story of the stage race itself: the individual sections fit together just as the four days combine to determine the overall winner.
This year’s edition is distinguished by its use of colour. Blue, red, green, yellow and black are taken from the UCI ProSeries logo and mark the Czech Tour’s historic step up to the second tier of the international calendar. “I conceived it as a peloton frozen inside the volume of the trophy,” explains Oldřich Sládek. “The individual colours create a sense of movement within the crystal, even though the object itself is static. It captures the dynamics of the race.”
Creating the trophy is almost as demanding as the battle to win it. The entire process takes around six months. First, a mould is produced from the prepared model, which takes approximately two weeks. It is then filled with a specially formulated blend of coloured crystal and placed in a kiln for another two weeks. Only after this can the cast sculpture be removed, ground and gradually given its final surface finish.
The glass components were made at Studio Lhotský near Železný Brod using VITRUCELL, a unique technique developed by the studio itself. The process creates coloured cells or bubbles within the crystal mass. Every object made in this way is a one-off, and its exact final appearance can never be planned entirely in advance.
The final stage involves producing the metal components and assembling the complete object. Here, too, the trophy features an exceptional detail: the stainless-steel elements are plated with pure gold, applied not as a uniform coating but in a smooth gradient. It is a unique process used by Oldřich Sládek and, according to the designer, by no one else in the world. Combined with the coloured crystal, it creates an artefact that changes with the viewing angle and the light falling upon it.
Photo: Jakub Konupka
