Originally Posted by
gregor7777
When I play pick up hockey, virtually all of us have an NHL jersey on of one era or another, and not a single damn is given because everyone knows you don't play for the team and aren't pretending to. You're probably just a fan of the team/player/color/city, and that's all there is to it.
Cycling is the only sport I can think of that sees things this way, and it just happens to be one of the most pretentious sports I'm involved in.
It's a different culture, and part of the difference is the actual rules of the sport on an orginized level. If you race, you can't wear the jersey of a team that you don't race for, clothes with sponsor's names on them that do not sponsor your team, nor jerseys that you have not won the right to wear.
Obviously, those rules do not apply outside of racing. But racers will wear their own team kits when training, either because their deal requires it, or just to support their sponsors.
And there are enough people riding at the club level that either race, or have raced, that the attitudes formed by those rules tend to affect cultural norms in the broader community.
Note, I'm not saying that you have to abide by any such "rule", just positing where the norm, to the extent there is one, comes from.