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I completely agree that it was whack. I think Assos, for it was their advertising campaign, got a lot of negative feedback on it and, eventually and somewhat reluctantly, dropped it.
The world of cycling apparel was a very different world ten years ago, with almost all brands using white, male models for all their imaging bar their women's range. I remember @amey rightly making this point repeatedly in the Rapha thread (and Twitter I think) about how none of their models looked like him. They got the message eventually.
That image is at least ten years old.