Year in review: The most interesting cycling tech stories of 2023
What tech news got all of us talking this year?
As the mince pie of cycling slowly turns a lovely golden brown in the oven off the off-season, it’s time to take a look back on the year in tech. If you only hopped aboard for the ride over the summer there’s a whole host of interesting stories from the start of 2023 that you’ve probably missed, so I’m going to run you through the hottest tech stories of the year month by month.
In general, the year has been defined by tough headwinds for the industry as a whole, as rebounding stock levels post-covid have intersected with a drop in demand, and exacerbated by a noticeable increase in the cost of living. That hasn’t stopped brands from releasing new tech, nor has it stopped racers from using innovative mods to gain an advantage over their competitors. Without further ado then, before I get all doom and gloom, here’s what got you all sufficiently buzzing throughout 2023.
January
The January tech playbook is pretty well established by now. The new year dawns and all the pros are ‘spotted’ in their new kit, on their new bikes, at their new team training camps in Spain and elsewhere. We put together a guide to the bikes and kit of 2023, but given it’s soon to be outdated I suggest you just keep an eye out for the 2024 guide which is coming soon.
The season properly gets underway with the Tour Down Under, where we get to see the pros giving it both barrels for the first time. This year there was a ban on TT bikes for the opening time trial, meaning we saw some heavily modified road bikes instead as teams sought to maximise their aero gains for the opening 5.5km prologue.
Elsewhere, at the Vuelta a San Juan, we were left asking why Oscar Sevilla had added a strip of electric tape between his seat stays. It turns out to be a properly old-school puncture protection hack, but it’s certainly not something we see much of anymore, not least since tubeless has reached near-ubiquity in the pro peloton.
Finally, in a more business-oriented story, we also reported that Rapha’s chairman invested €10 million in Classified, the planetary rear hub system. While we are yet to see the hub in regular use in competition, it continues to slowly gain momentum as a viable system for adding gear range to 1x bikes.
February
February tends to be when things go downhill. It’s been dark for about 16 years at this point. There’s no fun Christmas food, all of your friends are going to the gym and have become insufferable, and every single one of the bearings on your bikes needs replacing. The only thing that goes downhill faster than February is Tom Pidcock. Our story about his daring descent of Tuna Canyon was only topped in terms of clicks by a follow-up story where Pidcock responded to the safety concerns that people validly raised after watching him fly down a pitted, often dusty mountain road with no runoffs that, had his near miss gone even worse, could have resulted in serious injury or worse. Anyway, if you want a hair-raising POV ride behind the Yorkshire maestro I advise you to take a look.
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February also marks the start of ‘racing season proper’ in the minds of many fans. Sure, the pros have been cruising around in Australia, but for many of us, the season doesn’t really begin until pictures of filthy, frozen hard men and women rattling their fillings out over the cobbled streets of Belgium are beamed into our nice, warm, centrally heated homes. As far as tech stories go, the most interesting one came from Spain, where I spotted Victor Campanaerts’ monster chainring in his training camp hotel. It’s easily the biggest chainring we’ve seen on a road stage and was combined with a Classified rear hub. Sadly it didn’t net the loveable Belgian the win, but he continues to be the winner of many tech nerd’s hearts nonetheless.
To round out the most miserable month of the year, we also caught a glimpse of the wild new Sweet Protection TT helmet atop Uno-X riders at the Volto o Algarve, and to keep his annual tradition alive, Chris Froome blamed disc brakes for something yet again. Will we have a Froome-free disc brake year in 2024? Only time will tell.
March
March of 2023 was dominated not by tech so much as people bickering. Despite genuinely interesting stories like the fact an adjustable tyre pressure system was used for the first time in competition, the headlines were grabbed far more by a sponsorship spat between Scicon and Mark Cavendish, and a poorly judged podcast comment regarding the prowess of the Colnago V4Rs by legend of the sport Tom Boonen.
In the Scicon saga, legend of the sport Mark Cavendish signed with Astana, but his lifelong partnership with Oakley seemed to sit at odds with the team's current sunglasses sponsor, Scicon. Eventually, Scicon pulled out of its sponsorship of the team and then proceeded to blast Astana’s ethics.
Elsewhere, Tom Boonen was quoted as saying legend of the sport Tadej Pogacar is disadvantaged by bike sponsor Colnago, primarily as he claimed that Colnago 'hasn’t quite mastered that super-hyper-aero stuff yet'. In a rare show of contrition from a top sports star, the Belgian later apologies, saying 'it breaks my heart’, alongside an image of three legends of the sport from team Mapei crossing the line at the Roubaix velodrome together, each atop a Colnago.
Oh, and Hugo Hofstetter managed to snap two pairs of handlebars in one race. Quite the feat, and not the best publicity for team sponsor, Bianchi.
April
April is dominated by Holy Week, where cycling fans are treated to Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders on consecutive Sundays. In pretty short order we naturally put out a Paris-Roubaix tech gallery, followed by a Tour of Flanders tech gallery thanks to our ability to get into the race paddock while the team presentations are going on. Here we analyse all the mods and tricks the pros utilise to gain an edge over the cobbles. There are aero hacks, tools taped to the bikes, adjustable tyre pressure systems, carbon chainrings, and all sorts of mods to stop things shaking loose.
While the eyes of the world were mostly fixed on the spring classics, April also treated us to a classic time trial start ramp mishap, as Rui Costa’s chainring fell off right as he embarked on the Tour of Romandie’s 6km prologue.
May
As April is dominated by the biggest of the spring classics, May is dominated by the Giro. It’s the first chance for some proper, three-week racing, and there are always some intriguing tech stories, created primarily this year by Jumbo-Visma.
Sepp Kuss kicked us off with a daring/idiotic (delete as you see fit) high-speed battery swap while descending at 40 kph on stage 3. While he managed to avoid getting his fingers minced and falling off, he wasn’t so lucky later in the race when removing his overshoes.
While Kuss’s exploits took the plaudits early in the race, at the very end the only tech story anyone was talking about was the fact that Primož Roglič used a gravel groupset for the queen stage of the race, and the final time trial to take the overall GC victory.
Outside of the Giro circus, we were also treated to another wild new track bike from Stromm, destined for the Paris Olympics, along with some retro cosplay from Sonny Colbrelli as he sought to work out why the Tour de France keeps getting faster. In a series of tests on increasingly ancient machines, Colbrelli shows just how much faster modern bikes are, and just how daft vintage helmets looked too.
I also took a jaunt to northern Italy to spend some time with Colnago. While there I put together a behind-the-scenes gallery from its factory in Cambiago, as well as a gallery that fans of historic bikes will love as I dug out eleven historic bikes from Colnago’s archive.
June
Amidst all the tech stories, the rising pre-tour fervour, and the chaos of Unbound, June saw the tragic death of Gino Mäder at the Tour de Suisse following a crash on stage five. As ever when a member of the pro peloton passes away it serves as a reminder that beneath all the tech innovations and media circus, cycling is just men and women riding bikes as safely as they can, and sometimes it goes wrong.
Despite the month’s terrible news, the racing calendar continued apace in its inexorable build-up to July’s crescendo. In the road world, I shot off to France to try and find any pre-tour tech releases at the Critérium du Dauphiné, where I managed to spot three prototype bikes and curate yet another mega tech gallery.
On the other side of the Atlantic (and the Pacific, if you go the wrong way round), the world’s best gravel racers lined up at Unbound. “Good riddance to aero bars”, was the general consensus following their high-profile ban by the organisers. The loss of aero bars also precipitated some great aero hacks to go on top of all the usual mad gravel race mods we always see. These were all compiled in our Unbound tech gallery, so peruse that if you want to know why riders bring a stick with them for the race.
July
Here we go, this is it, it’s the Tour de France. This is the peak of the season for riders and journalists alike, and while the racing takes the majority of the headlines, and the majority of the new tech for the season has already been spotted before the Grand Boucle, that doesn’t mean by any stretch that it’s a drought month for us in the tech team.
Naturally, our Tour de France tech gallery got the most traffic - This is unsurprising given how breathtaking the paint in Mads Pedersen’s Trek Madone is. In an interesting story though we learned that Adam Hansen plans to use lasers to keep race motos at bay, following another race peppered with unwanted motorbike-rider interactions.
We also spotted Ben O'Connor's eye-catching prototype BMC Aero bike at the Tour which later was formally launched as the Teammachine R
Thanks to a leak on a messageboard we were also treated to a sneak peek of the new Tarmac SL8, which set the comments section ablaze with its rather interesting front end.
August
You’d think we’d get a little downtime after the maelstrom that is the Tour, but August brought both the Vuelta a España and the all-encompassing UCI omni-worlds, with every discipline of cycling besides cyclocross on show in Glasgow.
In the velodrome, we spied Argentina’s new track bike, which could well be the wildest one we’ve ever seen (yes, wilder than the Hope one). Given the location of the World Championships, we also saw Canyon’s intern sent out for tartan paint to create a fleet of special bikes for its athletes.
Away from Glasgow, and the inevitable release of the new Tarmac SL8, we were also given the inside scoop on what may well be another new wheel size standard. A set of prototype 750d WTB wheels and tyres were seen fitted to a Moots gravel bike, sparking some intense discussion here at Cyclingnews as to whether this was useful, or innovation for the sake of innovation.
September
As the Vuelta drew to a close, Shimano stole the show to some degree. Sadly not thanks to any new tech, but to what may be the biggest recall the bike industry has ever seen. Initially, nearly 800,000 of the brand's cranks were set for recall, but the final figure was closer to 2,000,000.
Back in Spain, we saw Ineos Grenadiers, ever vigilant to the next even more marginal gain, pioneering a duct tape aero transponder hack that we suspect we will see on other bikes in the future. Later, in a chat with Dan Bigham, we were told just how small the wattage gain for this hack is. As ever with any big race we also put together a Vuelta a España tech gallery, replete with a new lightweight Bianchi.
From my point of view, the most interesting tech story of the month wasn’t from the road cycling world at all, but from the world of ultra-distance bikepacking. Former roadie-turned ultra-do-it-all guy Lachlan Morton finished the 2,620-mile Tour Divide course with no brake pads and a broken derailleur, held in place with a spoke; truly a brilliant piece of get-you-home ingenuity.
October
The leaves start turning brown, the days get shorter, all the biggest races of the year are done, and the lion’s share of the year’s tech has already been released. Sadly the biggest story of the month was the news that WiggleCRC was put up for sale. Insolvency stories are always a cause for sadness, but given the size and popularity of WiggleCRC, it was a particularly large canary in the bike industry coal mine. Not to be outdone in the bad news game, Shimano faced a class-action lawsuit following its crankset recall.
Perhaps to take everyone’s minds off the dour headlines, Chris Froome warmed to disc brakes, in what may well be the biggest U-turn in the bike industry since Lance Armstrong admitted to doping.
November
November was dominated, oddly, by doping stories. A new blood hack was discovered thanks to marine worm haemoglobin, Jonas Vingegaard revealed he missed a doping test, and Jan Ullrich made a full doping confession, to the surprise of maybe someone, somewhere possibly. In a blow to fans of midweek cyclocross coverage (me), it was reported that GCN+ is to close down in December, too.
Besides all of our Black Friday content, we also saw a new bike sponsor for AG2R: Van Rysel enters the World Tour, and sadly AG2R have had to ditch the brown shorts.
This news also meant that at the moment it looks likely that Campagnolo equipment will not feature in the WorldTour Peloton next year for the first time in, well, a very long time indeed.
December
Well, we’re only halfway through at this point, but everything is at least much fresher in my mind. So far we’ve had yet another big story for Shimano, as it was accused of conditions ‘akin to modern slavery’ in one of its supplier factories.
December is also normally our quietest month in tech terms. We get the chance to compile our gear of the year lists and take a deeper dive into some stories that we otherwise wouldn’t have. From my point of view, this took the form of a piece on the future of waterproof clothing, given the impending ban on so-called ‘forever chemicals’ that’s coming in 2025.
In a throwback to an earlier trip, Tom treated us to a glimpse at Fausto Pinarello’s private bike collection. There may well be some big story that reveals itself before the new year, but I suspect it’ll be the usual trickle of new team bikes and kit.
I hope you've enjoyed this throwback retrospective, and hopefully, you’ll also join us in 2024 where we’ll be working hard as always to bring you all the best in tech from the cycling world. Now, go get those mince pies out of the oven and have a glass of mulled wine.
Will joined the Cyclingnews team as a reviews writer in 2022, having previously written for Cyclist, BikeRadar and Advntr. He’s tried his hand at most cycling disciplines, from the standard mix of road, gravel, and mountain bike, to the more unusual like bike polo and tracklocross. He’s made his own bike frames, covered tech news from the biggest races on the planet, and published countless premium galleries thanks to his excellent photographic eye. Also, given he doesn’t ever ride indoors he’s become a real expert on foul-weather riding gear. His collection of bikes is a real smorgasbord, with everything from vintage-style steel tourers through to superlight flat bar hill climb machines.
