On the third iteration of Paris-Roubaix Femmes, SD-Worx Protime managed to end the Lidl-Trek dominance and secure their first victory, thanks to their superstar world champion, Lotte Kopecky.
The Belgian won the sprint from a small group of six after 148.5 km and covered 17 cobbled sectors before the famous lap and a half of the velodrome. She pipped the former world champion, Elisa Balsamo, who finished second; whilst the rising British youngster Pfeiffer Georgi came third.
The full overview of the day's events - including Kopecky's mid-race mechanical - can be found in our excellent race report written by our race team, but here we're going to focus on the bikes. At the end of Paris-Roubaix, the organisers kindly prop the bikes up on a makeshift podium inside the velodrome and leave them for tech nerds like us to get up close with, take pictures of, and generally just gawp at.
Naturally, the winning bike of Lotte Kopecky is the one we care about most; the share of real estate her bike has been given in this article is evidence of that, but all three bikes here have just podiumed at the hardest one-day stage race in the calendar, so we also found it interesting to compare the differing approach each team has taken with their equipment choice.
Kopecky raced and won on the Specialized Tarmac SL8 S Works, whilst Balsamo rode Trek's Domane model. Third-placed Pfeiffer Georgi was aboard the Scott Foil. Interestingly, there were three different genres of road bike on the podium. An all-rounder, an endurance bike, and an out-and-out aero bike which we examine below.
As we predicted in our tech predictions, and then had confirmed by Specialized a few days later, Kopecky opted for the S-Works Tarmac SL8, notably shunning the Roubaix for its namesake race despite that bike having won the race 7 times in its 20-year history. The Tarmac is an all-rounder race bike; striking a best-of-both-worlds balance between lightweight and aero.
Meanwhile, 2nd place Balsamo was on the Domane, Trek's endurance-focussed bike, with its wider tyre clearance and bump-smoothing Isospeed Decoupler technology. With that said, it was the 'RSL' (Race Shop Limited) version which bears more aggressive geometry akin to a race bike than the Domane SLR 9 I reviewed in 2023.
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In third place, Pfeiffer Georgi was on the Scott Foil, a bike that gives no doubt about its aero credentials with its deep profiled tubes and one-piece cockpit.
Up close with Lotte Kopecky's Paris-Roubaix-winning bike
Josh is Associate Editor of Cyclingnews – leading our content on the best bikes, kit and the latest breaking tech stories from the pro peloton. He has been with us since the summer of 2019 and throughout that time he's covered everything from buyer's guides and deals to the latest tech news and reviews.
On the bike, Josh has been riding and racing for over 15 years. He started out racing cross country in his teens back when 26-inch wheels and triple chainsets were still mainstream, but he found favour in road racing in his early 20s, racing at a local and national level for Somerset-based Team Tor 2000. These days he rides indoors for convenience and fitness, and outdoors for fun on road, gravel, 'cross and cross-country bikes, the latter usually with his two dogs in tow.