Self-inflating tyres, rare brands, and custom paint - Women's Tour of Flanders Tech Gallery
All the tech from the pits at the race start in Oudenaarde
On an unseasonably warm day in Belgium, the Tour of Flanders served up some fantastic racing. Both the men's and women's races were competitive right to the death, though ultimately both were won by the favourites.
The women's race starts and finishes in Oudenaarde, so after getting all the tech from the men's race, we hopped in the car and hightailed it down the motorway to make sure we could bring you an equally bumper crop of tech from the pits of the women's race.
Access at the women's paddock is usually a little easier, and from a tech point of view, there's usually an opportunity to see setups and brands that aren't always in the limelight. On top of that, we saw some brand new unreleased wheels from Zipp, and Visma-Lease A Bike using a self-inflating tyre system.
Now that the dust has settled on the race, feast your eyes on all the goodies, and then try and work out what's going to change next week for Paris-Roubaix.
A feast for the eyes at Canyon-SRAM-zondacrypto, now that Canyon is offering custom paint options on its bikes for customers. Her,e Kasia Niewiadoma and Chloe Dygert had paint schemes that, somehow, out-jazz the usual team bikes.
Here's Niewiadoma's dazzling Canyon Aeroad. We ran a full gallery of this bike at Opening Weekend, but it can't hurt to take another look.
The paintwork is quite similar to the geometric patterns we see from brands trying to disguise the outlines of their new bikes.
Unlike even most custom Aeroad frames, the logo has been moved to under the downtube.
Larger (I think 30c) Schwalbe Pro One tyres are squeezed into the frame. The metal flake in the frame really pops in the sun, too.
There's room for larger tyres still, which I suspect will be used for Roubaix.
The team rides on Time pedals too, which are part of the SRAM brand family.
Dygert, however, was using Wahoo Speedplay pedals. Given her injury history I suspect this is more down to the added adjustability on offer with Speedplay.
Pedals aside, Dygert was rocking the same paint scheme we saw Van der Poel using at Tirreno-Adriatico.
Brand new Zipp wheels on show too, with an integrated TyreWiz pressure sensor. Most bikes had the whole Zipp logo taped over, but this only had the model name. Answers on a postcard as to what you think it is.
Oddly some of the team bikes on the roof of the cars had Schwalbe's new Clik Valve head on, rather than the traditional presta. It needs a special pump head, but purports to be quicker and easier.
The mechanics at Fenix–Deceuninck have paid attention to the details. Here the Di2 cable is zip tied to the derailleur hanger to stop it snagging in a crash.
It's a really nerdy detail, but the team is using Elite's new Custom Race X bottle cages, which are about 30% lighter than the Plus.
The team, held by a small army of officials on electric scooters, awaits their presentation at the start.
Over at the AG Insurance-Soudal camp, the team were rocking custom red 'Wolfpack' computer mounts.
The riders in the women's peloton often go off-script with their saddle choices for comfort reasons. Here Alex Manly is using a Specialized Sitero time trial saddle.
The team were all using Specialized's Turbo Cotton 'Hell of the North' tyre, a 28c width with a file tread centre rather than a smooth one.
An uncut steerer isn't the most aero, but it does give some scope for raising the bars at some point.
Some of the team's wheels had certainly been in the wars. Luckily scuffed logos won't mess with the performance too much.
A red Ceramicspeed bottom bracket to match the red computer mount; a classy touch indeed.
Across the whole weekend, there were a lot of S-Works Tarmacs on show, but for me, the plain matte blue bikes of VolkerWessels were my favourite. Simple and classy.
DD Group changed bike sponsors just before the race. Here are the team's race bikes, a very stealthy lineup of BMC Teammachine R bikes.
On the roof of the team car though, the spare bikes were different, with some aero chainrings on show.
The all-grey Isaac frames were, if anything, even more stealthy looking than the BMCs that replaced them.
I've certainly never seen a Titan Racing bike in the wild before. These are the team bikes of DAS-Hutchinson.
Welsh rider Lucy Lee was using a pretty worn-looking and rather old Selle Italia saddle, clearly a comfort choice and something that works for her.
Unlike many teams that warm up on smart trainers, DAS-Hutchinson were more old school with their rollers. Also, for the eagle eyed, yes those are Schwalbe tyres not Hutchinson, but the team sponsor is an engineering company rather than the French tyre manufacturer.
I'm always here for colour-matched computer mounts.
Ellen van Dijk was using a different saddle to her teammates, though the model of which escapes me.
Many of the team were using a SRAM Red XPLR 1x13 groupset.
Even with a single front chainring, the 13sp cassette at the back gives a huge gear range.
Of all the teams, access to the SD Worx bikes was the most limited. The bus was entirely fenced off, but you can still see the custom bikes for European champion Lorena Wiebes and world champion Lotte Kopecky at the back.
Another bike brand I've never seen in the wild before (honestly, this was a day for it), these are the Officine Mattio bikes of the Italian BePink-Imatra-Bongioani squad. I'm a real sucker for glossy raw carbon in the sun...
Sadly, for me at least, the rest of the team bikes were this purple-white fade. I suspect the ones on the car roof were older bikes for spares in the race.
The team was using Deda wheels, which we also don't see many of despite the brand being a relatively big name in the component world.
Cynisca Cycling's gloss, all-black Tarmacs were also a favourite of mine. What caught my eye though, was the tyres. They're Panaracer Agilest TLR tyres, a less common choice in a sea of Continental and Vittoria's top-end race tyres. Having tested them myself, they grip really well, though I am unsure as to whether the team would switch to Panaracer's Agilist Fast for smoother courses.
Ally Wollaston of FDJ-Suez had her saddle slammed all the way forwards.
Unusually for a Specialized sponsored team, the French squad run Continental tyres.
Here, they're shod onto the Team Edition of Specialized's Roval Rapide CLX II wheels, for a small gram and aero saving. The silver hubs really pop in the sun.
The UCI Commissaires were out in force making sure all the bars were within spec and nobody was running anything too narrow. It's unclear why he's measuring the distance between the hoods since no rule affects this measurement directly, but he did also measure the outside-outside measurement at the drops, which cannot exceed 35cm, and he measured the angle of the hoods, which can't exceed 10 degrees.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again; the bikes of the women's peloton are just better looking.
Having a Wahoo Kickr in your team colours to warm up on is the sort of attention to detail we love to see.
Human Powered Health was the only team I saw the whole weekend running Vittoria Corsa Pro Control tyres. They could go wider, but the team was sticking to 30c.
At the UAE Team ADQ bus there was some tyre code to decipher. I'm not sure what the '25.102' is, but I'm pretty sure the white pen '4/04' is the date the sealant was last added.
Bars wrapped all the way to the stem for added grip on the cobbles was a pretty common trend in the paddock.
While the all black paint (if you can call clear lacquer that) is stealthy and neat, it's also far lighter. White paint especially is surprisingly heavy, so is used sparingly nowadays.
Usually we see race transponders lower down on the fork legs, but here it's up near the fork crown. It could be a performance thing, but equally, the team mechanic might just have a bad back and not want to bend down so far.
I didn't have time to peep the very small size mark on the Continental GP5000S TR tyres, but there's less room at the crown than we saw on Tadej Pogačar's winning bike, so I think these are 32c options.
There's no forgetting where the next cobbled climb is going to come with these race notes on the stem.
Perhaps the most high-tech thing on show from the day was at the Visma-Lease A Bike bus, where both Mariana Vos and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot were using an adjustable tyre pressure system from Gravaa.
Inside the front and rear hubs are compressors that, when switched on, use the wheel's motion to inflate the tyres on command, at the cost of 4 watts or so.
Vos used the system to win the UCI Gravel World Championships last year, but Ferrand-Prévot allegedly only had two days on the system before using it to come second at Flanders.
Vos had her tyre control buttons on the tops, though I think this was primarily as she had sprint shifters inside her drops.
With the sprint shifters, plus the extra tyre buttons and bonus buttons on the hoods, Vos had eight buttons at her disposal! Cycling really is becoming like Formula 1!
While the Cervélo S5 could fit as wide as a 34c, Vos was using a 30c option.
Over at the Uno-X bus I got a look at the monumental headtube of the latest Ridley Noah Fast 3.0. Ridley has come on as a bike sponsor of the team for the next 10 years, giving plenty of stability in terms of bike setup to the riders.
CeramicSpeed is also a sponsor, so the team all had oversized pulley wheels added to their Shimano Dura-Ace derailleurs.
No, he's not taking a photo. The Commissaires were back, this time with the magic iPad that checks for hidden motors.
Here he is again at the EF bus. No, I swear I wasn't following him, though he may have got that impression.
Unlike many, Noemi Rüegg chose to run her bars without any additional bar tape along the tops.
The Swiss champion had a custom paint scheme, as is befitting, but in typically reserved fashion it was classy and understated.
Other riders, however, opted for additional grip. The carbon pattern on the cockpit is purely aesthetic, using offcuts as an outer layer for a 'forged carbon' look, but despite this, it still looks trick.
As do the pink Muc-Off valves.
Here's the front of Rüegg's bike. It's the small red speckles in the white that do it for me.
Silver edition Vision Metron 40 SL wheels caught my magpie eye in the sun, too.
Over at the Movistar bus we saw some differing cockpit setups. Here Marlen Reusser is running the Pro Base bar and stem, which does away with the integrated computer mount.
She also ran satellite shifters under the bars, meaning she likely spends her time on the cobbles on the tops rather than the hoods.
Other riders though were using the Core cockpit which has the integrated computer mount.
The team were also using the unreleased Zipp wheels with the tyre sensor. This is perhaps the clearest shot I got all day.
Finally, here's something from walking from the paddock back to the press room. Some random supporter was running my favourite wheels of all time - Campagnolo Shamals - along with some Campag Delta brakes.
Using these pads with these brakes really doesn't do it for me, but it's still cool to see on someone's round town runabout bike.
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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.
