Tour de France bikes: Who's riding what in 2021

(Image credit: Courtesy)

The Tour de France is widely accepted as the most prestigious bike race in the world. The bikes in use at the Tour de France are up there with the very best that money can buy.

All of the bikes used in the 2021 Tour de France are made from carbon fibre. That includes their frames, wheels and most of the components such as handlebars and seatposts.

Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) won the 2020 Tour de France riding a Colnago - for the Italian brand's first-ever Tour win, no less - but there are plenty of other manufacturers in the race. In terms of bike frames, there are 19 different brands in the 2021 race, with three different manufacturers of groupsets and 15 different wheel brands. Each of these brands is continually innovating and improving in a bid to improve their products and outdo their competitors. To do this, they look at the various barriers that a rider needs to overcome in order to go faster. Aerodynamics is a big focus, but rolling resistance, friction and of course weight are key areas of attention.

In terms of the rule book, there is no upper limit on the weight of a Tour de France bike, but of course the lighter a bike is, the faster it will be when the gradient of the road starts to rise. All else being equal, a lighter bike will also accelerate more quickly and be easier to handle, so teams will do everything they can to get their bikes down to this 6.8kg limit, usually allowing 100 grams or so, to account for the discrepancy between their scales and the UCI's.

The introduction of disc brakes on road bikes made this a tougher task, since the disc braking system is heavier overall, and the introduction of aerodynamic tube shapes has also yielded heavier frames, but even so, the weight of most bikes in the peloton will hover between 6.8kg and around 7.2kg. Some of the heaviest bikes will push closer to 8kg, but these will be aero bikes and will typically only be used on the flatter days, where weight is less of an issue.

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Luke Durbridge Pro Bike — Luke Durbridge's Bianchi Oltre XR4 Disc from the Santos Festival of Cycling(Image credit: Kevin Anderson)

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.