The Women’s Tour de France is in full swing this week, and especially in my home country: the Netherlands. This year, that made it super easy to check out the route on a few different stages – both road and time trial. In today’s post, we’ll look at a road stage, and then in tomorrow’s post, I’ll dive into a time trial stage, including some details on team cars and more!
Above you can see a first behind-the-scenes video that covers the following interesting things, among others:
– How Shimano Neutral Service inventories each team’s bikes at the start
– Kristen Faulkner’s new bike setup after the Olympic gold medal
– …and pairing said new bike/power meter with their new golden Wahoo BOLT (in the middle of the team zone)
– Washing machines, of course
– The reason why a team used Smart Trainer for a non-TT stage
– Which teams use power meter pedals
– Which teams will appear at the last second
– A group of female cyclists follows the tour… but starting in Germany.
– A really big squirrel hugs me
– A look at Puck’s daily handlebar artwork with the stage details (current KOM holder)
– All sorts of other random things
Basically, it’s what happens when you give me a camera for two hours and I just want to enjoy the randomness of professional cycling in the team zone. Or essentially what I always do at the Tour de France, whether it’s the men’s or the women’s.
Of course, a lot of this is about inventorying sports technology, and today was power meter day. As is often the case, the choices on the women’s side are much more interesting. On the men’s side, it’s basically a case of choosing one: Shimano or SRAM (with a single SRM team thrown in). But on the women’s side, the world is your oyster! We’ve seen everything from Favero to Garmin and SRM to 4iiii and Stages in the past. And that largely holds true here too.
In summary, here is the summary:
Shimano (crank arms): 8 teams
SRAM (Spider): 6 teams
FSA/Power2Max (Spider): 4 teams
Garmin Rally (power pedals): 1.5 Team
4iiii (crank arm): 1 team
Appearance (Power Pedals): 0.5 teams
SRM (spider): 0.5 teams
For me the big star here is FSA/Power2Max (which is almost entirely down to FSA), who have slowly but surely increased their market share over the last few years. Power2Max makes a good product and FSA takes advantage of this well (as they have for years).
Of course, some of you are wondering at this point: “WTF”, half a team? Well, hopefully the following makes it a bit clearer:
Arkéa–B&B Hotels Ladies: Shimano
Ceratizit–WNT Pro Cycling: Shimano
FDJ–Suez: Shimano
Fenix–Deceuninck: Shimano
Liv AlUla Jayco: Shimano
Lotto–Dstny Ladies: Shimano (+ a few FSA/Power2Max)
Team dsm–firmenich PostNL: Shimano
ADQ of the UAE team: ShimanoCanyon–SRAM: SRAM/Quarq
Health through human power: SRAM/Quarq
Lidl Trek: SRAM/Quarq
Movistar Team: SRAM/Quarq
Team SD Worx–Protime: SRAM/Quarq
Visma – bicycle leasing: SRAM/QuarqEF–Oatly–Cannondale: FSA/Power2Max
Roland Cycling: FSA/Power2Max
St. Michel–Mavic–Auber93: FSA/Power2Max
Uno-X Mobility: FSA/Power2Max (+ pair of Garmin Rally)AG Insurance–Soudal: Garmin Edge
Cofidis: Half Look pedals, half SRM
Laboral Kutxa–Fundación Euskadi: 4iiii (one-sided)
There are a few teams whose riders have been using Garmin Rally pedals (some teams use Shimano pedals, some don’t use any at all), and then there’s a team that is in the process of switching to Look power meter pedals (as the men are doing, as they have sponsorship).
The teams that had Garmin Rally were teams sponsored by Garmin in general (bike computers, trainers, etc.), but not ones where I’ve seen Garmin Rally on all their bikes. Almost all of Garmin’s pro cycling sponsorships for major TdF teams are limited, at least publicly, to the non-electric stuff.
Garmin has noted that they would like to sponsor the power meter division, but Shimano/SRAM largely block this through drivetrain sponsorship.
Conversely, we didn’t see any Wahoo-based power pedals this year (as far as widespread sponsorships go, I may have missed a bike somewhere among the 180 or so riders), whereas in the past both Wahoo and Favero have had sponsored teams. But again, this is often driven more by drivetrain sponsorships. There is no significant resistance to power pedals in the WorldTour peloton today as there was 8-10 years ago. Given the Shimano accuracy issues, many teams use power pedals in training (where they can get away with it from a contractual perspective).
I did, however, unexpectedly see a 4iiii team that I wasn’t expecting. However, they were all one-sided units.
In any case, more to come with all the details from the time trial phase, including some surprises and firsts in terms of smart trainers.
Stay tuned and thanks for reading!
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