Welcome to Escape Collective. Please select your language.
Please note that this is an automated translation and it will not be perfect. All articles have been written in English and if anything appears to not make sense, please double check in English.
Having already won Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Grace Brown might have considered her final year in the pro peloton a success, but then she only went and added an Olympic gold medal to her palmarès, winning the time trial in the opening event of cycling at the Paris Games.
Just two weeks later, Lapierre has this golden TT bike ready for today’s Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift 6.3 km time trial stage. While the short prologue-esque stage is very different to the much longer TT that Brown won in Paris, she will no doubt start the stage as one of the favourites and hoping to add another win to what is becoming a fairytale retirement season.
Brown’s FDJ-Suez team assembled the custom bike ahead of the Tour de France Femmes and provided these photos. At the heart of the build is a Lapierre Aerostorm DRS frameset and Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 groupset. From there, Brown has plenty of wind-cheating aero hacks. Let’s dive in.
The bike is as trick as it is bling, with plenty of hacks to set hearts racing. Most notable are the Sync Ergonomics 3D-printed custom TT extensions and the Evolve TroikaMax+ front tri-spoke paired to a Shimano-branded rear disc wheel, which is most likely a Roval 321. Brown is running the now almost seldom-seen-in-time-trialling 2X setup with a 58/41 chainring combo.Other more subtle upgrades include the Dash saddle, which was not seen in the WorldTour prior to this season but is popping up across multiple teams in 2024. Note also the arching and narrowing risers from the base bar. While these could be explained by Brown’s preference for a narrower arm position and perhaps wider extension mounts on the Lapierre base bar, we’ve also seen a similar design from Sync on Luke Plapp’s Giant TT bike, and we are willing to bet there is some aero wizardry happening here.Brown will no doubt have an aero bottle fitted come race day. Note also the Continental Aero 111 front tyre, a surprisingly rare sighting of the recently announced aero-focused tyre. Out back Brown has opted for a Continental Grand Prix TT TR tyre.Deep forks, deep wheel. The front wheel is pretty wild; not only does it feature an 80 mm-deep rim paired with a tri-spoke design, but the hub effectively comes out to meet those three wing-like spokes. This is as close as you can get to a front disc without actually running a disc.‘Nuf said!Brown will also race the World Time Trial Championships later this year where some rainbow bands could be the cherry on the golden icing of this retirement cake.
