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As if timed by Tissot themselves, this final part of our Tour de France TT coverage lands on the eve of the Olympic Time Trials and covers a new TT bike from Van Rysel and a few other tech tidbits we spotted roaming the start in Monaco. While this gallery is all from the Tour, you’ll see a lot of this tech raced Saturday in Paris. See part 1 and part 2 for more.
Decathlon-AG2R la Mondiale has the Van Rysel XCR TT bike for time trial stages. I don’t need to mention the waves Van Rysel has been making this season as a newcomer to the WorldTour with competitively priced bikes and an upturn in success for the long-standing French team. Whether those two things are connected is debatable, but less debatable is that Decathlon isn’t simply ticking a box as some marketing activity with the Van Rysel brand. If that wasn’t already clear with its RCR and its new FCR aero bike, this XCR TT bike confirms it, looking every bit like the highly-optimised TT rig we might expect from long-established performance-focused brands.That’s a lot of surface area! The tube profiles are huge on the XCR, from the head tube to the seat tube, forks and down tube. Just look at the size of the top tube-to-seat tube intersection and the shelf-like bottom bracket.The bottom bracket area is taller than a 58-tooth chainring.There’s a slight peak to the head tube, which, as we covered earlier this year, tells us a lot about an aero bike and should aid in reducing draggy high-pressure buildup on the head tube.Arguably, the only thing missing from the team’s stage 21 TT setup was an exceptionally deep front wheel, but that may have been a course-optimisation decision given that the team also raced with deeper-but-not-disc wheels on the rear for the hilly TT. Decathlon was the only team I spotted using Continental’s new Aero 111 tyre.The seat tube and seat post profiles are about as deep as you might expect to see, while the seat stay-to-seat tube interface clearly has also been carefully considered to reduce drag as much as possible. That said, the stays are not quite as low or hidden as we’ve seen on some bikes. Another angle on that seat stay interface. The fork legs are … you guessed it, very deep, but the dropout isn’t as refined as it could be, especially for an aero bike where a hidden dropout would seem even more justified.The fork legs and crown flow neatly onto the down tube. I do often wonder if the inevitable gap between the two could turn into a wind trap of sorts, nothing a little gap tape couldn’t fix for those of us not beholden to UCI rules.Most Decathlon riders had these stock Deda extensions mounted to those mono-risers and these neatly integrated grips on the base bar.Some riders had these Swiss Side & Deda-branded extensions – seemingly more customised, and perhaps faster – with a unique Y-splitter riser as seen here on French time trial champion Bruno Armirail’s bike.With the team racing Swiss Side wheels in 2024, and Swiss Side having lent a hand in the development process of the new Van Rysel bikes, it’s hardly surprising to see the brand bring its experience in developing extensions for triathlon bikes across to the WorldTour.There’s aero expertise littered all over the Van Rysels; Drag2Zero supply the 1X chainrings and chain catchers.TotalEnergies are another French squad with a new bike supplier for 2024 in Enve. Enve doesn’t have a TT bike, though, so the team is still using the Shiv TTs from the previous bike supplier, Specialized, with branding scrubbed.With conditions pretty warm, although not as hot as in the days before or after the TT, the teams still needed plenty of these.And these cooling vests.Arkea-B&B Hotels’ Bianchi time trial bikes had these 1X aero chainrings and “Aero covers” from Alugear for Shimano cranks.And this blanked-out aero oversized pulley wheel system we believe is from Cycling Ceramic.Richard Carapaz won the King of the Mountains classification and as such had this polka dot-themed Cannondale SuperSix Evo flown in for the final stage. Probably not the most optimised solution for a time trial, but with the classification already secured and little hope of scoring a top result in the time trial, who could blame Carapaz for racing on this bike?Polka dot themes can be difficult to get right, but arguably Cannondale got the balance correct.The reigning Olympic Champion won’t get a chance to defend his gold medal given Ecuador has selected Jhonatan Narváez as its sole representative in Paris, but Carapaz’s Tour de France should soften that blow given he spent a day in the yellow jersey, won a stage, and stood on the final podium as King of the Mountains.Still, his wheels, likely a carryover from his regular gold-themed bike, offer a subtle hint to his Olympic gold medal.The Polka-bike was otherwise pretty much how I suspect Carapaz raced the rest of the Tour. A 54:40 2X chainring combo is pretty standard these days…… And his barstem setup looked pretty similar.These gold markings are used by mechanics as a measurement point for adjusting lever height. Given the fork legs are all black and the markings are gold, I went back to check if the fork had perhaps come from his regular bike; it had not given his regular bike has a gold fork.Even the head unit for the polka touch, a much easier job given this is probably just a sticker.As did the Kickr trainer he used to warm up… again just a simple, low-key sticker.The team car was less low-key, though. We spotted Rui Costa warming up for his time trial with this CoolMitt cooling device, which is seen here on his right hand.. The CoolMitt is another attempt to mitigate the negative side effects of overheating. While practically every team and rider warms up with ice vests and fans, the CoolMitt covers just the hand, and is said to reduce blood temperature at the palm through the “rapid thermal exchange mitt.” CoolMitt claims this cooler blood then travels through the heart and onto the rest of the body and thus reduces or maintains core body temperature. CoolMitt claims the device can have positive effects in just 90 seconds.A pump, seen here with the two tubes going to and from the single mitt, is filled with a mix of ice and water and pumps precisely chilled water into the mitt. If it looks expensive, it kind of is, priced at $995.Sci-fi geek warning from the editor: “What’s in the box?” “Pain.”Team DSM Firmenich-PostNL was another team with all riders’ bikes hidden out back behind a barrage of team cars, making it difficult to get a close look at all their equipment. That said, I did spot this Shimano Ultegra wheel. It is refreshing but incredibly rare to see so-called “second-tier” equipment at the WorldTour level.While the team uses Shimano wheels for road stages, it is free to use Syncros’ Capital SL Aero (60 mm deep front) and Capital SL Disc wheels for TT days. Also rare but becoming more frequent in the peloton are these 3D-printed and better-integrated head unit mounts. This appears to be from the Dutch company Hinloopen Design and is specific, as they all are, to the handlebar, the Syncros Creston IC SL Aero bars specced on the Scott Foil. The new Scott Plasma features these reach-adjustable extensions.Ekoi has a new TT helmet. Officially unveiled by the French manufacturer ahead of the Tour’s first time trial, Ekoi says the new helmet was a year in development and the result of extensive CFD simulations and “rigorous testing.”Initially spotted on Victor Campenaerts before the Tour, many suspected the Belgian was using a Specialized TT5 helmet, but as more pictures emerged, including on Ekoi’s own Instagram account, it’s clear the Pure is very different, with a much longer tail. The helmet will be available from January 2025.One shot we missed from coverage of the Look 796 in part two of the TT tour tech galleries was this monster 60-tooth outer chainring on Simon Geschke’s bike.The Monaco-Nice TT was somewhat of a logistical nightmare for teams. Some, including Ineos Grenadiers and Movistar, seemingly had Shimano neutral service follow some of their riders and provided those riders’ own spare bikes to Shimano in the event they had an issue.It’s the first time in 35 years we had a final-day TT and while some riders were competing for the stage or overall positions, others just wanted to complete the Tour. A full-gas hilly TT on a TT bike probably wasn’t all that appealing to the latter category and so, like Carapaz, some completed the course with regular road setups.
