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We’re going to start at Lidl-Trek, whose bikes are painted in this special design to commemorate Trek’s 50th birthday.
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Each square marks a specific event in Trek’s history.
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That’s not Santa, it’s Trek co-founder Dick Burke.
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Describing the smiling banana graphic, Trek says “In 2004, we stubbed out the smoking cafeteria and launched a wellness programme that treated employee health like it mattered – because it does.”
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There’s a page on Trek’s website detailing the meaning of – and story behind – each square.
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The Lidl-Trek riders were also aboard new Bontrager Aeolus wheels, although we don’t know much about them yet.
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They also used this neat 3D-printed out-front computer mount, which fits smoothly – and thus aerodynamically – onto the bottom of their head units.
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Moving on from Lidl-Trek to Cofidis, this is a pretty cool thing to have on your top tube.
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It belongs to Danish national champ Amelie Dideriksen, who’s aboard the new Look 795 Blade RS.
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The Cofidis team use Campagnolo’s Super Record groupset, a rare find given the current Shimano and SRAM duopoly.
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The rest of the Look bikes had a fun paint scheme too.
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But with Dideriksen’s, instead of black paint, it was just clearcoat over the raw carbon, meaning you could see the complex layup of the carbon fibre sheets.
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Unsurprisingly, given. the Look bikes, they were aboard Look pedals too.
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“It all starts with dreaming.” – can you guess whose bike this is?
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It’s Demi Vollering’s, whose S-Works Tarmac SL9 is painted to reflect her status as European road race champion.
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This top tube sticker may be a nod to her enjoyment of yoga, a reminder to relax, or perhaps both.
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Meanwhile, her former team’s bikes – also the Specialized S-Works Tarmac SL9 – have a really cool mismatch custom design to mimic their jerseys.
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Close up, the colours and graphics really pop.
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They’re equipped with SRAM Red groupsets, but everything else is supplied by Specialized and its component subsidiary Roval.
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Putting some tape or a gel wrapper inside your out-front computer mount is a simple way to keep it secure and prevent it rattling.
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It’s been a fruitful start of the race for the Dutch team. Lorena Wiebes has won the first two stages and was in yellow at the time of shooting. To celebrate, the team had adorned her bike with some yellow touches.
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Moving on to Visma-Lease a Bike, and this is the Cervelo S5 of Dutch road race champion, Lieke Nooijen.
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It bears the same design as the standard bike, but in a colour-switch to reflect the Netherlands flag.
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Also, while we’re here, that number 274 sticker is the last three digits of the power meter’s ANT+ ID, making it easy to pair with your head unit when surrounded by a dozen other team bikes. Simple, but clever.
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Here’s the usual team bike, with the same design but in the traditional black and yellow colours.
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It belongs to team leader, and one of the race favourites, Pauline Ferrand-Prevot. The ‘2’ is a nod to the number of Tour de France stages she’s won to date.
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This was a nice find on Ferrand-Prevot’s bike. To keep the weight down, she’s running thru-axles from Chinese brand Overfast.
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This was cool too – The custom mount is designed specifically for Visma-Lease a Bike, but the white pen ensures the mechanics can tell if the bolts have loosened, just by looking at it.
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The paint job on UAE Team L’IMAD’s bikes was nothing special, so the Enve wheels brought some fun to the party instead.
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They had this pink geometric finish to the Enve stickers. Curiously, on Blasi Cairol’s bike, they also had ‘Factory Second’ written on the rim, suggesting these weren’t up to Enve’s preferred standard.
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It’s unclear what the sticker with UAE Team L’IMAD 26.112 on it means.
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Next up, this pink and white design really stood out on Laboral Kutxa’s X-Lab AD9 aero bikes, complete with FSA chainset and Power2Max power meter.
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The fork legs have a patterned design ot dissimilar to the Trek bikes above.
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The fork tips have this massive aero ‘blade’ protruding from the rear to help smooth airflow as it passes by the fork leg. The red heart is a nice touch too.
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While most teams in the WorldTour use bottle cages from Tacx or Elite, Laboral-Kutxa uses cages from lesser known Race One.
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We couldn’t talk about fun paint jobs without bringing this one up though – Factor One’s bikes were painted with this crazy SpongeBob SquarePants theme.
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Every element of the bike has been given the SpongeBob treatment.
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Even the Wahoo computers were incorporated into the design.
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This bike belonged to Human Powered Health’s Italian rider, Barbara Malcotti, but they were also painted for Factor’s other sponsored team, Ma Petite Entreprise.
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Despite riding a Factor bike, Malcotti was using a Specialized saddle. It’s rare for women’s teams to have a saddle sponsor, since saddle fit is so rider dependent, most are free to choose their own.
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The bikes were designed by XXRay, part of the Mighty Jaxx studio.
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This is the Ma Petite Enterprise version of the design.
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Lotto-Intermarche Ladies’ team had the new Orbea Orca Aero at their disposal, mostly in this silver and red finish.
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Except Sandrine Tas had this prototype version from before its launch.
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The raw carbon was painted with these fluorescent lines to show off specific design elements of the frame.
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This one highlights the angular seat stay junction as it meets the seat tube.
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It appears that this was the 22nd version of this model ever made.
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I really like how the raw carbon can be seen here at the dropouts, showing the different types of carbon fibre used in different parts of the frame.
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The lines also highlight the angular design of how the fork leg meets the head tube and down tube. There’s also a cut-off section of an inner tube wrapped around the fork leg, which will later be used to shroud the race transponder and make it more aero.
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The paint on this Fenix-Premier Tech bike is un assuming at first, but the golden flakes really help it to pop in the sunlight.
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Also on the Fenix-Premier Tech bikes, we spotted the newly launched Shimano Dura-Ace wheels, with the part number WF-R9370, confirming they’re from a new series of Dura-Ace groupset.
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I also liked this little hack nearby, using a zip tie to keep the cable from snagging against the nearby moving parts in the event of a crash.
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Despite the men’s team – specifically Jasper Philipsen – using prototype pedals at Paris-Roubaix this year, the Fenix-Premier Tech team are still on the R9100 pedals, which carried over when Shimano launched the R9200 series groupset in 2021.
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However, we did spot the new pedals elsewhere…
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We found them on Eleonora Ciabocco’s bike, over at Picnic PostNL.
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Details are sparse, but rumours suggest a lower stack height.
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They still resemble the existing Shimano Dura-Ace pedals, but in a slightly more refined design.
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The big difference, which we learned when Van der Poel and Philipsen failed to swap bikes in Roubaix, is that the two use slightly different pedal-cleat interfaces.
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Without knowing these are new, it would be hard to distinguish between these and the older pedals.
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At first, this looks totally normal, but on closer inspection, you can see that the E and Y have been filled in using white pen. Presumably worn away by heel rub or damage in transit.
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It was found on Katrine Aalerud’s Ridley Noah Fast 3.0
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These wheels were recently included in Cyclingnews’ latest round of wind tunnel testing, albeit the Aero 111 tyre no doubt helps their performance a little.
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I can only assume Uno-X have borrowed the power meter ID trick from Visma mentioned above.
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I’ve not seen the DT-Swiss ARC 1100 DiCut wheels laced up using silver hubs before, they look great, and presumably save a bit of weight by having no surface coating.