Cobbled Classics season is tech watch season, and while Roubaix takes the biscuit – though Cyclist tech editor Sam Challis has perfected the Roubaix build – Flanders is a good warm-up, with teams having to blend cobble-friendly comfort features with low weight components for the steep bergs.
Photographer Xavier Pereyron got stuck in in Oudenaarde to snap the peloton’s bikes, and got ahead of the curve catching the women’s bikes at Dwars door Vlaanderen mid-week too.
Expect tyres averaging 30mm, lots of 1x cranksets and some made-for-gravel components too. Oh and the new Endurace up close before its official launch.
We kick things off with this actually very nice BH of team Burgos Burpellet BH, who set the tone with 30mm Pirelli P Zero Race RS tyres and aero chainrings.
Flanders-Baloise are still flying the flag for Eddy Merckx bikes with maybe overly cautious 32mm Vittoria Corsa Pros. Whatever happened to underbiking? Romance is dead.
Also remember that seat tube shape, it’ll be important for later.
Uno-X switched to SRAM over the winter and were making full use of that in Flanders, with aero 1x chainrings all over. They even used SRAM’s gravel specialist Red XPLR AXS parts for the wide-range cassette and tough Direct Mount derailleur.
Jonas Abrahamsen’s bike pictured here also has a nice WolfTooth chain catcher and the team were using Continental’s Aero 111 front tyre and GP5000 S TR rear.
NSN Cycling were using Continental’s 30mm Tour de France special Archetype tyres, which were developed with Tadej Pogačar. If you can’t beat him…
EF Education-EasyPost also switched to SRAM this year and made the same choices as Uno-X with that single chainring and SRAM Red XPLR AXS rear derailleur and cassette. Like most of these 1x setups, this one has a 54t chainring.
Back to the old school, Picnic-PostNL are sponsored by Shimano, who don’t currently have a roadworthy 1x system – though Pogačar did use custom chainrings to go 1x at Milan-San Remo. Which team also hasn’t won a race all year? Picnic-PostNL.
Interestingly they’ve scribbled out the spec on their Michelin tyres.
Pinarello-Q36.5 were Pidcockless but they did get 12th place courtesy of Aimé De Gendt. Their Pinarellos were fitted with 30mm Vittoria Corsa Pro tyres and interestingly they didn’t go 1x despite being on SRAM.
Anthony Turgis’s TotalEnergies swapped Enve for Cube this year, so it’s a similar setup to Intermarché’s 2025 bikes.
Ineos had Sam Watson and Magnus Sheffield both riding well in the front group until they crashed out. The team are Shimano sponsored so were using full Dura-Ace groupset and had Continental GP5000 tyres on their new-for-2025 Scope wheels.
Watson’s British National Champion’s bike is easy to spot.
Unibet Rose Rockets’ talisman Lukáš Kubiš has an eyecatching Slovakian National Champion themed Rose bike. They were also on the SRAM 1x and Red XPLR AXS combo and were using 30mm Vittoria Corsa Pros. He changed shoes for the race, fear not.
Bianchi will be enjoying their return to the WorldTour with Bahrain Victorious. Matej Mohorič rode his Oltre (not this one) to eighth place in Flanders. There isn’t much room for wider tyres in there.
Soudal-QuickStep’s Specialized tyres are going under the radar with no model name.
You can spot Daan Hoole’s bikes a long way away with that enormous head tube. He’s 6ft 6in if you’re interested.
Mads Pedersen had the fortune of riding a new limited edition design on his Madone, which has been put together to celebrate Trek’s 50th anniversary. Behind that gloss Lidl-Trek were also running SRAM 1x and XPLR AXS.
Lotto’s normal Orbea Orca Aero looks rather boring in comparison to that Madone, and their 30mm Vittoria Corsa Pros are pushing that tyre clearance very close.
SRAM-sponsored team. SRAM 1x. SRAM Red XPLR AXS. 54t chainring. There is definitely a theme. 30mm Vittora Corsa Pro tyres – another theme.
Tudor are another that didn’t get the 1x memo though. They did have Matteo Trentin going well until he crashed badly.
Yes that is Mathieu van der Poel’s lower half. Yes that is the Canyon Aeroad – stay tuned for the new Endurace, which he wasn’t using. His all black rims indicate these are unreleased Shimano Dura-Ace wheels though.
Don’t think there was any danger of getting lost.
Lightly dusted.
Here is the new Endurace, ridden to third in the women’s race by Puck Pieterse.
This is a good angle for comparison between this new bike and the Aeroad below.
And there’s your confirmation it is an Endurace.
‘Please don’t press start. Please don’t press start’ – the rest of the peloton, probably.
Pogačar has racked up quite the collection of wins on the Y1Rs. Find the full breakdown of his bike here.
Lotte Kopecky and her SD Worx team are also using the unlabelled Specialized tyres. This and the following pictures of women’s bikes were taken at Dwars door Vlaanderen earlier in the week, but the tech won’t have been changed much if at all.
Elisa Longo Borghini and her UAE Team ADQ teammates do frequently use the V5Rs, which is good news for the bike’s developers given Pogačar only rode it for about ten minutes before the Y1Rs came along.
The only Factors left in the WorldTour belong to the Human Powered Health women’s team. No Factor One for Flanders, it was Ostros all round.
Kathrin Schweinberger didn’t ride Flanders, but her Austrian National Champs bike we spotted at Dwars door is rather fetching.
The new EnviLiv, the women’s equivalent of the Giant Propel is now light enough to be a true all-round race bike for Liv-AlUla-Jayco.
For the full breakdown of Demi Vollering’s Euro Champs bike click here.
For those who don’t need to know when the climbs are coming and when to feed.
Lidl-Trek were already testing the SRAM setup earlier in the week with Loes Adegeest getting the full works.
As did Uno-X’s women’s team, with Linda Zanetti on the same setup as the men including the aero front tyre.
While Astana don’t have a women’s team, they do have a technical and sporting parternship with Basque team Laboral Kutxa-Euskadi, whose X-Lab bikes have this pink and white paintjob.
Along with some cool detailing on the inside of the fork.
Irish rider Fiona Mangan’s Mayenne Monbana My Pie squad rides this bling Winspace bike, with the brand’s Lun Hyper wheels with carbon spokes along with Hutchinson Blackbird Racing Lab tyres.