The 2022 Tour de France has been one of all time. Exciting races, great performances, impressive moments from your seat at nearly every stage, and a host of new technologies. It’s been a busy month with no shortage of content to cover for cycling tips.
As such, a few things have crept over the net, but now on the eve of the final phase, we’ve sat down to scroll through our camera’s tech-packed SD cards and pick out some that didn’t make it a standalone article. Not because it’s not very interesting, but because it was either meant to be part of a dedicated standalone that, for one reason or another, didn’t materialize, or was put off while waiting for more details that never arrived.
The good news is that the contents of this tech savings piggy bank make for a great summary gallery. enjoy
KTM Revelator Model
T-3 days to Le Grand Depart, and we’ve already spotted Cyril Lemoine’s new KTM Revelator. Expecting KTM to reveal the Revelator on the Tour or Eurobike, we’ve kept those shots once again for the big reveal. KTM still hasn’t revealed this revelation.
Unfortunately, even when KTM reveals the Revelator in full, it is unlikely that a zebra-like paint job will be available to you and me. One can hope, and in the meantime, here are some close-ups of the new bike.
The new Revelator feels light, airy and fast. It’s definitely a bike we’re keen to hear more about. Drop-down stays and hidden seat-mounting clips are some of my favorites…when done right. This seat post mounting bolt seems to be easy to access, a good start. The bike looks very elegant up front with the internal cable routing that FSA takes care of with its ACR system.Ah Cyril, your guy just went and hit that paint job. Broken tubes – ticks. The new frame appears to balance the aerodynamic gains and stiffness of a deeper head tube while saving weight for a smaller design.Flat back seat post – sign. The new Revelator features many of the design cues nearly standard on aero and light bikes today, but it does so in a way that gives the frame a unique identity. Pierre Rolland also had the new Revelator but in a very low key paint job. The Revelator Alto team gives it its full name.
Campagnolo climbing wheels
Campagnolo has introduced the new climbing wheels for Team UAE. The Italian company has yet to make any official announcement about the new wheels, and again, that’s something we’ve been hoping to hear during July, but these close-ups give us at least a few more details to speculate on. One of the things the Campagnolo team emphasized on the Tour was the development of both a tubular and compatible tubeless version of the new climbing wheels. Oh, Campagnolo also confirmed that these are new Campagnolo lightweight wheels that climb specific wheels, but we know a lot more already. The new wheels seem to have new rims and the G3 leather pattern has been abandoned. New hubs too.
Muto Spear Reserve
Cervelo and Reserve acquired Santa Cruz store in Morzine during their first proper day of rest. Reserve has since launched its new Aero 52/63 road wheel set, and this scooter now makes sense.
The three-wheeled scooter was not a form of modern design on an ancient Roman chariot, but instead a custom excavator up front with pitot tubes and other tools to gather atmospheric data, winds, ambient weather, and other information in an effort to Reserve a better understanding of the chariot. The turbulent conditions riders encounter in the real world. The pitot tubes in the front are very technical, very tapered, and they look like $13,000 each. Not your average bike shop floor width. Pitot tubes were out in the open when I took these photos, behind a black and yellow warning tape as I was leaving, and I went later that day. Better safe than sorry. All of this data was collected using this laptop and the software contained in the hard case in the back of the scooter. Reserve later used the data to design the new 52/63 wheel set.
New shoes, old shoes, wrong shoes
Magnus Cort wore Northwave polka dots during his time in the King of the Mountains shirt. While Adam Yates butchered the back of his Side Shot 2 shoe, Yates removed the adjustable heel retainer entirely, either to reduce installation or perhaps just to save a few grams. Geraint Thomas is now racing in Giro Imperial shoes. Maybe you were influenced by the same shoes that broke the record at Everesting? Another former British Tour de France champion also appears to be racing the Giro Imperials under Siri’s shoes on at least one mountain stage…While Chris Froome was racing these eye-catching Sidis on other stages. Speaking of gaiters, Alexander Kristof is pushing the UCI sock height limit with these DMT gaiters and really pushing the title stallion with this position. The winner of the France 2022 Footwear award has to be Wout van Aert, drawn by Caitlin Felder. Jonas Vingegaard looks set to win the Tour de France, but he’s arguably losing a lot more now that we’ve revealed his socks, sandals and sporty looks.
Merida bars
Bahrain Victorious Racing with Vision components on their Merida bikes. But some riders seem to prefer the stock Merida Team SL bars for either weight savings or perhaps personal convenience. Merida’s bars mostly went unnoticed because of the Vision stickers, but mostly because apart from Fred Wright, the rest of the team was mostly unseen Bahrain on this tour. Some riders also still prefer the good old-fashioned adjustability and drop shape of a classic two-piece stem and classic drop bar.
Trial time headache
He never ceases to amaze me with the amount of work that mechanics have to do in the lead up to and during the trial days. You might think WorldTour riders have their time to prep and prep the test bikes way too long, but we regularly see mechanics rebuilding and tweaking the test bikes even close to the morning trial stages. Here the Alpecin-Deceuninck mechanic was preparing the Speedmax Canyon for Mathieu van der Poel on the eve of the first phase of the experiment. Gary Blem of Team Israel-Premier Tech was building a new Hanzo worker for Chris Froome, also on the eve of stage one. The title of this…With multiple riders on each team and each with their own vastly different locations and preferences, many teams now use online software and spreadsheets to track each setup down to the exact function of each shift button. Most take the day of the experience very seriously, and some take it seriously.
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The Jumbo mechanics came ready for Wout’s T-shirt switching style. His yellow days meant the green, forked Cervelo truck descended into a parts truck.Amid all the Speedmax and Aeroads in an Alpecin truck this was the Ultimate. Was the MVDP hoping for a green and yellow Wout style? The Movistar team has largely stuck to tubular tires for many stages. Ditch the trend toward tubeless tubes, which they kept for spare bikes. There is great anticipation for the new giant thruster, and Team BikeExchange-Jayco’s loyalty to Propel for high mountain stages only added to the hype. As many have taken this as a cue, the new bike is really at the roughly 7kg mark that Giant suggested to us as we approached the new Propel in Copenhagen. Mountain high weight rescue tricks aren’t quite what they used to be, but they are still there if you know where to look. Jonas Vingegaard has raced the Cervelo S5 for many stages but, along with Wout van Aert, is moving to the Cervelo R5 for the climbing stages.Vingegaard is also racing with the Garmin 530, which is lighter than larger width units like the new 1040, but, more interestingly, it apparently uses an inverted paint version of the integrated Metron 5D ACR tape stem. Primož Roglič also did with this slightly different but still far from the standard cockpit. Jumbo seemed happy to race the tubeless tires on the flat stages as well, but largely switched to the tubeless tires on Shimano’s lighter-weight C36 wheelset for mountain stages. Interestingly, one of the team mechanics told us that the grouting between the tire and rim is actually a new prototype of tubular cement that should be applied along the edge of the wall rather than pneumatically penetrating. Some Ineos Grenadiers also chose the C36 for the higher stages but preferred the tubeless version. Super Blanche needs super gear. Geraint Thomas climbed to fifth on a steep gravel road with a 40 chainstay and what looks like a 32 sprocket in the back. We hear a lot about how the riders stay motivated for 21 days of racing, but we hear very little about how the directors are fed…
