29 July 2023
As was the case with last year’s Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift (the women’s Tour de France), I swung down to check out all the sports tech. This first post will cover all the bike computers and power meters, and then tomorrow I’ll dive into all the trainers as the teams complete the final stage, an individual time trial.
Having followed the women’s teams for a number of years at various major events, it’s been fascinating to see the transition and sponsorship shifts that are really raising the gear level that the women receive. This year was no different. Whether measured by the completeness of team bikes/power meters/bike computers, or simply the size of the team buses/RV’s to match the men’s busses (arguably a better proxy metric in some ways), it’s clear the sponsors are spending money on the women’s side.
Yet what’s cool is how accessible the women’s side still is. For today’s stage, the entire technical zone was fully open to anyone. Whereas at a corresponding men’s stage, it’s roped off. Sure, some stages will have really good viewing of the men’s teams from a couple meter’s away behind a fence – but others will be hidden entirely, only accessible to the teams/media/VIP’s. Here though, it’s wide open, allowing any and all spectators to walk right-up to the riders, including for autographs:
Of course, that isn’t always the case. Last year in Paris at the start, the women’s teams were behind the fences a bit (but still everything only a few meters away). But given the size of the crowds there, it probably made sense. In any event, let’s jump over to the tech side.
Bike Computers:
Here’s a look at what the riders were using for their bike computers today. As has been the case the year or two, almost all the teams are sponsored by Garmin, Hammerhead (SRAM), or Wahoo. Within that, for the Garmin & Wahoo teams, riders are allowed to select which units they prefer. For example a Garmin sponsored team can choose an Edge 840 variant or an Edge 1040 variant, or even as we saw, one Jumbo-Visma rider on an Edge 130 Plus. Same goes for Wahoo, choosing between the Wahoo BOLT V2 or ROAM V2. For Hammerhead, they’ve got one unit currently in production, the Karoo 2, so that’s what they get. There are no Stages/Giant, or Bryton units this year.
Note that as is usually the case, with 100+ riders, some riders will sneak by with a different unit than I saw the majority of the team riding. For example, on some of the Wahoo sponsored teams, as the riders started I saw a handful of Wahoo ROAM V2’s fly by. Riders typically hold onto their own bike computers until they get on their bike and head to the start line, so while they did do some trainer warm-up today, not all of them had bike computers recording those warm-ups. However, these units are virtually always within the sponsored offerings from their respective sponsor.
UCI WorldTeams:
Canyon-SRAM Racing: Hammerhead Karoo 2
EF Education-TIBCO-SVB: Wahoo BOLT V2
FDJ Suez: Wahoo BOLT V2
Fenix-Deceuninck: Wahoo BOLT V2
Human Powered Health: Wahoo BOLT V2
Israel-Premier Tech Roland: Hammerhead Karoo 2
Lidl Trek: Wahoo BOLT V2
Liv Racing TeqFind: Garmin Edge 840
Movistar Team: Garmin Edge 840 Solar & 1040 Solar
Team DSM Firmenich: Wahoo BOLT V2
Team Jayco AlUla: Wahoo BOLT V2
Jumbo Visma: Garmin Edge 840, Edge 840 Solar, Garmin Edge 130 Plus
SD Worx: Garmin Edge 840 Solar
UAE Team ADQ: Wahoo BOLT V2
Uno-X Pro Cycling Team: Garmin Edge 830 + mixed Garmin Edge
UCI ProTeams:
AG Insurance – Soudal Quick-Step Team: Garmin Edge 840 Solar
Arkea Women: Wahoo BOLT V2
Ceratizit-WNT Pro Cycling: Wahoo BOLT V2
Cofidis: Wahoo BOLT V2
Coop-Hitec Products: Wahoo BOLT V2
Lifeplus Wahoo: Wahoo BOLT V2
St Michel-Mavic-Auber93: Garmin Edge 830/840, plus one Wahoo BOLT V2
The most notable thing here is we really saw Wahoo ramp up their women’s sponsorships this past year, in total they support 15 Women’s teams (8 WorldTour teams, 6 Pro Teams, and 1 Continental teams – however Team Park Hotel isn’t at the TDFF). Plus the men’s side. In the case of the women’s sponsored teams, all of those except Jumbo Visma are using the Wahoo units (Jumbo Visma arrangement just covers regular pedals, the remainder is sponsored by Garmin/Tacx).
With that, here’s the totals for this year’s Tour de France on the women’s side:
Garmin: 7 Teams
Hammerhead: 2 Teams
Wahoo: 14 teams
Again, the usual reminder that these totals is merely a simple representation of how companies decide to spend their marketing dollars on sponsorships. Wahoo has made a clear effort this year and last to increase women’s cycling sponsorships. Garmin and Hammerhead have as well, albeit keep in mind Garmin specifically also sponsors a ton of other female athletes that aren’t WorldTour cyclists (Wahoo does as well, including triathletes). Point being – all three companies above make excellent bike computers. We’ve seen some funky bike computers out on the starting line in the past, but those days are thankfully gone.
As with years past, we’ve seen skins on some of the units, including Wahoo’s, such as this white-jersey holder:
With that, let’s dive into the power meter side.
Power Meters:
We’ve seen great strides in the cycling computer side with ensuring that the women’s cycling teams are on the latest gear, and all with uniform gear. However, nothing compares to the dramatic shift we’ve seen on the power meter side. When I first started covering the women’s teams a few years ago, you’d be lucky if half the riders on a team even had a power meter at all. And outside of Canyon-SRAM, most of the other teams had a hodgepodge of random creations they cobbled together.
Now though, every team is uniform, and all of them on top-quality units. Nobody is riding a 10-year old hand-me-down single-sided power meter. A few years ago? Definitely the case.
However, perhaps even more interesting on the geekery side is the number of power meter pedals at play here. We saw a few last year, and again all three major power meter pedal brands are represented. It sounds like this is likely a ‘transition’ year, and I suspect we’ll see more women’s teams on them next year.
WorldTeams:
Canyon-SRAM Racing: SRAM RED (Quarq)
EF Education-TIBCO-SVB: 4iii Precision on FSA cranks
FDJ Suez: Shimano R9200P
Fenix-Deceuninck: Shimano R9200P
Human Powered Health: SRAM RED (Quarq)
Israel-Premier Tech Roland: FSA PowerBox
Lidl Trek: SRAM RED (Quarq)
Liv Racing TeqFind: SRAM RED (Quarq)
Movistar Team: SRAM RED (Quarq)
Team DSM Firmenich: Shimano R9200 but not all with power
Team Jayco AlUla: Shimano R9200P
Jumbo Visma: SRAM RED (Quarq)
SD Worx: SRAM RED (Quarq)
UAE Team ADQ: Favero Assioma power pedals
Uno-X Pro Cycling Team: Shimano R9200P
Continental Teams:
AG Insurance – Soudal Quick-Step Team: Garmin Rally power pedals
Arkea Women: Some Shimano R9200 but not all with power
Ceratizit-WNT Pro Cycling: FSA PowerBox
Cofidis: SRM Origin Carbon Power (Crankset)
Coop-Hitec Products: Wahoo POWRLINK ZERO power pedals
Lifeplus Wahoo: Wahoo POWRLINK ZERO power pedals
St Michel-Mavic-Auber93: Stages LR dual-Sided cranksets
The power meter scene is much more spread out, both compared to the men’s side (where it’s basically just Shimano and SRAM). Here’s where things stand:
4iiii Precision: 1 Team
FSA PowerBox: 2 teams
Garmin Rally (Power Pedals): 1 team
Shimano R9200P: 4 teams (plus 2 teams that had a handful of riders)
SRAM RED (Quarq): 7 teams
SRM Crankset: 1 team
Stages Dual-Sided: 1 team
Wahoo POWRLINK Zero (Power Pedals): 2 Teams
Thus in total, we’ve got four power meter pedal-equipped teams. I thought we might see 1-2 more teams there, especially from the Garmin side on Rally. It sounds like Wahoo also have some that might be transitioning next year from pedals to power pedals (many of Wahoo’s sponsorships are for the non-power Speedplay pedals).
With that – here’s a gallery of some of the power meter goodness:
Next up tomorrow is the individual time trial – which should be lots of fun. There we’ll take a look at the trainers, albeit I already got a pretty good look at that from most teams today, because the teams were largely doing short 20-minute warm-ups on their trainers. You can side team Movistar’s Sheyla Gutierrez Ruiz’s Garmin Edge 1040 after she finished up her warm-up, 20 minutes long with an average power of 175w.
Depending on her weight, that’s actually a quite notable warm-up. Most of the teams did this warm-up ending about 20-30 minutes before the start of the stage.
But again, plenty more on warm-ups, trainer tech, and much more tomorrow (video included tomorrow as well).
With that – thanks for reading!