Best New Bikes And Tech | Tour De France 2014

The Tour de France always sees some of the very best new tech releases of the year. Here’s the GCN tech roundup with Caley Fretz of Velonews.
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The start of the Tour de France is a great opportunity to snoop around the teams to see just what the riders will be racing for the toughest race in the world. This year didn’t disappoint.

We discuss the new Trek Emonda, pushing boundaries for lightness, contrasting with the new Specialized Tarmac which, although incredible, is still 200g per frame lighter.

At the other end of the spectrum is the new Canyon Aeroad, as aero looking a bike as we’ve seen in the peloton.

All this, and more, in the tech roundup at the Tour.

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It’s been a tough few days before the Tour de France even started for us because we’ve been getting on nose to the ground finding out the best new tech Kayleigh freshman Berlin uses here gives his opinion on things clearly let’s start with the new trek in Monda it’s

The lightest production bike that’s not too much use that seems else because they’re hamstrung by the weight limit but what do you make of it have you seen have you seen it there over a track yeah yeah we checked it out I got a four and

A half hour ride on it treks gonna be building these it’s sort of the same level they build everything else and and the fact they can hit a weight like that is super impressive rides really really well I’ve compared it to a Cannondale Evo which I’m sure Trek doesn’t like but

It’s one of my favorite bikes ever so it’s actually high praise and the guys it so let’s say Andy Schleck is on this this new Honda he’s gonna have potentially a kilo of weight added to his bike on what the bottom bracket the debacle cages they were sent there’s a

Whole bunch of different things they can do generally just replacing carbon bits with metal bits I don’t I’m not sure that the the 6.8 limit will stick around all that much longer to be honest I think part of the reason why we’re seeing some of these lightweight bikes

From companies like Trek is because the UCI has been discussing either lowering that six point eight limit or eliminating it entirely and they’ve been discussing that for about two years now but there’s some new folks over in the tech side at the UCI and we may actually

See some movement on that pretty soon does that mean no one’s told specialize because they’re new tarmac is you know it’s super spelled super light bike but it’s still what an extra 200 grams per frame just about 200 grams yeah and and specialized will tell you that that

Extra weight goes into improving ride quality stiffness or comfort in the right places or things like that I haven’t personally written that friends so I cannot attest that however the previous the SL 4 was a phenomenal bike yeah I can’t imagine it got any worse so maybe they’re right

That half a pound is is important but it’s not gonna it’s not gonna keep them over say six kilos if they really wanted to get there so on the one hand we’ve got the trekker mondo which is super light breaking your ground on the other hand Canyon have just released their new

Air road which is obviously aerodynamic and it seems funny that we’ve got these two sides of the same coin and riders riding either one or the other seemingly not switching between the two what’s what’s your impression initially of new Canyon well it’s it’s more air than last one they say again we haven’t

Actually put it in the wind tunnel for ourselves yet so all that all these claims are just that their claims they’ve moved to a truncated aerofoil style tube shape which is something that the Scot foil and the truck Madone already use among many many others and

It allows them to make a little bit faster and and lighter and stiffer and it’s like like bikes keep going hmm because we’re two things that we really noticed actually there we were at most uh moose or Hosea quacking row houses bike they’ve got direct mount break something that the canyon and Campagnolo

Don’t make direct mount breaks yet so he had voice breaks yes he had looked suspiciously like Shimano brakes on there now that’s quite a novel improvement isn’t it the new direct Matt breaks I know you were really impressed with it yeah I have been really really

Impressed I think the design has a lot of potential it’s it’s lighter those want trigger brakes named under 105 grams which is lighter than a derice caliper they’re very very powerful and they actually they dramatically improved tire clearance so on that Amanda Trek doesn’t officially say this they

Officially say you can only run a 25 millimeter tire but you can actually run a 28 29 30 millimeter tire on that’s very cool because of those brakes and if you ran a traditional derp a scalper for example you can’t get much more than about 27 on there it would not surprise

Me if this sort of the single bolt traditional brake is sort of phased out of the next five six years or so get a little dry the one final thing I see therefore is the is the Giro synth helmet which i think is pretty noteworthy because of the claims they’ve made now presumably

We can’t test these because their aerodynamic claims but they say that their new vented helmet is as aerodynamic essentially as their aerodynamic helmet which has virtually no vents in it so what what’s going on there k are they they essentially taken two helmets and now they’re just gonna

Sell one yeah so I was actually at the launch of the of the Giro Cynthia’s ona the American launched about a week and a half ago and got the whole spiel and I think they’ve actually shot themselves in the foot a little bit because why

Would you buy an A on if if this new helmet is supposedly just as cools just as well and why would you buy an air attack if the new helmet is actually faster the synth is faster with your head at a 30-degree angle which is what Giro and a number of other helmet

Manufacturers have decided that’s sort of when you’re riding in the hoods or even in the drops kind of with your head up so you’re looking straight ahead that’s a 30 degree ish head angle the air attack is still faster significantly faster if you put your head down so if

You sprint like Cavendish does with his head kind of tucked in the air attacks still know me faster or if you are using it in time trials and you’re gonna sort of like look down at the road for 30 seconds of time peak up look down peak

Up then the air attacks still get me faster but for most people most of the time we ride with our heads up because we’re looking where we’re going and they’re saying that the new anyway I’ll might seem difficult faster with that head position okay thanks very much I

Think for the start of the Tour de France we’ll leave it that I think over the course of the streaks we’re probably gonna see a few new bits and bobs potentially something from SRAM which will keep our fingers crossed that that makes an appearance but we don’t know

But but yeah tune in for more tech news over the course the Tour de France