Tour de France Winning Bikes: 1903-2023

The Tour de France has been running nearly consecutively since 1903, and during that time the bikes, not to mention the sport of cycling all together, has changed tremendously! So sit back, relax, and see how we went from 40 lb fixies to 15 lb super bikes!

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Intro
00:57 1903-1912: A Publicity Stunt
02:54 1913-1936: No More Single Speeds
05:13 1937-1955: Shifting Gears
07:24 1956-1985 : Innovating…Slowly
09:13 1986-1999: Innovating…Rapidly
12:00 2000-2019: Marginal Gains
14:53 2020-2023: The Modern Era

#cycling #tourdefrance

the 111th edition of the tour to fron kicks off tomorrow and we’re starting the party a day early with a look back at every winning bike in the history of the tour that’s right we’re going all the way back to the dusty roads and steel single speeds of 1903 and we’re going to trace a line from there to the modern super bikes of today we found some pretty interesting Trends and surprises while researching that we’re excited to share with you but first a couple caveats number one we at 99 spokes are bike nerds but not necessarily historians so if and when I miss some facts and I know for sure that I’m definitely going to mispronounce some names then you can go ahead and graciously correct those down in the comments secondly speaking of the comments I’m sure all of you are ready to write down there it’s not the bikes that win the race it’s the Riders and you are 100% correct we couldn’t agree more but instead of highlighting every single bike that’s ever been raced in the torto front ever we thought choosing the winning bikes would help us narrow down the list just a little bit so without further Ado let’s hop in the way back machine and go all the way back to the first ever tour to France which took place in 1903 which was put on as a publicity stunt by the French newspaper luto to sell more papers during the first few years all writers participating in the tour were required to race on one of two official bikes and the winner of that 1903 race was Maurice Gahan on his 40 lb or 18 kg law France this steel boohemoth used a fix gear Hub had no brakes and rolled on wooden Wheels mace would have won the next year’s tour as well if it weren’t for the fact that he and the three other top Riders were all caught cheating essentially using vehicles to get themselves across the stage instead of biking the title then went to the fifth Rider to cross the line who is hory cornet on a con which is one of just a few manufacturers to make only one appearance on our list of winning bikes 1905 was the first year that the tour Was Won by a brand that you’ll probably recognize but likely not from cycling and that’s pjo pjo is actually the second most successful manufacturer of the tour with 10 total victories and another three as a part of the French conglomerate law sportif that we’ll be talking about here shortly pjo won back-to-back winds from 1905 to 1908 but the bike that we’re going to highlight here is the one that won in 1907 which is actually the first bike to feature a coaster Hub this was a controversial solution to the rising safety concern of fast asense in which Riders on their fixed wheel bikes removed their feet from the pedals to allow the bikes to Coast at maximum speed opponents to the Free Will thought that they would diminish the difficulty of the race as well as decrease some of the differences between Riders and ultimately add more complexity of the bikes and lead to more of them breaking down pjo streak was broken in 1909 by Francois Faber riding an elone and it’ be alion and our old friends La frav swapping it out for the top spot until pjo once again found themselves on top in 1913 1913 is also the start of what we’re calling our second era of the tour and that’s the first first year that we saw someone win the race with a multi-speed setup on their bike these systems were a far cry from Modern derailers which were actually banned until 1937 instead Riders would have to Dismount their bike and physically move the chain from one Cog or another before hopping back on and riding away P would win one more time in 1914 before the tour took a brief Hiatus from 1915 to 198 due to World War I World War I left Europe in bad shape and many of the factories that had previously produced bicycles had been reduced to Rebel in an effort to continue professional cycling racing many of France’s biggest cycling companies bonded together under the losp name from 1919 to 1921 losp sponsored over half of the pro pelaton and unsurprisingly one each of the three years they entered making them the only cycling manufacturer with a perfect record at the tour to France losp disbanded before the 1922 race but its subsidiary Brands continued to dominate in the tour the first to do so was once again pjo which was won by the 36-year-old Ferman lambach who still holds the title as the oldest person to ever win the general classification at the torto France the next year we saw another former law sportif company begin its winning streak and that was automoto who won four races in a row from 1923 to 1926 and it was a similar story from 1927 to 1929 but this time with asalone back in the top spot things got a little weird in 1930 when hre gron of the leato newspaper banned any manufacturer teams from having their graphics on the bikes instead every Rider raced on a generic looking yellow bike so while we have a pretty good idea of who these races were won by as far as the official records go there are no manufacturers listed as a winner from 1930 to 1939 despite the diminished branding opportunities during these years there are still some pretty big technological advancements that happened the first that we want to talk about happened in 1934 and that’s when anonin Magna became the first person to win on alloy wheels seeing as anything other than wood Wheels were still banned at this point he painted them to look the part but the following years aluminum wheels were finally allowed and as you’d imagine quickly swept their way through the pelaton the next big change took place in 1937 which is also the year that we’re seeing starts our third era of the Tour bikes because that’s the first time that derailers were allowed and by derailers I really should say derailer because only one model was legalized the winner that year was Raji lapi who rode a bike equipped with a rod actuated three-speed oscure super Champion drivetrain it was also around the same time that we started to see some more widespread changes in bike geometry and that came down to a couple reasons for one road surfaces were getting better uh material engineering was improving and the competition was stiffening which meant that bikes were shifting their priorities from comfort and ease of riding to power transfer and Agility this was done by shortening the length of the front and rear triangles and reducing the fork rate the torto France was once again put on hold from 1940 to 1946 because of World War II but that’s not to say that cycling Innovation stopped because 1947 was another big year for the bikes this year the winner was Jean robique whose bike was equipped with the Simplex torto France derailer one of the first cable actuated designs a much less sophisticated design was being used by the Italians one of which being 1948’s winner Juno bartali on his Lano this bike used Cholo’s Cambio Corsa that required Riders to reach back to two levers mounted on the seat stays one to release the rear wheel the other to select the required sprocket 1949 it kept things in the Italian Corp and Was Won by FAO copi on his bian which just so happens to be the longest running manufacturer in the Tor of France despite winning only three General classifications 1950 Was Won by Ferdinand Kubler on his fiorelli and 1951 by Hugo cobl on his Fus 1951 was another big year for drivetrain development and the bike this year was the first to win using Cholo’s new Grand Sport derailer this used what’s now referred to as a parallelogram design and set the stage for just about every rear derailer to follow speaking of Italians Italian manufacturers continued to remain dominant for the next few years and between 1952 and 1958 the top spot Switched Off between Stella bian and Mercier compared to the rest of the tours history bicycle development was relatively stagnant during the the ‘ 50s 60s and70s which ironically is the thing that defines this third era in our categorization of Tour bikes yes weight was starting to go down and geometry was beginning to evolve just a little bit more but for the most part the frames were still pretty dang similar they all use steel tubing with steel lugs as you’d imagine drivetrain and Brake technology was increasing during this time as well and campolo a brand that was an underdog just the decade before would go on to be a mainstate on almost every sing single Pro bike for a couple decades following that time that said it would still take a few more years for bikes to truly progress into the modern era so there you go 15 years of bikes covered in about 30 seconds and a whole lot less names for me to butcher now this isn’t so much bike related but we’d be remiss not to stop our fast forwarding for just a second here in 1969 to talk about Eddie MKS MKS had a nearly perfect run from 1969 through 1974 on his own m branded bike which was built by kago he was only bested by Luis Oka on his titanium speed well tital light 1975 was a turning point for our French manufacturers who had been pretty consistently beaten out by their foreign rivalries most of which being Italian and Jon and our old friends pjo would go back and forth swapping winds for almost the entire next decade 1977 was actually the year that PUO would go on to win their 10th and final tour which like I said earlier still gives them the second most victories of any manufacturer the French briefly surrendered their top spot to a brand that you’ll probably recognize Raleigh for their first and only tour victory in 1980 before jiton took it back over and won for the next 4 years now I don’t know I wasn’t born yet but there must have been something about all the hairspray disco and neon colors of the mid 80s that jumpstarted the cycling industry because this would user in the start of what I think might be some of the most interesting years of cycling we saw massive changes in compon quality frame design and probably most importantly frame material in 1986 would be the first year that the tour would be won on a carbon fiber bike Greg lemon’s look kg 86 used carbon fiber tubes made by tvt molded to alloy LS this resulted in a 16 lb or 7.3 kg bike which wouldn’t be unreasonable by today’s standards and was absolutely Monumental at the time lamon and his teammate Bernard H know were also the first two Riders to win the Tour using clipless pedals which as You’ probably guess spread pretty quickly to the rest of the field 1987 and 88 saw the return of Steel before lemon once again won in 89 and 90 on a carbon tvt frame set also found on lemon’s 1990 bike where the first generation of shimano’s STI or Shimano total integration levers that nested the shifters within the brake levers meaning Riders can now shift without removing their hands from the bars as revolutionary as lemon’s bikes were carbon wasn’t quite yet here to stay the next couple years would be won once again by metal bikes really I should say more specifically they should be won by pinero’s metal bikes piloted by Miguel and durin 1991 through 1995 would go on to be the longest winning streak of a single athlete and while inder’s luck may have stopped there pinello didn’t and they’d go on to win in ’96 and 97 as well during this time we also saw the short-lived success of alloy bikes the first of which to win the Tour was the Pell coralite in ’95 and 96 followed by the pinell prince in ’97 and the biani mega Pro XL in 98 before I move too far out of the ’90s however we of course have to mention Chris borman’s Lotus 110 which paved the way for time tral bikes for decades to come what I find most interesting about this era of cycling is that it’s the only time that we’ve had so many different ideas of how to make a good bike and so many of them end up being successful I mean there were alloy steel carbon and even titanium bikes racing and doing quite well during this time not to mention there are huge changes in geometry and while Brands like giant CLL and bian may not have been on the top of the podium their work in this regard definitely deserves a mention so in just over a decade we went from this a steel race bike with down tube shifters and geometry inherited from the 50s to this a wind tunnel shaped carbon fiber rocket ship that in all reality isn’t all that far far from the bikes you’ll be seeing race next month but of course we can’t show that picture without at least real quick talking about what in my opinion is one of the darkest eras of cycling that was Lance Armstrong’s seven recounted victories from 1999 to 2005 aboard his full carbon fiber Trek the first of its kind according to the official data there’s actually no winning bikes during these years and of course I don’t want to throw all the blame at Lance we all know he was one of many writers who had internally Justified cheating as required means to an end but all that being said is it’s a bummer we don’t have more bikes to talk about from that era but one thing we can talk about is that in 2000 the UCI officially put a legal weight minimum of 6.8 kg or 15 lb which will also Mark the start of our second to last era of this video that we’re calling marginal gains in a moment we’ll talk about how this new rule eventually mitigated the pursuit of allout weight savings above anything else but first we have to talk about the winner of the 2006 tour which was Oscar pereo and his magnesium pinell Dogma this was the first and only magnesium bike to ever win the Tour and from here on out it was all carbon like I mentioned earlier the uci’s weight limit meant that Engineers now had other places to focus their energy namely these went to comfort efficiency your power delivery and aerodynamics an example of this is the Trek Equinox TTX one of the bikes Alberto contador rode to victory in 2007 this also marked the first ever non-european Bike Company to officially take the win at the tour and it wouldn’t be the last the top spot temporarily went back to Europe with CLL winning the tour in 2008 before Tre took the win in 2009 and specialized earned their first victory in 2010 2009 also happened to be the first year that a stram equipped bike won the Tour speaking of first BMC would win their first and only title in 2007 on a bike raced by cadell Evans this was also the first for one with an electronic drivetrain shimano’s Dura Ace di2 and While others had existed since the 9s shimano’s di2 was the first to be reliable enough to be widely used within the tour and again first to win the Tour altogether next it was time for pinell to make its second phenomenal run winning every race from 2012 to 2019 giving them a total of 16 victories over the history of the tour more than any other manufacturer along the way we saw a couple other Innovations come and some come and pass the first of which being oval chain rings that said despite their success very few Riders use them today bikes were also getting highly specified at this time and if they didn’t already have them by now every manufacturer had a dedicated climbing bike Arrow bike time trial bike and maybe more lastly during this stretch of years we saw disc brakes begin to make their first appearance onto bikes and we’ll talk more about those in just a little bit 2020 kicks off our final era of the tour and that has been dominated by two Riders and two manufacturers and that is of course T pachar aboard his kago and yonas vingar with cello during these last few years we’ve seen a few noticeable shifts in bike design and technology for starters Pacha became the first Rider to win the tour with a 12-speed cassette in 2020 despite their release a couple years earlier 2 years later in 2022 vagar was the first Rider to win the race using exclusively disc brakes switching to disc brakes also allowed for wider tires and nowadays it’s not uncommon to see Riders using 25 mm rims with anywhere from 28 to 30 mm tires one last interesting Trend over the last few years has been the switch from hypers specialized bike designs to ones designed to do just about everything and that’s happened because aerob bikes have gotten progressively lighter and light climbing bikes have gotten progressively more aerodynamic and they’ve sort of met in the middle these days we’ve seen several companies drop stage specific models all together in favor of general purpose bikes and that brings us to today and we can’t wait to see who wins the 2020 4 race let us know in the comments who you think the winner is going to be as well as what you think the next major Innovations of cycling will be too until then enjoy this year’s tour and of course remember that bikes are for everyone have fun out there