With the Giro a week underway we are diving into the tech used by the World Tour teams at a Grand Tour. We visited our sponsored teams to give you an overview of the components they are racing with. Scroll down to see our best products captured in combination with interesting facts and figures from our sponsored teams.
In total a team carries around 50 bikes to a Grand Tour. The nine riders on a team have at least two fully built road bikes. One they use in the race, the other one is on the roof of the team car. Besides their road bikes they also have two time trial bikes. Again one to race with and one as a back up at the team car during time trials. Besides the road and time trial bikes teams carry spare frames in their truck.
With that many bikes, teams and riders need a huge amount of wheels. Teams bring around 70 wheel sets. During each stage every team car takes around 10 wheel sets.
Riders prefer riding with tire pressure from 7 (101psi) up till 10 bar (145 psi). It's a personal choice but also depends on the weather.
Water bottles are not only used to drink. The mechanics use them to prepare the rim with two layers of glue before they put the tubular tire on.
Teams carry around 160 cassettes in total - that's over 17 per rider! Besides all the prepared bikes and wheel sets they bring a number of 11-32 cassettes specifically for the mountain stages.
There are around 200 chains per team at a Grand Tour. For mountain stages teams change cassettes (for instance to the 11-30T cassette) so mechanics will change the chain to make sure the chain length and tension is perfect again.
Every sponsored rider has three pairs of shoes for a Grand Tour. With no incidents or damage most riders only use one pair.
