Gearing choice in the world’s biggest bike races like the Tour de France used to be easy; a standard chainset was the only way to go and cassette choices were limited at best. However, these days, with 12-speed options from Shimano and SRAM and 13-speed Campagnolo Super Record 13 all represented in the peloton, there’s more choice than ever. We’ve had a nosey at the pros’ bikes to see what they’re using this year.
Suffering on the hills? Find out how to get lower gears to make climbing easier
The peloton’s gearing choices differ from many consumer bikes simply because the riders race at very high speeds and therefore need bigger gears to keep a comfortable cadence. Whereas most bikes you can buy come specced with a 50/34T compact or 52/36T chainset, (or 48/35T and 46/33T on SRAM 12-speed groupsets paired with 10-tooth start cassettes), you’ll typically find the peloton powering along on chainsets with larger chainrings.
Check out this article for a primer on the basics of gears and all the lingo
Although they’ll change according to the terrain and a team/rider’s aims for the day, a 54T or 55T outer chainring is common. This is a 55/40T Shimano setup on the bike of Louis Vervaeke of Soudal Quick-Step, for example.
Jordan Jegat of TotalEnergies has a 54/40T setup too. Although it’s essentially a Shimano drivetrain, TotalEnergies uses Carbon-Ti chainrings on its bikes.
Race leader Tadej Pogacar uses a similar setup: a Shimano Dura-Ace drivetrain but with Carbon-Ti chainrings. Again, this is a 55T outer chainring. This is on top of the car before Stage 19 with an Alpe d’Huez summit finish.
Things are a little different on the teams using SRAM.
Remco Evenepoel of Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, sitting second in GC, has a 54/41T chainset here, along with a gold chain and cassette to celebrate his status as the current Olympic Champion (in both road race and time trial).
Sprinter Biniam Girmay of NSN has a similar 54/41T chainset on his Scott Foil RC, but without the gold components.
You’ll find larger chainrings during the time-trial stages when riders are consistently moving at high speeds. This (above) is Pogacar’s bike from the individual time trial fitted with a 64T chainring, again from Carbon-Ti.
As well as needing the option of large gears, the reason for using such a massive chainring is for drivetrain efficiency when in the most frequently used gears in the middle of the cassette.
Cassettes have varied much more over the years, largely as a consequence of the steady increase in gears, from the old days of 5-speed and 6-speed to the 12-speed and 13-speed setups that are currently used in the pro peloton.
As the number of gears has increased, so too has the range, with larger cassettes increasingly common, partly as a response to race routes that are getting ever harder as race organisers attempt to find even more cruelly savage mountains to send racers up.
The increase in the number of gears also means that riders can cover those larger ranges with smaller jumps between sprocket sizes. This helps them keep a more even cadence as they move across the cassette.
When we visited the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes recently, loads of pro bikes were fitted with 11-30T and 11-32T cassettes. These are positively humongous compared with a few decades ago when you’d get an 11-21T cassette and, if you were lucky, 11-23T for the mountains.
We saw quite a lot of 11-34t cassettes too. With a 40t inner chainring now more common than a 39t, it looks like more riders want a larger cassette to compensate on hillier roads.
Cofidis is the only team that uses Campagnolo in this year’s Tour de France. Campagnolo Super Record 13 offers cassettes with a 10T smallest sprocket. The standard options are 10-29T and 10-33T. Campag also offers 11-32T and 11-36T options.
Up front, Campag offers various chainset options, the largest being a 55/39T.
> Which chainset is right for you?
What about 1x?
SRAM’s 1x system, where you have a chainset with a single chainring matched to a wide-ranging cassette, has been around for a few years now and has gained more prominence thanks to its use by Visma–Lease a Bike riders like Jonas Vingegaard (who crashed out of this year’s Tour de France).
Uno-X use SRAM components too, with Tobias Halland Johannessen going for a 1x setup here. With no inner chainring to help out when the gradient gets steep, he’s gone for a 52T option here – a little smaller than the outer chainring in a typical 2x Tour de France setup.
There are benefits to a 1x system. There’s no duplication of gears – which is something you get with 2x groupsets – it can be lighter and more aerodynamic, and the lack of a front derailleur means there’s one less component to fail.
Many riders use a single chainring setups on their time trial bikes (above) where a huge spread of gears isn’t always required.
This XDS Astana rider at the Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes used a single chainring with the logos concealed on their X-Lab TT bike, for example, with a chainguide to help keep the chain in place.
This Lotto-Intermarché uses a similar-looking Miche X1-RD chainring (without any logos covered) on their Orbea, with a Wolf Tooth LoneWolf Aero Chainguide.
Today’s pro road racers are provided with equipment vastly superior to 10-20 years ago, but it’s the range of gears that has been the most interesting trend as the groupsets have evolved. As the number of sprockets has increased, the gear range has increased. Are riders getting soft, are courses getting harder, or is the higher number of gears making it possible?
The big groupset manufacturers – Shimano, SRAM and Campagnolo – are still focused on the needs of the pro racers and delivering groupsets to meet their needs, but there just aren’t many normal people that need a 54×11 gear. The requirements of the pros are very different to people like you and me.
This is slowly changing, though. Outside of the pro peloton, we’re starting to see a shift in focus from the equipment manufacturers to meet the growing diversity of modern cyclists that are less influenced by pro racers and more by their riding, whether long-distance road rides or adventure and gravel bikepacking.
Largely thanks to adventure riding, we’re now seeing much wider range groupsets with more realistically usable gear ratios for the many people that don’t go racing every Sunday, but want gears to help them out on challenging terrain and let them conquer every hill.
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