Gearing choice in the Tour 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, SRAM and Campagnolo 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 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
The most common chainset size in the pro peloton on normal stages is 54/40t. That’s a standard Shimano Dura-Ace option, and most teams racing in the Tour de France use this groupset. This is the chainset from Dylan Groenewegen’s Giant Propel (above), for example.
There are plenty of other choices, though. We spotted Edvald Boasson Hagen of Team TotalEnergies using this 55/42t chainset (above) which comes from the days when Shimano Dura-Ace was an 11-speed system.
Enric Mas, who had to withdraw from this year’s Tour after sustaining an injury during the first stage, was using a 52/39t SRAM chainset (above).
Intermarché – Circus – Wanty’s Georg Zimmermann uses this 55/42T Rotor setup on his Cube Litening Aero.
The Shimano neutral service bikes are fitted with 52/36T chainsets that give a broad spread of gear options for any rider who is unfortunate enough to require one.
You’ll find larger chainrings during the time-trial stages when riders are consistently moving at high speeds. For example, this (above) is Luke Durbridge’s TT bike with 58/46t chainrings fitted.
During last year’s Tour de France, Stefan Bissegger was spotted using this 64 tooth chainring that is not available to the public.
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 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 Critérium du Dauphiné recently, loads of pro bikes were fiitted 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, and that surprised us. David Gaudu’s Lapierre Xelius SL (above), for example, was fitted with a 54/40t chainset and an 11-34t cassette. 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.
Campagnolo has just updated its Super Record EPS groupset and now the cassettes come with a 10t smallest sprocket. The standard options are 10-25t, 10-27t and 10-29t.
The largest sprockets on those cassettes might seem pretty small but at the same time Campagnolo has altered the size of its chainsets to compensate. They’re available in 50/34t, 48/32t and 45x29t options.
That said, we saw Ben O’Connor’s BMC Teammachine (above) at the Dauphine fitted with new Campagnolo Super Record EPS shifters and derailleurs, with a 54/39t chainset and a larger cassette than any of those listed above.
SRAM offers a 10-33t cassette for Red eTap AXS, and that’s what we saw fitted to one of Jonas Vingegaard’s bikes ahead of the Dauphiné, matched to a 52/39t chainset.
> Which chainset is right for you?
The use of that 10t sprocket means that SRAM chainsets don’t need to be as large as Shimano’s to achieve the same gear ratios (Shimano’s smallest cog is 11t). However, as well as the 52/39t chainset Vingegaard was using, SRAM now offers 54/41t and 56/43t options.
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 lately thanks to its use by Jumbo Visma riders Jonas Vingegaard and Wout van Aert in this year’s Tour de France.
Pic: © Zac WiLLIAMS SWpix.com (t-a Photography Hub Ltd)
Jumbo-Visma switched from Shimano to SRAM for this season and we first saw Vingegaard experimenting with 1x at the Dauphiné.
> Jonas Vingegaard uses 1x gearing for Tour de France opening stages
A few riders have dabbled with 1x, with varying levels of success, and of course, there was the ill-fated Aqua Sport Blue team which solely used 1x drivetrains on 3T Strada bikes. The team boss at the time was quite scathing about either the drivetrain or the bike, or perhaps both.
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.
Jumbo-Visma uses single chainring setups on its time trial bikes (above) when it doesn’t need a huge spread of gears.
However, Vingegaard and Van Aert have also used 1x for normal road stages with a Wolf Tooth LoneWolf Aero chainguide fitted to help keep the chain in place.
It’s not as if Jumbo-Visma has chosen to give 1x a go just for flat courses; the first two stages of this year’s Tour were pretty hilly. It’ll be interesting to see if the team sticks with the tech throughout the race and, if not, the circumstances in which it turns to 1x.
SRAM insists that Jumbo-Visma’s use of 1x isn’t a marketing exercise, by the way. It’s down to the team and the individual riders which of SRAM’s components they decide to use.
One issue with 1x is that you can still get some fairly sizeable jumps between the gears. A possible solution to this is the Classified system which basically moves the function of the front mech into the rear hub.
Classified’s tech could also bring aero benefits and it has been used by a few teams. Uno X has tried it out in competition, for example, and Lotto-Dstny’s Victor Campenaerts rode this year’s Omloop Het Nieuwsblad with a Classified system on his bike.
The system raises some questions about wheel changes but could it be something we see in the Tour de France in the future?
> Check out Classified’s innovative Powershift drivetrain
What about the rest of us?
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 three big groupset manufacturers are still focused on the needs of the pro racers and delivering groupsets to meet their needs, and then selling them to the public, 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 equipent 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.
