Support road.cc

Like this site? Help us to make it better.

TECH NEWS

Tour de France Bikes 2015: A yellow Trek for Fabian Cancellara?

Is this a Domane painted yellow just in case Spartacus headed the general classification?

Could this be a Trek Domane frameset painted yellow and ready to rock just in case Trek Factory Racing’s Fabian Cancellara took the overall lead in the Tour de France, as he has done following a third place finish in the second stage?

We were in Utrecht, Netherlands, towards the end of last week to check out the bikes and equipment that the pros will be using in this year’s Tour de France. We were mooching about – we do a lot of mooching about – around the Trek Factory Racing bikes when we spotted this yellow frame all bubble wrapped-up in the back of one of the team vehicles.

Take a closer look and it appears to be a Trek Domane. We think. It’s kind of difficult to tell. We don’t think it’s an Emonda or one of the new Madones, and it’s certainly not a Speed Concept.

Anyway, no sooner had we spotted it than the nice man from Trek Factory Racing stuck it under his arm and went and squirrelled it away somewhere out of the gaze of prying eyes, so that’s the last we saw of it.

Our guess is that this is a Domane that was sprayed up and ready to go just in case Spartacus took the yellow jersey - as he now has.

The team bikes are painted at Trek HQ in Waterloo, Wisconsin, and knocking up a special paint job in the US and having the frame ready to go the following morning would be out of the question. Like the Scouts, it looks like Trek was prepared for one of its riders to take the race lead.

Mat has been in cycling media since 1996, on titles including BikeRadar, Total Bike, Total Mountain Bike, What Mountain Bike and Mountain Biking UK, and he has been editor of 220 Triathlon and Cycling Plus. Mat has been road.cc technical editor for over a decade, testing bikes, fettling the latest kit, and trying out the most up-to-the-minute clothing. We send him off around the world to get all the news from launches and shows too. He has won his category in Ironman UK 70.3 and finished on the podium in both marathons he has run. Mat is a Cambridge graduate who did a post-grad in magazine journalism, and he is a winner of the Cycling Media Award for Specialist Online Writer. Now over 50, he's riding road and gravel bikes most days for fun and fitness rather than training for competitions.

Latest Comments