Spotted: New Bontrager XXX shoes at the Tour de France

The pace of development in the world of high-end race shoes is rapid at the moment, with lower weight being the current frontier on which companies are doing battle. Spotted at the Tour de France were a brand new set of Bontrager XXX road shoes.

We don’t have any details on the new shoes yet, and Trek isn’t willing to comment at this stage, which leaves us to speculate. We can see from the photo below that the new shoe, looks quite different to the current model, seen on the right.

The most obvious change is the removal of the Velcro strap, which is replaced by another loop of Boa dial lace. The shoes still use a pair of Boa dials as before, but the lower dial now has three anchor points, compared to one previously.

Many high-end shoes combine a small Velcro strap for adjusting the toe-box volume, and it’s generally and set-and-forget thing. By replacing it with an extra loop of Boa lace we can presume Bontrager has been able to shave off some weight whilst possibly maintaining, or improving, the customisation of the fit.

The new shoe also appears to have the central cutout offset to the outside of the shoe a little bit, though it is hard to say for certain from the photos. The riders were in a rush to get off on their last training day before the Grand Depart when we snapped these photos, so we didn’t manage to get up very close.

We can also see that the two front mesh panels seem to have vanished as well.

Given how brands like Specialized and Giro are really pushing the weight of their top-end shoes ever lower by investing in fancy new materials for the upper, might we speculate that Bontrager has also dabbled with some exotic upper materials to shave the weight? We’ll have to wait and see.

As soon as we have more info on these shoes we’ll be the first to share it, so keep checking back daily.