January is the month in which many teams and professional cyclists from all over Europe leave the icy countries to descend towards the sunny roads of Spain. Training Camps take place there, where athletes do their first training sessions with all their colleagues and presentations of the teams and their respective equipment take place.
Soudal Quick-Step, in a report to the American website Cyclingnews, revealed some of the team’s trends for the upcoming season. Some of these are surprising, including the use of clicher tires, in line with the global trend of using Tubeless tires.
In this case, the model chosen was the 26 mm Specialized Turbo Cotton, with a latex chamber. “It’s exactly the same bike we finished the season on,” said Nicolas Coosemans, Development Manager at Soudal Quick-Step.
Naturally the question is why not tubeless, to which Coosemans’ response was:
“Will come. It’s a project we’re working on.”
Specialized reinforces choice
Gian Paolo Mandini, from Specialized, reinforces the choice: “At the moment, the quickest solution we have is the decisive argument. So cotton tires now. They give us better performance. So we continued with that.”
This differs slightly from Specialized’s marketing approach, which dropped the emphasis on inner tubes with the launch of the new Rapide CLX II and Alpinist II wheels (both Tubeless).
BORA-Hansgrohe continues with Tubeless
Interestingly, information from the Bora-Hansgrohe Training Camp in Mallorca suggests that, despite being sponsored by Specialized, the team is using Tubeless models and plans to transition to this technology during races.
Shorter cranks for Evenepoel, with consequences for aerodynamics
Nicolas Coosemans stated that even though Remco Evenepoel, current World Time Trial Champion, has a very precise position, some adjustments have been made.
“We made some small changes; shorter cranks, 165mm, and the handlebars were five millimeters lower. This is because the saddle has risen five millimeters. So it’s a gain of one centimeter, let’s say, which makes a difference”, explained Coosemans.
Improves at high cadences
Mondini added that these changes were made in search of better efficiency at higher cadences for the Belgian superstar:
“When he’s at full throttle, he’ll have better efficiency with that crank length. And now, he’s testing it on the road bike as well, maybe that could help him a little at high cadences and tough climbs.