The 2026 Tour Down Under got under way today with a short, sharp prologue, with lots of time trial-specific setup tweaks on show.
With an agreement in place that teams can't use TT bikes for this race, riders have been forced to make changes to their normal road bike setups for maximum speed on the 3.6km thrash.
I was at the race start in Adelaide with access to the bikes. Here's what I was able to glean about the tech decisions the teams have made.
Changes driven by necessity
The absence of time-trial specific bikes isn’t as surprising as it might first seem – it was a decision made by the race organisers and teams, in collaboration with the UCI, due to the unique location of the Australian race.
Alongside a reduced carbon footprint, part of the reason stems from haulage costs. Should the teams have been obliged (on performance grounds) to bring their time trial bikes, one team insider suggested the total additional weight would have amounted to around 200-300kg – which would result in thousands of pounds of extra air-freight fees.
Ultimately, for a 3.6km time trial, this was deemed an avoidable cost.
You could argue this improves technical competitiveness. With bigger-budget teams such as UAE Team Emirates-XRG, Visma-Lease a Bike and Ineos Grenadiers in a stronger financial position than smaller teams competing at the same level, it was suggested to BikeRadar that the ‘poorer’ teams might have had to make hard decisions about whether to bring the equipment at all.
All teams receive financial support to arrive at the race, according to our source, but this doesn’t cover the entirety of the bill. Effectively, teams are required to fund the shortfall, and this means they bring enough specialist equipment for their key riders, while others make do with the standard equipment they’d usually race with.
With that covered off, let’s dive into the main changes the teams have made.
Wheel swaps
An open goal, given the prologue is officially designated a time trial, has been to fit deeper front wheels than the road-race mandated 65mm, and disc rear wheels.
Some Groupama-FDJ United riders had use of the Miche Kleos RD SPX3 tri-spoke front wheel, while Jayco-AlUla riders used a Cadex Aero 4-Spoke Tubeless Disc Brake wheelset. All other teams stuck with wheels with a regular laced-spoke design.
Not all the riders are using the fastest wheelsets available, though, a decision driven mainly by the additional costs associated with shipping over the extra equipment for riders who won’t be targeting a strong individual performance in the prologue.
1x dominates
Team mechanics have been hard at work switching over the bikes of the main contenders for the prologue, and overall victory, to a single-chainring setup up front.
The benefits of 1x drivetrains include improved aerodynamic performance, plus a small weight saving when the front derailleur and second (inner) chainring are removed.
There’s also less chance of slipping a chain or accidentally calling for a shift should fingers stray over the front derailleur shifter, which remains fitted to all the bikes.
The largest chainring I spotted? 60 teeth.
Mixed tyre choices
Teams were running a mix of tyres for the race.
Alpecin-Premier Tech, for example, chose to run odd tyres for the prologue (a Pirelli P Zero Race TT mounted to the Shimano rear disc wheel, and a P Zero Race TLR RS to the front wheel), for practical reasons.
Given the prologue finished late in the evening, and the bikes needed to be ready for the journey to the start of stage 1 by 8am the following day, it was deemed too much of a drain on resource to make wholesale changes to the tyre setup in between (bearing in mind the limit of kit each team has brought with it).
There were also variations in size – defending Tour Down Under champion Jhonatan Narváez, of UAE Team Emirates, was running 25mm Continental Grand Prix 5000 TT TR tyres on his combination of ENVE SES 6.7 front wheel and ENVE SES Disc rear wheel.
Meanwhile, Enzo Paleni of Groupama-FDJ United was running a 25mm Grand Prix 5000 TT TR on his Miche rear disc wheel, and a 28mm Grand Prix 5000 S TR on his Miche Kleos RD SPX3 front wheel.
Team mechanics revealed the choice of a 25mm rear tyre was down to concerns over passing the UCI’s credit card width rule governing tyre-frame spacing when running a 28mm tyre.
Off-sponsor selections
Some teams were running non-sponsor-correct components.
At Lotto-Intermarché, some riders were using a Zipp Super 9 Disc wheel (a common sight among SRAM-sponsored teams), given wheel sponsor Oquo has yet to release one.
But the most common non-sponsor choice was single chainrings.
UAE Team Emirates-XRG had taped over the CarbonTi branding on its 1x chainrings (it has used these without covering them up previously), while Alpecin-Premier Tech and Ineos Grenadiers were using unbranded Miche RD R92 chainrings.
Jayco-AlUla was another team to opt for third-party chainrings, fitting an SR-TMP DM from Dutch chainring specialist The Mechanic Parts.
Rider-position tweaks
Most riders opted to run an identical position to their normal race setup – again, some team mechanics confirmed this was partly because of the desire to reduce setup time between the short prologue and the following morning’s stage one.
However, some riders, including XDS-Astana’s Marco Schrettl, made small tweaks to their saddle position for the race, pushing it as far forward as the rails allowed in order to pitch him further forward over the bottom bracket.
This more closely imitates a rider’s time trial position on a TT bike, and opens the hip angle for improved power transfer.
