Van der Poel's stage-winning Tour de France bike hides some special features 

Mathieu van der Poel won stage 2 of the Tour de France on this Canyon Aeroad CFR.

The Dutchman outsprinted Tadej Pogačar on an uphill finish into Boulougne-sur-Mer, taking the yellow jersey from Alpecin-Deceuninck teammate Jasper Philipsen in the process. 

At first glance, van der Poel’s Aeroad appears to be a pretty stock affair. But we managed to get a closer look at the aero bike and it has a few special features for one of cycling’s biggest superstars. 

Custom paint 

In February this year, Canyon announced its bike customisation programme, called MyCanyon. 

Similar to Trek’s Project One scheme, and set to launch this summer, MyCanyon lets you select from a range of paintjobs, components and accessories.

Although it looks white from a distance, van der Poel’s Canyon Aeroad CFR for the 2025 Tour de France has one of these custom paint schemes. 

Up close, you can see the frame has a gold, sparkling finish. 

A fancy cockpit that’ll please the UCI 

Even if you’ll be able to select van der Poel’s white and gold paintwork from MyCanyon, there’s a strong chance you won’t be able to choose his cockpit. 

The standard Aeroad cockpit has a -8˚ stem, but the former world champion’s bike takes things to the extreme with a -17˚ stem.

We suspect this negative stem rise will be reserved for the pros only. Or in other words, those riders who can assume an aggressive position without suffering from back pain like the rest of us. 

Otherwise, van der Poel’s cockpit isn’t out of the ordinary. The stem is 120mm long, and the bar is 40cm centre to centre and 32cm between the hoods. 

The UCI’s proposed changes to handlebar width have sparked controversy and will mean riders such as Pogačar and Vingegaard will have to switch to wider bars. But cycling’s governing body will be content with van der Poel’s setup as it is. 

Built for sprinting

Apart from the cockpit, van der Poel’s Aeroad is a pretty stock affair, which isn’t dissimilar to his 2024 Tour de France bike – or the bike he’s been riding all season.  

He is running a Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 R9200 groupset, albeit with large 54/40-tooth chainrings, and a 11-32 tooth cassette. 

Van der Poel is also running 172.5mm cranks, which is pretty standard compared to the trend for shorter cranks among pros. 

Alpecin-Deceuninck appears to be running waxed chains this year. These have previously been a divisive topic with Tour de France teams, because despite their performance benefits they come with a lot more maintenance and impact logistics for team mechanics. 

This Canyon Aeroad is built for sprinting, with 60mm-deep Shimano Dura-Ace C60 wheels. We’ll probably see van der Poel switch to shallower wheels when the race gets into the mountains, and he may switch to a slightly bigger cassette, too. 

The wheels are wrapped in 30mm Pirelli P Zero Race TLR tyres, front and rear, which plump up to 31mm. 

There are a few custom details on van der Poel’s bike. He has a Selle Italia saddle with his name on the nose and a 3D-printed computer mount. 

Van der Poel’s bike weighs 8kg, which is respectable for a fully-fledged aero bike.

Will van der Poel get a yellow bike? 

By winning stage 2, van der Poel took the yellow jersey from teammate Jasper Philipsen. 

As has become customary at the Tour de France, Philipsen was decked out with a very special yellow Canyon Aeroad to go with the maillot jaune. 

Philipsen will now be racing on a green bike to go with his green jersey as leader of the points classification, which has us asking, will van der Poel now get his own yellow bike? 

We’ll have to tune in to stage three today to find out, and to see whether he can hang on to yellow.