Mathieu van der Poel will almost certainly be riding a Canyon Aeroad at the Tour of Flanders this Sunday, looking for a record-breaking fourth Flanders win.
There's a chance he will ride the currently unreleased Endurace he won the E3 Saxo Classic on, but given the parcours of Flanders, our odds are on the Dutchman swinging a leg over the Aeroad.
Ten years ago, defending 2015 Flanders champion Alexander Kristoff also took to the start line on a Canyon Aeroad. Riding for Team Katusha, Kristoff finished fourth, 49 seconds behind Peter Sagan, who took his first Monument win.
Same name, very different bikes, despite the strong family resemblance. Here’s how the Aeroad, and Flanders tech in general, has changed over a decade.
Frameset
Kristoff’s 2016 Aeroad was the bike’s second generation and in CF SLX carbon, which was then the top-spec frameset. The claimed frame weight was 960g.
Despite some obvious differences (such as the braking systems – more on this later), the overall silhouette of the 2016 Aeroad is remarkably similar to that of the current model, with a selection of deep, truncated aerofoil tubes and a horizontal top tube.
Van der Poel will be on the fourth-generation Aeroad. He will ride the CFR frameset, because Canyon has introduced this new, lighter tier that sits above the CF SLX. Despite this, the claimed frame weight remains 960g.
We don’t have a weight for Kristoff’s bike, but at the 2025 Tour de France, we weighed van der Poel’s Aeroad at 8kg.
Cockpit
As now, in 2016 Canyon fitted the Aeroad with a one-piece carbon cockpit. Kristoff’s Aerocockpit CF had a 130mm stem length. Its 410mm width was quite narrow for the time for a rider of 1.81m in height, but Canyon had already identified that narrower bars made the rider more aero.
Van der Poel’s Aeroad CFR has Canyon’s variable-width Pace cockpit. As well as changing the bar width, the Pace’s drops can be exchanged for aero drops, which have a flare and provide a narrower position at the hoods.
Van der Poel chooses to run the non-flared classic drops, though. At the 2025 Tour de France, we measured his bar width at 400mm – which is in fact fairly wide by modern standards.
Groupset
Kristoff’s Katusha team had, at the start of 2016, switched from Shimano to SRAM, so he was using the 11-speed SRAM Red eTap wireless groupset at Flanders. Red eTap had been launched by SRAM in August 2015, and was still a novelty and rarely seen outside the pro peloton.
Kristoff’s Aeroad had a 53/39t Quarq power meter crankset paired with an 11-28t cassette, a fairly typical pro-level combination at the time, although tighter 11-25t cassettes were often used. We reported at the time that "for the cobbled hills of the Tour of Flanders, even the strongest riders often opt for an 11-28t cassette".
Roll on 10 years and van der Poel is on a 12-speed Shimano Dura-Ace groupset with a Dura-Ace power meter. Chainrings used by pros have increased in size over 10 years and we’d expect van der Poel to be using the same 55/40t combination he rode when he won Omloop het Nieuwsblad at the end of February.
At Omloop, he chose an 11-30t cassette, the smallest spread Shimano now offers, although we reckon he might swap to an 11-34t. Doing so could enable him to spend more time in the big ring and potentially avoid dropping his chain with a mis-timed shift.
While Kristoff had recently swapped from Shimano Dura-Ace to Look Keo Max 3 pedals, van der Poel is on Dura-Ace pedals that are essentially the same as Kristoff’s from 11 years earlier.
Brakes
A major change in a decade is the switch from rim brakes to hydraulic disc brakes on road race bikes.
Kristoff’s Aeroad was configured for direct-mount rim brakes, a product that SRAM didn’t sell at the time, so his calipers were Shimano with the logos scrubbed out. They were fitted with SwissStop brake pads and brake cables ran externally from the bars to the front brake and into the top tube for the rear brake.
Van der Poel has Shimano’s standard Dura-Ace disc brake calipers fitted to his Aeroad CFR, with Ice Tech Freeza rotors. Brake hoses are run fully internally.
Wheels
Kristoff was riding Zipp 303 rim-brake carbon tubular wheels with quick-release hubs back in 2016. They had a super-light 1,152g claimed weight. Pros had been wary of riding carbon wheels over cobbles, but by 2016 they’d become convinced they could cope even with the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix.
Roll on 2026 and van der Poel is riding on disc-brake tubeless wheels. His Dura-Ace C50 R9300 wheelset ridden at Omloop is an as-yet-unreleased update, though. In place of steel spokes, it uses the carbon spokes now typical of many performance wheelsets and there are concealed spoke nipples.
The rim has a 23mm internal width with hooked beads, up from the current Dura-Ace wheelset’s 21mm.
Tyres
Another big change (literally) from 2016 is the switch from narrow tubular tyres to much wider tubeless tyres.
Kristoff’s Zipp wheels were fitted with 25mm-wide Continental Competition Pro Ltd tubulars, no doubt inflated to eye-watering pressures. It's a tyre Conti still sells, but it no longer has a place in the pro peloton.
Van der Poel may switch from the Pirelli P Zero Race TLR RS tyres he rode at Omloop to the brand’s latest, more aero P Zero Race TLR SL-R tyres, launched last month.
At Omloop, he was on his favoured 30mm tyres, now typical for pros. It’s the widest that Pirelli offers for the SL-R tyres – although there’s a 32mm width on its way this autumn.
Saddle
Kristoff’s favoured saddle in 2016 was a Selle Italia SLR. Not much has changed in a decade, with Van der Poel also on a Selle Italia saddle, in his case a Flite SLR.
