In addition to some great racing, this year's Tour de France delivered a plethora of new and exciting bike tech. Here we look back at the highlights of gear we discovered on the ground, which raced from Germany through Belgium and Luxembourg before crossing all five mountain ranges of France and ending with the traditional procession into Paris.
- Gallery: Tour de France jersey winners' bikes
- Tour de France shoes gallery
- Top 5 custom bikes at the Tour de France
Many brands use the Tour de France to showcase their latest and greatest products. It used to be that products raced by the pros would not be available to the rest of us until the following season, but more brands are shortening that window. Trek, in fact, has begun to sell new bikes and gear like the Emonda SLR and Velocis as soon as you see them at the Tour.
The biggest tech headline of the race was Marcel Kittel’s victory on a disc-brake Specialized Venge, the first victory for a disc brake-equipped bike in a grand tour. Kittel went on to win five stages.
Alberto Bettiol (Cannondale-Drapac) also raced the opening stage time trial on a disc brake Cannondale Super Slice, while Michael Matthews showcased the unreleased Giant Propel Disc on stage 2 of the race.
BikeRadar first spotted the new Specialized Tarmac, Merida Reacto and Trek Emonda at the Criterium du Dauphiné in June before all three bikes were publicly launched at the Tour.
It wasn’t just new bikes at the race. No fewer than five new helmets were launched during the race, with the headlines grabbed by new models from Giro and Kask.
Custom bikes and shoes have become commonplace too to celebrate team leaders, specific race wins, national champions, Olympic champions or purely as a marketing stunt from a bike or component manufacturer.
On the final stage of the race the four jersey winners were each presented with custom-finished bikes to celebrate their achievements on the Tour.
Chris Froome cemented his fourth Tour de France victory during the penultimate stage time trial in Marseille and while we haven’t seen an update to the Pinarello Bolide time trial bike for a couple of years now, Pinarello’s component wing MOST produced custom 3D printed titanium cockpits for several Team Sky riders.
While the biggest race in the world of course displays the best components in the industry, there was still a fair share of tech hacks, and following Froome’s infamous running incident on Mont Ventoux in 2016, neutral support providers Mavic had bikes equipped with dropper posts to suit a variety of rider sizes.
You can catch up with all of our tech coverage from the Tour de France here and we’ve selected some of our highlights in the gallery above.