Seven tech predictions for the Tour de France from the pits at the Critérium du Dauphiné

When faced with a protracted stint in the odd, liminal space of the exit lobby of Britain’s second-largest airport, one can do several things. People-watching is my favourite, and as I wait for my meandering coach from Gatwick to Bristol there is a constantly revolving carousel of weary travellers, a fair few Taylor Swift fans returning home from Lyon, and chauffeurs awaiting their charges nursing ever-stagnating cups of Pret A Manger coffee.

I cannot, however, watch people for two hours; I’d go mad. I also cannot bring myself to read one of the magazines or newspapers from the paltry selection on offer in one of the innumerate WHSmith outlets that seem to proliferate in airports, seemingly in defiance of the plight of their high street counterparts.

What I can do instead is try and coalesce what I learned wandering the pits at the Critérium du Dauphiné the past few days. I saw four new bikes, double the new bike cohort from last year, and so an easy first prediction is ‘we’re going to see new bikes at the Tour de France’. This is a bit like saying ‘we’re going to see a yellow jersey at the Tour de France’, though, given marketing executives’ collective aim to launch their new model at the biggest race of the year, inevitably leading to all of them getting lost in a noise of headlines. If you want to get really nerdy with all the tech from the Dauphiné, my bumper Dauphiné tech gallery is now live.

The new bikes – a new Pinarello Dogma, a new Trek Madone or Emonda, a new Canyon Aeroad, and a new Willier all-rounder, took the headlines and make up the bulk of my tech gallery snaps, but behind all this, there are some trends that should carry into the Tour. I am at the end of a long day, so if any of these seem a little wide of the mark then feel free to argue amongst yourselves on X to your heart’s content.

With each new bike that comes to market, it seems the industry is reverting back to its old ‘one bike to rule them all’ tricks. While this adage was mostly used when referring to gravel bikes, it seems like it’s being used once again but for top-tier race bikes. It should be noted that I don’t think any marketing exec has signed off on a campaign slogan as hackneyed as this for a while,…

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Seven tech predictions for the Tour de France from the pits at the Critérium du Dauphiné

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