Smaller Gears, Slower Riders? Tour de France Gears Explained

- Professional cycling has changed in many, many ways
over the last couple of decades.
And one subtle way, but nevertheless important,
is the gear ratios that the riders are using.
Now bear with me, this is actually very interesting.
So we're in the Katusha Alpecin team truck.
You can tell that because it's stacked full
of beautiful red team bikes there.
In this little cupboard we have a selection
of the cassettes;
so the rear gears that the riders have at their disposal.
Now, about 20 years ago there would not have been
half that selection.
Riders would have used either an 11-21 or an 11-23.
In extremes perhaps an 11-25.
So lots of cogs all really closely spaced together.
Now, however, the smallest cassette in here is 11-25.
Then they have 11-26, 11-28, which they use most days,
then 11-30, and even four 11-32 cassettes up here
that are reserved, principally it seems,
for Tony Martin who likes to spend all day
riding around in his big chain ring.
So, it seems a little odd, doesn't it,
given that the roads have not got any steeper,
bike technology has got better,
riders are not going much slower, if at all,
but yet their gears have got easier.
I think we need to ask some questions.
Jason is a former pro-cyclist and you've been
team liaison for SRAM for what, 10 years now?
So you were the guy that bridges the gap
between teams and the manufacture.
- Exactly, yeah.
- Okay, so you're pretty well placed then
to comment on how gear selection, gear choices,
changed over the last couple of decades.
- I hope so, yeah.
- Okay, so why are we seeing this shift then?
If you'll pardon the pun!
- Yeah, I think we definitely see like 10 years ago
an 11-25 was the standard cassette.
That's what everybody rode and mountain stage
in the tour, they'd go to 26,
whereas today a 26 or even the 28
is becoming the go-to cassette,
and in the mountain stages they'll ride 30 or 32.
But concurrently you see that on the flat stages
they're riding bigger chain rings all the time.
So the gear range in general
is just really expanded.
- And so the reason it's expanded.
Is that a request from teams that you then fulfil,
or is it a case of, you know, riders are using
compact chain sets and benefiting
from wider gear ratios just out in the mountains,
so people you don't race,
and therefore that's driving what the teams use?
- No, I mean,
we basically provide the teams
what they would prefer to use from what we can offer,
and the WiFLi rear derailleur
where they can go up to a 32 cog,
really gives them the flexibility
to ride one bike for the whole tour
and they just need to change the cassette.
They don't need to do anything like that with compact
and it just simplifies their whole life, basically.
- Why are they doing it in the first place though?
Is it the fact that cadencies are increasing,
so how fast people are pedalling,
or is it a case of, you know, they're just going
a little bit slower?
I mean, I don't think that's the case.
- I think the riders are going slightly slower uphill,
I think the bikes are going probably faster on the flats,
whether it's the benefits of better training
and much better aerodynamics on the bike
than we had 10 years ago, 20 years ago,
but if you look at videos from the 70s
you really see, you know, they're doing
a lot of this stuff and today,
you know, really nice pedalling actions up the climbs.
So the whole style of cycling has changed, I think.
Just because of...
Now you have the possibility to ride those gears.
The guys in the 70s and 80s and even early 90s
never had that possibility.
- Now one thing that the Katusha mechanics have told me
is that the biggest fan of an 11-32 cassette
is actually Tony Martin.
Now he's arguably one of the most powerful riders
in the Peloton.
And so why is a guy like Tony riding 11-32
because 32 is a big cassette isn't it?
- Absolutely, but he's got a 58 chain ring
on his bike for instance - okay fair enough
- and so the 32 cassette
really allows him to ride
the big chain ring almost the whole time
and, you know, that's what he's aiming to do.
When it's fast down hills he's really got the gear
to get up to probably 75, 80Ks an hour
and still pedalling
but not completely spun out or over revving.
- So is a part of that, like you say,
actually just simply being able to stay
in the big chain ring for longer,
and therefore not having to use the little ring at all?
- Absolutely.
I mean, especially when you've got
you know, massive chain rings like that
you've got a huge gap between
the big chain ring and the small chain ring,
so they're definitely wanting to stay
in the big chain ring for as much as possible.
- So riders are more concerned then
with saving their legs and trying to inflict
less damage on them so that they can effectively
be fresher at the end of a three week race.
But technology has also played a key part.
So let's have a look in one of the Katusha drawers here.
Now, this is a SRAM eTap rear derailleur
and it is, you'll notice,
a medium cage rear derailleur.
So that bit there, between the two jockey wheels,
is a little big longer
and it's also what they call WiFLi.
And so what it does is it effectively means
that this rear derailleur can be bolted onto the bike
all year around and the mechanics can swap effortlessly
between 11-25 cassettes and 11-32.
Meaning that there is no extra work involved.
Whereas, back in the day, swapping between
an 11-23 and an 11-28 would have involved
potentially swapping out an entirely new rear mech
and indeed a new chain as well to make it slightly longer.
So it's technological advances like WiFLi
that actually enabled riders to save their legs,
use more appropriate gears and then go faster.
Now the team does still carry
what's called short cage rear derailleurs,
so like this one here.
You can see for comparison
it is much smaller.
But effectively it is only really for time trial bikes,
where they can be confident that the riders
don't need any really light gears,
because it's not often you climb super steep hills
in time trials.
So that'll be the reason why that's still there.
Well that has hopefully shed some light
on the evolution of gearing in the Pro Peloton.
A mixture of rider preference dictating a need
for smaller gears for faster climbing cadences,
and then paired it with technological development
from components like SRAM WiFLi.
Do make sure you subscribe to GCN.
To do so just click on the globe and then
if you'd like some more content,
why not see Tony Martin's TT bike
with that monster 58 tooth chain ring.
And then we've also got my own little test
of riding standard versus compact gears
and that was on the fearsome Mortirolo in Italy.

Smaller Gears, Slower Riders? Tour de France Gears Explained | Tour de France 2017

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