When a rider gains the yellow jersey for the day, come podium time he somehow miraculously manages to become bathed in yellow clothing, with a yellow jersey, helmet and shoes. What is more impressive though, is that the next day his trusty steed has also been given a make over and he gains a yellow bike overnight. This is not just some off the shelf piece either, but it is exactly suited for him, his size, his stem and bar combo and often a special saddle. Just how does this happen? When we try and order a custom colour from our suppliers, we can often wait up to 10 weeks!

Overnight, Cadel gained a yellow bike, with matching stem, computer and wheel decals – awesome!

Before and after:

Fabian matched it up with the new L.E. Sram Red Yellow and yellow Zipp decals.

Aside from the problem of each team needing a yellow version of each size frame, the rest is pretty superficial – but very effective in finishing off the look. You can certainly see the Yellow jersey even from the helicopter shots.

Jerome Pineau was given a special edition polka dot Merckx for his ride into the KOM jersey.

For holding both the Yellow and Green jersey Chavanel was given this awesome two-tone bike – we like!


There are also parts for the holders of the Green sprinters jersey. Overnight, Thor had gone from running his usual Rotor chainset to a green special edition chainset:

A few other things we can’t help but notice with all these pictures of Pro’s bikes, a lot of them are using the new Elite Sior bottle cages. We simply can’t keep these in stock with them selling so well and if so many Pros are using them, they must be very good.


Common cage complaints are – rattling, not holding onto bottles, too tight to release the bottle and breakages often of the lower stopper tab. The Sior is light, very strong and that extra loop of carbon wrapped Ti holds onto bottles tightly, but not so tight that you have a fight each time you want a drink. If you look closely, Thor has one on his S3, Columbia use them as do Liquigas – praise indeed!


Other things we’ve spotted are Cavendish’s massively oversized stem and matching bars, we have the set available here.

In a word, it’s massive!

Ours doesn’t have this red and silver graphic which was brought out for the Tour, but beneath it is the same.

The body is 100% carbon with an alloy front plate to ensure strength is retained. Teamed up with the matching handlebars this must be one of the stiffest front ends out there right now.

The bars are 7050 alloy and have internal splines to add rigidity, not the lightest set-up but if there’s one place to trade a bit of weight for stiffness this has to be it.


Bradley Wiggins has his own Tour saddle:

A special edition Prologo Scratch Pro saddle gets a custom paint-scheme but also some new tech tricks that help bring the weight well below the 200g mark and if you look closely, ANOTHER Elite Sior bottle cage!


Another is the use of SRAM’s Limited Tour Edition ‘Yellow’ groupset, Cancellara has been sporting it:

Inspiration for the black anodized gruppo with yellow graphics was to pay tribute to the colour of the Tour as well as reflect on SRAM’s 2009 success. SRAM RED not only won the Tour de France with Alberto Contador (Astana) but swept the podium with Andy Schleck (Saxo Bank) and Lance Armstrong in third (Team RadioShack).

Features and benefits stay the same as the SRAM RED and it remains the world’s lightest gruppo; approaching 1800 grams in the BB30 version. Keep an eye out for it appearing for sale on Probikekit.com.


So there you are, although the Pro’s have some very special equipment, they do also use products available to us all. It just goes to show how accessible cycling is (providing you have some money!) you really can ride with the same gear.



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