cyclezen

Sortta made me think back at what I did remember from 6+ hours of watching roubaix... I didn't remember seeing any 1x in the Men's race (I'll have to go back and watch the women's again...)
I thought one rider might have had 1x but everything moved so quicky it was real hard to get a good glimpse. I did watch some of the 'bike tech' reports for the major Pro teams (Cyclingtips) and ALL were running 2x cranks... The one I might have identified as 1x could easily be 2x cause some cranksets have 'silver/shiny outer ring embellishment and full black inner rings - so visibly hard to see... Apparently MVDP was running a 'Mid-Compact' extreme... 53x34...
For a race like P-R single step cogsets give a real advantage, so a 2x crank is almost a must... SIngle step might give the critical gear to keep power on and not over-spinning.
Definitely all pro teams were using 30-32 mm - surprisingly Bora had riders with all 3 different types - tubular, tubeless and tube (referred to as 'clincher')... Wondering what the post-mortem produced at that post-race tech meeting ??? Fly on the wall...
Ride On
Yuri

msu2001la

Some of the men were running ridiculously big rings, which is probably why 2x setups made more sense for them. I think it's less about single step gearing (is that even a thing? Like a 11-22 cassette or something?) and more about having a 54/11 or 55/11 for a high speed finishing sprint. It would be pretty tough to push a 54T 1x all day, but they wanted that tall gearing for the end.

cyclezen

LOL ! Not since 6 spd... corncob... no, what I meant with 'single step' is single step from 11 thru 17 or 18 - 19 then 2 step ... sometimes they'll step up to 27-28 , but usually always single at least until 17...
I am lousy afflicted with 'SETS' ... Sports Equipment Tech Syndrome... LOL! Been that way ever since my yoot !!! LOL !
so... BMC typical cassette for Roubiax - appears to me to be 11-17 singlestep, then 19,21,23,25, 27... I'd luv that for 'general purpose'... except, for my old legs, I would always give up the 11 for an 18... I lUV 18 !!!

BMC 12 spd cassette for Roubaix - 11-17 singlestep , 19,21,23,25, 27
Campy/SRAM based Pro teams use 12 spd and Shimano based still use 11 spd...

Bora - Salon de Tech... notice the chainring sizes and empty 55... LUV that funky pedal thingie - looks like it might be a 'Q' measurer ??? details, details, details...

If I was a religious man, this would be my heaven !!!
Bora Tech's comments: All riders on Spec Roubaix Frame, All Bora riders on Tubulars, although he expected all 3 wheel variants in peleton. Tire Pressure was TOP SECRET !!! LOL!
Ride On
Yuri

Wildwood 

they have been there and done suspension decades ago. Ditched it.
Must be a reason to avoid it, given the punishment.

msu2001la

FWIW - Lizzie Deigan's 1x setup ran a 50T front ring paired with a 10-33 cassette. SRAM's Red XG-1290 10-33 cassette (assuming that is what she used) has 10,11,12,13,14,15,17,19,21,24,28,33. The 10-28t version has: 10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,19,21,24,28 SRAM also makes this in an even tighter 10-26t, so she (or her team) seems to have chosen the largest range at the cost of some increased gear jumps.

A 50/10 is the same as a 55/11, so even with a 50T she had plenty of top-end for the final sprint. 50/33 is roughly 12mph at 100rpm, so I doubt she spent much time in that gear. It sounds like Trek Segafredo women ran either a 50t or 52t 1x setup- and the Trek Segafredo men ran a 54t 1x.

​​​​​​My guess is that Trek Segafredo figured their riders would be in the big ring all day anyway, and it sounds like Trek told media that the 1x setup provided a slight aero benefit and added chain security of running a narrow/wide chainring. Trek Segafredo women riders took 1st, 3rd and 8th on the day, so this setup clearly worked for them.

msu2001la

Yep. A number of teams have experimented with suspension on bikes for Paris Roubaix and both the current Specialized Roubaix and Trek Domane have forms of suspension built into them still. Disc brakes have allowed for much wider rims and tires and modern carbon frames have a lot more compliance than previous generations of race bikes. I think suspension probably made more sense when road bikes were limited to 23-25mm tires on 15 mm rims, and they all had ultra-stiff aluminum frames.

There is a good history of this on Cyclingtips: https://cyclingtips.com/2020/04/road...paris-roubaix/

Bianchi developed a few different full-suspension bikes for Paris Roubaix in the 1990's.

PeteHski

Decades ago they didn't have the damper tech that is available today. I think the only reason they don't do it is a lack of commercial demand. It would be perhaps a bit too niche and very expensive. There's no way standard road race bikes are optimal for Roubaix, but since they are all more or less in the same boat it is at least a level playing field. Colbrelli's bike was pretty much bog standard from what I read.

What happened to the Pinarello full-suss bike from a couple of years ago? I guess it is obsolete now?

The_woo

They very clearly are on the optimal bikes for that course, at least the ones with isospeed. Carbon bars make a difference, as do the seatpost and latest frame geometry. Despite the rough surface, the riders can handle it for 6 hours, which is all that matters.

Grip is the biggest issue, and there’s nothing you can do that will better a 32c road tyre at a nice low pressure on wide rims.

msu2001la

If any manufacturer thought they could win Paris Roubaix with a suspension bike they would absolutely be doing it - and they'd immediately be selling it as the next revolution in gravel racing.

Road racing is all about marginal gains, and if pro riders can suffer through 30k of cobbles on a stiff aero road bike that gains them 5 watts of aero advantage in the last 30 seconds of the race, they're 100% going to do that. They don't care about comfort. They want fast and light.

Chinghis

That being said.... This VW is really uncomfortable. German torsos must be longer or something, because I end up sitting on pillows. And I still can't just hang my arm out the window - it's just tall enough to be uncomfortable. My minivan is a bit better, once you get in, but its like climbing a ladder to the driver's seat. I even asked about running boards to make it easier.

PeteHski

Nah, I don't agree. They are only on the optimal bikes that are actually available to them. There are a few bikes that have been developed more specifically for it like the Specialized Roubaix, but only in a half-assed kind of way (as in something they can market to the masses for ordinary endurance road riding). Just because a rider can handle it for 6 hours, doesn't make it optimal.

PeteHski

I'm not sure they would. A gravel bike is not really the same thing. Paris-Roubaix has no hills and no gravel for a start! This would be more about developing a sophisticated, super-lightweight damping system to absorb most of the energy from the cobbled sections, instead of the rider absorbing pretty much 100% of it. Along the lines of IsoSpeed and Future Shock, but far more sophisticated and therefore expensive. Pinarello had a play with it in 2019 with electronic dampers, but not sure how successful that was.

I'm actually glad they don't make much effort to modify road bikes for Paris-Roubaix as the suffering is all part of the spectacle. But as a mechanical engineer I'm far from convinced that a standard rigid road race bike is the optimal tool for Paris-Roubaix. They just ride what they have available and for a manufacturer to commit to building a bike specifically for this event is pretty niche and probably wouldn't sell due to cost and lack of demand. Specialized and Trek have dipped their toes in the water with relatively cheap solutions that cross-over into normal endurance riding. Pinarello had a more serious attempt with their Dogma FS, but that seems to have disappeared with their current line-up.

PeteHski

Here's the Dogma FS:-

https://www.pinarellostore.co.uk/dogma-fs/

This is the kind of thing I actually had in mind. But at £7k for a frameset that 99.99% of paying riders don't need for regular road riding/racing is not likely to be a commercial success.

Maelochs

I think it was Moots that had a bike with a tiny rear shock a couple decades back .... Apparently they still make this buike https://moots.com/bike/routt-ybb/

Leinster

Colbrelli won on Merida’s aero bike. Matt Hayman won on a Scott aero bike in 2016. These guys have endurance/comfort bikes available, but chose the harsher ride that’s faster on pavement.

GCN did a road test a while back and the fastest bike over a 5-star sector of pave was a full-squish mtb, but the 3 5-star sectors only add up to about 10km of the 260km distance. The pave makes up about 20% of the course, and it’s true that you can’t win if you can’t ride the cobbles; but a lot of the racing, and winning moves, happen on the asphalt, so you need to be fast there, too.

The riders might have gears like 54x11 and 50x10 available on their bikes, but I doubt they’d be used much on a dead flat course. They probably spend most of the day between the 13 and 17, similar to Tony Martin riding a 60t chainring to have the best chain line.

ofajen

Yeah, that’s a classic! I watched it again. I remembered it pretty well from having watched it back in the day. Definitely worth the time. Merckx and De Vlaeminck are in it.

Otto

PeteHski

I can fully understand choosing an aero bike because the speed is relatively high. A non-aero endurance bike isn't going to provide that. But that doesn't mean you can't make something with less of a compromise for the cobbled sectors. Specialized have done the obvious with their Roubaix and it clearly has a worthwhile advantage, even though they shot themselves in the foot with poor tyre choice this year. The Trek Domane also looks to have a small advantage. I just think they could take this approach further like Pinarello did with the Dogma FS. An aero bike with electronically controlled damping. But it's not the sort of thing that would sell enough to make it viable commercially. At least not yet. But we are starting to see high end mtbs with electronic "smart" damping, so it's probably just a matter of time.

scottfsmith

Did Cobrelli have 30s or 32s? GCN was saying 32 but I thought I heard 30 elsewhere. They were definitely the new GP5000 S TR, that much was clear from the pictures.

.. My wife normally yawns and walks away when I put bike racing on, but she was glued to the Paris-Roubaix coverage.

Leinster

I can definitely see some sort of smart damping with electronic lockout being in the future for Roubaix bikes, but again, you have to remember that these are pro cyclists who ride a specific bike 364 days of the year, and a lot of them are resistant to changing bikes just for that one other day (yes, even allowing for the bergs in Flanders etc). Deignan didn’t even wear gloves, because she never wears gloves. If a rider pushed back on a simple thing like a pair of track mits, you can bet they’ll push back on damping etc. Especially if they don’t of any more benefit than sticking a pair of 32c tubeless tires on an aero frame.

Everything I’ve heard says Colbrelli was riding 32c tubeless, despite the stated max clearance of his bike being 30c. People ride with too-big tires and too-big cassettes and other things past their manufacturer-determine, safety-factor design limits all the time.

msu2001la

You are correct - it looks like Cobrelli was on 32mm Conti GP5000 S TR tubeless clinchers mounted to Vision Metron 60 SL wheels. Those wheels are hooked 21mm internal width that Vision says are aero-optimized around 28mm tires. I guess the extra mm's of rubber were worth the aero tradeoff.

The_woo

With the weather that weekend hydrodynamics might be more relevant!

Ultimately the cobbled sections are too short compared to the rest of the race to bother with the extra weight. Grade 4/5 cobbles for 100km straight and maybe we get a new bike category, but it’s not close to that.

No one even used a gravel bike with one of the seat-stay linkage suspension ish joints (Cannondale have one).

People race 200km+ on pretty variable gravel roads in the US and haven’t resorted to real suspension yet either.

msu2001la

Agreed. Gravel suspension is still an emerging thing, but on the racing end of the spectrum it's something really only seen in ultra-endurance types of events. Most of the new gravel race bikes coming out are fully rigid 700c setups, and the suspension models are aimed more at "adventure riding" and 650b size wheels.

Still, as things evolve in gravel this may change. Full suspension XC MTB race bikes were unheard of just 10-15 years ago.

Leinster

Exactly all this. Except I don’t think weight is a major factor on a course as flat as Roubaix; not many of them would notice an extra kg or so even.

I will say that at least gravel roads have some give to them; the pave are solid rock. It’d be like hitting 3kms of concrete potholes.

PeteHski

Weight would not be a major factor on a pancake flat course. But aero would be a big factor and so that rules out using gravel bikes.