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Tour of Flanders 2025 tech gallery: Negative angle stems and 30mm tyres
Road bike races are the best when the roads are the worst, that’s a fact. And that means badly surfaced races are always hiding interesting bike technology and tweaks, even if modern road bikes are already comfortable enough to bounce over a cobble without a fuss (or puncture).
So we sent photographer Xavier Pereyron behind the scenes at the Ronde van Vlaanderen – between getting photos of the race itself – to see what treasure he could find.
Eddy Merckx Bikes is Flanders-Baloise’s official bike sponsor, however while the brand’s new bike is still in development the team are actually riding the Ridley Falcn RS, with Ridley and Eddy Merckx Bikes being part of the same company. It even says so on the chain stays.
Their bikes are fitted with lesser-spotted FFWD wheels.
They also show off the most extreme angle of one of this year’s themes: negative stem angles. The particularly interesting thing here is that this rider has a pretty steep angle while still keeping a few spacers, presumably to keep the tops extra high for climbing while the hoods and drops stay more aero.
Cofidis might be staring down the barrel of WorldTour relegation but they’re going out in style.
With their Campagnolo wheels they were running 30mm Vittoria Corsa Pro tyres with rather long valves.
There was nothing too crazy about Matej Mohorič’s bike in this one outside of his long stem.
Movistar’s Albert Torres had a slightly less exaggerated stem angle, but it was still pretty aggressive.
They were also using Zipp’s new wheels with the tyre pressure sensor.
De Rosa doesn’t get much of a run out in the big races these days, they were here courtesy of the Wagner Bazin WB Continental team.
Not many teams are using either Ursus wheels or Goodyear tyres in the pro ranks. (Also note handlebar angle).
Q36.5 got themselves a couple of Grand Tour invites so we’ll be seeing this set-up a lot more this season.
EF were using Vision’s new top tier Metron RS wheels.
The big talking point of those might be the fancy carbon spokes.
Neilson Powless had one of the bigger chainrings on the day with his 56T the biggest we spotted.
Roel van Sintmaartensdijk is 1.97m tall. Big boy stem.
Intermarché’s wheel setup is one of the freshest in the peloton with new Newmen wheels with hidden valves and new Hutchinson Blackbird Race tyres.
Mathieu van der Poel is a sponsor’s dream, probably because the sponsors tailor they stuff around him. Sadly for Shimano he didn’t win on his prototype wheels.
No logo = secrets, but carbon spokes can’t be hidden.
He still has plenty of room for even bigger tyres at Roubaix.
An insight into how MVDP planned his race with bottles, gels and the Kwaremont labelled.
Filippo Ganna is rather large too.
His lengthy exposed seat post also nicely shows the raw carbon finish on his Pinarello Dogma F.
Ganna was also using extra shifters on the tops for quick changes on the climbs. No flared bars here though.
While Ganna was on the standard Continental GP5000s, one of his teammates was using the aero front tyre.
Aren’t they lovely?
It was aero tyres for Jayco-AlUla too, this time 30mm with the full Cadex system.
And in this house flares are encouraged.
Take a good look, when Arkéa get relegated this year Bianchi will be gone from the WorldTour once more.
The Oltre’s Cervélo S5-esque stem rises rather than falls.
Israel-Premier Tech’s Factor Ostro VAM bikes were decked out in aero touches, including very deep wheels, but more fun is Jake Stewarts Darimo carbon seat post on the left.
Only a slight down turn on these bars.
Groupama-FDJ’s Clément Russo was also on the Continental Aero tyres.
His instructions were more basic.
Big aero on Tudor’s BMCs.
Slightly down here too.
However their more interesting choice was the Schwalbe gravel wheels, which we also saw used heavily in Strade Bianche.
It was a fantastic day out for XDS-Astana, and they didn’t even have the newer Vision wheels.
With Alex Dowsett on the staff you know the team have explored all their aero options, but they keep their bar and stems sensible.
On the contrary, Mads Pedersen goes aggressive with his setups.
Big stem.
Big targets.
Big plate.
Big gravel gears. He’s been using the SRAM Red XPLR gravel groupset throughout the Classics, and it seems to be working for him.
Uno-X swapped the big tubes of Dare for the big tubes of Ridley this season.
And with big tubes comes big responsibility to aero.
Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe have been disappointing this Classics season, despite making some big signings. Their previously secretive Specialized tyres are now out in the open.
Those brake levers are very wide.
Orbea produced some special paintjobs (and a jersey) for Lotto’s 40th anniversary and aren’t they lovely?
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