Tour de France Femmes: Behind the Scenes & Power Meters!

The women’s Tour de France is in full swing this week, and most notably, in my country of residence: The Netherlands. That’s made it super easy to check things out this year, on a few different stages – both regular road and time trial. For today’s post, we’ll look at a road stage, and then in tomorrow’s(ish) post, I’ll dive into a time trial stage, including some team car bits and more!

Above is an initial behind-the-scenes video covering all sorts of things, including the following bits of interestingness:

– How Shimano Neutral Service inventories each team’s bikes at the start
– Kristen Faulkner’s new bike setup post-Olympic gold medal
– …and pairing of said new bike/power meter to her new golden Wahoo BOLT (in the middle of the team zone)
– Laundry machines, obviously
– The reason why one team had smart trainers out for a non-TT stage
– Which teams are using power meter pedals
– Which teams are rolling-up at the last second
– A group of women cyclists following the Tour…except starting in Germany.
– A really big squirrel gives me a hug
– A look at Puck’s handlebar daily artwork, outlining the stage details (current KOM holder)
– All sorts of totally other random things

Basically, it’s what happens when you give me a camera for 2 hours and I just want to geek out on the randomness of pro cycling in the team zone. Or essentially, what I always do at the Tour de France, men’s or women’s.

Of course, a lot of that is in pursuit of inventorying sports tech, and today was power meter day. As is often the case, the choices among the women’s side are far more interesting. For the men’s side, it’s basically pick one: Shimano or SRAM (with a side dish of a single SRM team). But for the women’s side, the world is your oyster! We’ve seen everything from Favero to Garmin to SRM to 4iiii to Stages in the past. And that largely holds true here too.

At a high level, here’s the run-down:

Shimano (crank arms): 8 teams
SRAM (spider): 6 teams
FSA/Power2Max (spider): 4 Teams
Garmin Rally (power pedals): 1.5 Teams
4iiii (crank arm): 1 Team
Look (power pedals): 0.5 Team
SRM (spider): 0.5 Team

To me, the big stand-out here is actually FSA/Power2Max (virtually entirely due to the FSA side), they’ve slowly but surely grown their pie over the last few years. Power2Max makes a good product, and FSA is leveraging that well (as they have for years).

Of course, at this point, some of you are like ‘WTF’, half a team? Well, hopefully, this next bit makes it a bit more clear:

Arkéa–B&B Hotels Women: Shimano
Ceratizit–WNT Pro Cycling: Shimano
FDJ–Suez: Shimano
Fenix–Deceuninck: Shimano
Liv AlUla Jayco: Shimano
Lotto–Dstny Ladies: Shimano (+ a couple FSA/Power2Max)
Team dsm–firmenich PostNL: Shimano
UAE Team ADQ: Shimano

Canyon–SRAM: SRAM/Quarq
Human Powered Health: SRAM/Quarq
Lidl–Trek: SRAM/Quarq
Movistar Team: SRAM/Quarq
Team SD Worx–Protime: SRAM/Quarq
Visma–Lease a Bike: SRAM/Quarq

EF–Oatly–Cannondale: FSA/Power2Max
Roland Cycling: FSA/Power2Max
St. Michel–Mavic–Auber93: FSA/Power2Max
Uno-X Mobility: FSA/Power2Max (+ couple Garmin Rally)

AG Insurance–Soudal: Garmin Rally
Cofidis: Half Look pedals, Half SRM
Laboral Kutxa–Fundación Euskadi: 4iiii (single-sided)

There’s a few teams that had riders with Garmin Rally pedals floating around (some Shimano-based teams, some nothing-based), and then one team that’s in the process of converting over to Look’s power meter pedals (just as they are on the men’s side, given sponsorships).

Those teams that had Garmin Rally, were teams that were sponsored by Garmin at-large (bike computers, trainers, etc…), but not ones where I saw Garmin Rally on all bikes. Virtually all of Garmin’s pro-level cycling sponsorships of major TdF teams are limited to the non-power stuff, at least publicly.

Garmin has noted they’re happy to sponsor the power meter side, but Shimano/SRAM largely block that, via drivetrain sponsorships.

Inversely, we saw no Wahoo-based power meter pedals this year (in terms of widespread sponsorships, perhaps I missed a bike somewhere in the 180 or so riders), whereas in the past both Wahoo and Favero had sponsored teams. But again, this is often driven by drivetrain sponsorships more than anything. There’s no meaningful resistance to power meter pedals in the WorldTour peloton today, like there was 8-10 years ago. Heck, given the Shimano accuracy issues, many teams *are* using power meter pedals in training (where they can get away with it, from a contract standpoint).

I did see a surprise 4iiii team though, which I was not expecting. Albeit, all single-sided units.