Over the last few days, we have been pouring over our pictures that are still coming in from the Cyclocross World Championships in Tabor. One item that struck us was the changing nature of bike tech on podiums in comparison to years past.
We have looked at the technology behind the riders that have what it takes to compete for the podium, and analyzed the top four bikes in each category, from the Junior, U23, Women's Elite, and Men's Elite Races. In the slides below, we'll present some of the most common parts that helped the riders find the podium (or barely miss it), and we'll also point out some of the noticeable outliers.
Although we didn't incorporate the riders who placed out of the top four of each race into our statistics, we'll show you a few unique products that we found. Don't miss our full bike profile on Mathieu van der Poel's Stevens Super Prestige Disc cyclocross bikes of the BKCP Powerplus cyclocross team.
While we included many categories, we opted to save tire selection for a separate post for multiple reasons. In many cases, riders were changing their tire selection mid-ride: Eli Iserbyt and Logan Owen, for example, both reported their mistake of start-line tread selection after their race. As such, a breakdown of tire usage is not only unwieldy, but the reported statistics would be misleading. Stay tuned for our look at some notable tire choices at the 2015 Cyclocross World Championship.
Peddling Familiar Wares, Wearing Familiar Pedals
By far and away, Shimano pedals were the choice of the top 16, with 62.5% of confirmed riders sporting them on their bikes. Because riders tend to be a little more selective about their pedals, and wouldn’t likely change them over with the new year, we could safely say that 81.25% of the riders are actually using Shimano pedals.
As you probably guessed, Gage Hecht is once again the outlier. He uses Crank Bros. Eggbeater 11 pedals on his bike. This time, however, he is joined two riders. Wout van Aert, runner up in the Men’s Elite Race, uses Time ATAC XC12 Titan pedals, which like the Eggbeater 11s, have a titanium spindles. Clement Venturini, fourth place finisher in the U23 race, rides on Look S-Track pedals.
Although there are many variations of Shimano XTR pedals that the pros use, including the prototypes that Sven Nys rode on this year as shown below, you can’t assume that XTR is the go-to model. All season, Tom Meeusen (who finished sixth at Tabor) rode on Shimano M540 pedals, and he is not alone in his selection.
The pedals on Nys’ bike are heavily-modified XTR M980 that Nys has been using for a while now. We were surprised in April when a version was not included in the new XTR group. © Cyclocross Magazine
