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As the curtain falls on the 2022 World Time Trial Championships with the Mixed Team Relay, we thought there was probably no better time to take a look at some of the tech on show over the past four days of time trial action. There was of course, all the usual aero rig goodness, including the latest frames, helmets, shoe covers, and custom aero extensions you would expect at Worlds-level time trialling these days.
But some new and curious tech choices caught our eye, here’s the best of what we could pick out.
New Ridley Dean Fast
Where better to start with than with a brand new prototype time trial frame from Ridley? The new bike was spotted under Belgian Alec Segaert as he raced to second place in the U23 race. If Segaert’s links to the U23 and WorldTour Lotto-Soudal squad weren’t enough to give away the unbranded frames identity, the Ridley-branded fork, which looks like it has been borrowed straight from the Ridley Noah Fast, all but confirmed the new frame is a Ridley prototype.
Ridley has since confirmed the bike is a prototype Dean Fast Disc, but can’t yet share any details. In fact, it could be at the Giro next May before we hear any further details on the new bike.
Alec Segaert was the lucky chosen one provided with the new bike from Ridley for the TT champs. The bike is Ridley’s new Dean time trial frame and for the first time now includes disc brakes, while also seemingly ditching the high top tube so identifiable with the current Dean. The front end cable and hose routing is entirely internal, and looks fast with the dropped stem, inline top tube, and Ridley’s F-Surface Plus aero-aiding grooves.The new bike is distinctly Ridley with the Belgian brands F-Surface Plus aero trip strip like grooves on the fork, head tube, down tube, and seat post. Ridley claims “these grooves create a tiny turbulence which causes the main flow of air to better follow the shape of the tube. With a smooth air travel around the frame, you’ll expertly cut through wind.”Even the copious amount of transponder retaining latex tube on the fork leg couldn’t hide this is a Ridley. While the frame is entirely bereft of any branding, we can just about make out the PRO of “Prototype” on the UCI frame approval logo and of course Segart’s name, one to watch for the future.
The seat post seemingly also offers a wide range of adjustability with plenty of fore and aft adjustment in the saddle clamp and the usual saddle fore aft adjustment offered by the saddle rails themselves. Dropped seat stays? Check. Inline stem and top tube? Check. Ridley’s F-Surface Plus? Check The Ridley design team seemingly ticked off every aero box in its arsenal, then decided to go all in and make the deepest head tube-top tube- down tube compensation zone the world has ever seen. A lick of paint and this new Ridley should be a contender for one of the best looking time trial bikes currently available today.
Base layers
Mention aero clothing, and typically, most of us will think of skinsuits, aero socks, overshoes, helmets, and gloves, but base layers seem to be the new frontier. Long story short, Team Sky and Castelli developed their “vortex generating” skinsuit arm bumps and Geraint Thomas went on to win the prologue at the 2017 Tour de France. The UCI didn’t like this and banned the bumpy armed skinsuit, mandating in article 1.3.003 that “modifications to the surface roughness of clothing are authorized but may only be the result of threading, weaving or assembling of the fabric. Surface roughness modifications shall be limited to a profile difference of 1mm at most.”
Endura also had its Encapsulator suit banned as a result of the rule change, but of, as is so often the case, a new rule from the UCI simply means a new opportunity for the cleverest minds to find a new advantage over the competition. It was in the final time trial of the 2020 Giro d’Italia when we first heard about the potential of a base layer offering an aero advantage, with Tao Geoghegan Hart said to have used a base layer with much taller ribbing under his smooth, rule-compliant skinsuit, in chasing the aero gains lost with the 1mm UCI rule.
Fast forward to this year’s worlds, and some of the top contenders have brought their base layer A-game.
Tadej Pogačar time trialled his way to sixth place and can clearly be seen using a Rule 28 Aero Base Layer beneath his Alé Slovenian national team skinsuit. The Rule 28 “aero crop top” is claimed to “provide significant reductions in drag to any skinsuit with untextured fabrics on the sleeves.” Rule 28’s website explains the base layer was developed in the Silverstone Sports Engineering Hub, and “creates macro subsurface structures to trip the boundary layer of air flowing over the arms, yielding aerodynamic savings significantly greater than traditional textured fabrics.” We have a whole section on Filippo Ganna coming up later, but in the meantime, he was another rider spotted with a trick air tripping aero base layer. Speaking to Castelli, the Bolero Sleeves “have raised stripes running the length of the sleeve, from shoulder to wrist. These sleeves go on first, then the suit over the top. The fabric of the suit sleeves sits tight and goes into the grooves creating a raised texture to the suit. We’ve found this combination to be fast in our wind tunnel testing with Quick Step AlphaVinyl.” Castelli confirmed the Bolero Sleevers are available through its custom clothing program. Joshua Tarling is the new Junior Individual Time Trial world champion and already signed to the Ineos Grenadiers for next year. We will come back to Tarling in more detail later in the article, but for now it seems he is a another rider with the Castelli Bolero sleeves beneth his skinsuit. Magnus Sheffield was another Ineos rider seemingly wearing some form of aero base layer beneath his US national team edition skinsuit. Much like Ganna, Sheffield was also using Kask’s new barge board visor, presumably some form of flow control Dan Bigham aero witchcraft we might hear more about at some point.
Skinsuits
Before we all rush off to glue spaghetti sticks to our base layers, there were also plenty of new skinsuits on show presumably offering potential time trial gains. So many time trial gains, in fact, that some riders and teams have gone fully AWOL on sponsor commitments to race what they have either tested or perceive to be the fastest or at least faster kit.
First up is Mathieu Kockelmann of Luxembourg, who is seemingly using a NoPinz Flow Suit, thought to be one of the fastest suits on the mass market today. If Kockelmann seems to be wearing a NoPinz suit, Francois Hofmeyr of South Africa leaves zero doubt, with the NoPinz logo in full view on the chest. Remco had a fancy-looking short sleeve suit from BioRacer, one of the few brands sticking with a zip on the back of the skinsuit. We have asked BioRacer for more information, and will provide an update when that arrives.In the meantime, the external chamois has caused quite the stir online. Presumably it is a much more considered, and less painful, variation of Tony Martin’s infamous saddle sand paper attempt to introduce a bit more grip to the saddle and help keep the rider in position. Remco seems to be the only rider to have had use of the new skinsuit, with Yves Lampaert and others using a slightly different looking suit from BioRacer. Australia’s Georgia Baker raced in what appears to be a new Santini Viper suit with a front mounted zipper and very trippy sleeves. Lucas Plapp was another Australian rider in what appears to be a new Santini suit. From these photos it seems the trip strip sleeves are built into the suit, but may be another variation of the base layer hack from earlier. We have asked Santini for more details and will bring it to you as we have it. Zoe Backstedt won the Women’s Junior Individual Time Trial, and seems to have been wearing a custom skinsuit from Silverstone-based, British advanced technology brand, Vorteq. These suits can set you back anywhere from £2,750 for just a suit all the way up to £7,000 for the custom suit, overshoes, four hours of wind tunnel testing and a guaranteed 5% performance gain. Bargain! Both the Hayter brothers also seemed to have the Vorteq goodness. British Cycling clothing supplier Kalas recently partnered with Vorteq to produce what it says is “a new class of world leading aerodynamic skinsuits under the ‘Kalas-Vorteq’ research and development partnership.”
Ganna
As we mentioned earlier, Ganna had so much interesting tech that he needed an entire section to himself. In addition to those Bolero Sleeves, the former world champion and Hour Record hopeful had a new suit and bike, plus newish aero extensions, helmet visor, and hefty dose of black tape.
Ganna, like the rest of the Italian team, raced with suit from Castelli’s custom range, featuring the lower half of the Body Paint 4.X skinsuit mated to a new upper section featuring a different fabric. Castelli didn’t provide much information on what the new fabric provides, and instead suggested the main gain was actually from those Bolero sleeves. We have already seen Ganna race with these new aero extensions earlier in the season, but as Dan Bigham explained in a recent episode of the Nerd Alert podcast, there is supposedly some aero trickery at play in the elbow-like shape of the lower portion of the extensions. The elbow shaped extensions may offer some form of flow control or wake generating properties, providing some form of gain in hiding Ganna’s powerful legs during the upper phase of each stroke. Of course, it could be something entirely different, but while we await for official confirmation all we can do is speculate. Ganna was also using what we have dubbed the barge board helmet visor, with more than a few strips of tape applied immediately before the start.
Ganna’s new bike
Ganna also had a brand new bike for his ultimately unsuccessful world title defence. The new Bolide F first appeared back in June at the Tour of Switzerland, and the Ineos Grenadiers have been putting it to good use ever since. Gann’s new rig is simply stunning, as much so as his “old” blue one pictured below.
Now a moment for the blue version of the same bike.
The young guns are looking ever more the pros, both in terms of performance, positions, and equipment
Joshua Tarling is still a junior but already looks every bit the pro rider. Tarling not only has a superb-looking time trial position and a rainbow jersey to match, but he also has the full Ineos Grendaiers time trial setup to call upon.Tarling will ride for Ineos and his new team has already provided him with a Pinarello Bolide, Kask helmet, that visor, the Princeton CarbonWorks wheels, and presumably all the back-up support to go with that.Tarling also has Wattshop’s Minimoi aero extensions, arm rests, and adjustable angle risers for the slightly more affordable version of the modern aero profiled extension setup. Along with that, the Kalas:Vorteq skinsuit and barge board visor mentioned earlier. Jan Christen finished fourth, and, likewise, appears to have all the support of the UAE Team Emirates squad. Although it is unclear who Christen will ride for next season, his Colnago prototype TT frame, Campagnolo groupset and wheels, completed with Deda components and a MET helmet, look remarkably like a UAE Team Emirates-supported rider.
Another moment, please, to appreciate Adam Holm’s time trial position. I have no idea if it’s fast, how sustainable it is, or if he can even see where he is going, but oh my, it looks good. Maybe even one of the best-looking time trial positions ever?
Speaking of “seeing where you are going”, Lucas Plapp can’t take his eyes off that new Princeton CarbonWorks Mach 7580 TS (TriSpoke) front wheel. The tri-spoke is available through Princeton’s “Pro-Equip” program for now, with more information expected from Princeton soon.
Britain may have the time trialling tradition, and a considerable gold medal haul from these championships, but Switzerland is rapidly becoming the most dominant nation. The Swiss took the win in the mixed team relay time trial, following a bronze for Reusser and silver for Kung in the individual events. Not only do the Swiss have some of the best time triallists in the world, but they are also clearly very clued in to optimising their setups.
The team races with exclusive skinsuits from Assos, and while the suit looks highly technical and we ignore that face sock for a second, even the gloves look highly optimised. Assos told us the gloves are its standard RSR Speed Gloves, and “because the main textile is quite flexible and elastic (think aero overshoe), the black piece (between index finger and thumb) acts as a stabilizer to keep the finger panels in place.”Stefan Kung came oh so close to a rainbow jersey in the individual time trial, switching to a POC Cerebel helmet for the event. Typically Kung otps for a Giro Aerohead while on trade team duties, but wether it was rider specific or course specific, he clearly deemed the Cerebel the faster option for this specific event. Kung also opted for a TroikaMax disc brake tri spoke front wheel from British brand Revolver Wheels. Visors are not always faster. You can almost be certain if Bissegger raced without a visor, he has also tested without a visor. Read More
