Best triathlon tyres: Get your bike race-ready with these picks

By James Witts

Published: Friday, 27 May 2022 at 12:00 am

You may be all-consumed by carbon-fibre triathlon bikes and the latest drag-cutting aero road helmets, but if you’re not using some of the industry’s best triathlon tyres, you’re neglecting a vital area.

Tyres are the only contact points between you and the ground, so they significantly impact your performance. How good is their grip? How fast do they roll? How susceptible – or not – are they to punctures? How easy are they to remove and replace when you do experience a puncture?!

Types of tyres

Let’s start with tyre choice. When you’re looking for the best triathlon tyres, you have three options: clincher, tubeless and tubular. Clincher tyres are arguably what embraces your wheel at this moment as they’re the most common. They comprise what’s termed an ‘open casing’ and an inner tube, and mount onto standard-hooked wheel rims. The main benefit of these is their practicality. In other words, they’re (sometimes!) easy to change. On the downside, this is generally a heavier set-up than the other two.

Then you have tubeless tyres. While they’re once again an open casing, they can be used without inner tubes. Instead, they can be attached to specially designed, tubeless-compatible wheels where the tyres are attached by sealant. The benefits of this are you can run the tyres at slightly lower air pressure, which maintains good speed but also aids grip and comfort. On the downside, the sealant’s rather messy when fitting.

Finally, you have tubulars. These comprise a tubular casing that’s sewn shut around an inner tube. This is then glued or taped to the rim. Because of this construction, you can reach higher air pressures, which in theory means potentially higher speeds. The downside is they’re a right faff to change, which is why they’re more commonly used by professionals and their support teams rather than recreational, go-alone age-groupers.

Tyre size

Nearly all of you will roll on 700c tyres. This is the stated diameter of your tyre – and wheel – in millimetres. Your tyre will also have written on it its width, which is often 700 x 25mm. This used to be more commonly 700 x 23mm, as narrower was intuitively thought to be faster, the theory being that the contact point was less and so less rolling resistance.

However, subsequent studies have shown this isn’t necessarily the case. Slightly wider tyres roll equally as quick but are more comfortable. So 25mm is de rigueur for racing, though erratic terrain – like the cobbles seen at a cycling road race like Paris-Roubaix – often sees riders pitch for 28mm for their dampening qualities. But for general triathlon racing, you can’t go wrong with 700 x 25mm.