Our Paris-Roubaix tech feast continues
This week we’ve been bringing you a feast of Paris-Roubaix tech.
We’ve covered our tech highlights from the 2023 Hell of the North, the latest tyre pressure management system from Scope, taken you up close and personal with Peter Sagan’s final Roubaix bike, spotted an unreleased Specialized Mondo tyre and charted the evolution of Paris-Roubaix bikes over the past decade.
Now it’s time for something different, with our gallery of the weird and wonderful tech snippets spotted at this year’s Paris-Roubaix and Paris-Roubaix Femmes.
Jonas Rutsch’s 170mm stem
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We’re used to seeing pro riders with low and long positions but Jonas Rutsch’s stem stopped us in our tracks when stalking the mechanics’ trucks ahead of the race.
The EF Education–EasyPost rider’s FSA SL-K aluminium stem measures a monstrous 170mm.
As former BikeRadar staff member Ben Delaney commented on our Instagram: “That’s a top tube”.
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The German rider is 197cm / 6ft 6in tall and rides a 58cm Cannondale SuperSix Evo Lab71 frame, requiring the 170mm stem to get the position he desires.
Cannondale does make a 61cm size frame for the new SuperSix, but perhaps Rutsch doesn’t want the extra 3cm of stack height that frame brings.
Even at 170mm, the stem wasn’t long enough to cover all of Rutsch’s race notes…
Did you bring your reading glasses?
Paris-Roubaix is a chaotic race, with 29 sectors (54.5km) of cobbles in the men’s race and 17 (29.2km) in the women’s race.
Positioning is key to success on the cobbled sectors, with riders going elbow-to-elbow into each sector to stay at the front.
Ninety-degree corners are common, too, and with the narrow crown of the cobbles the most sought-after patch of ‘road’, there’s little room for error.
As a result, it’s common for riders to have the key sectors detailed on stem-mounted race notes. For a race like Roubaix, that requires some creative arts and crafts.
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Zoe Bäckstedt’s pedals are older than she is
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Zoe Bäckstedt made her Paris-Roubaix Femmes debut on Saturday – using a set of pedals older than she is.
The 18-year-old – a two-time junior world road race champion – opted to use the Speedplay pedals ridden to victory by her father, Magnus Bäckstedt, in the 2004 edition of Paris-Roubaix.
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The custom-modified pedals had their plastic casing removed ahead of Magnus’s surprise Hell of the North victory, leaving only the metal body on show.
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This, according to Bäckstedt Snr, reduces the risk of the pedal and cleat interface becoming clogged up by mud.
Zoe Bäckstedt’s EF Education-TIBCO-SVB team-mate, Alison Jackson, went on to win the third edition of Paris-Roubaix Femmes.
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