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  1. Home » Bikes and Tech » Mavic drops in fresh neutral service bikes for Tour de France

Mavic drops in fresh neutral service bikes for Tour de France

The indelible picture of Chris Froome running up Mont Ventoux at the two thousand sixteen Tour de France has inspired switches for the two thousand seventeen race. Mavic’s fleet of neutral support bikes will feature specially designed KS dropper posts. This will enable riders to adjust saddle height when railing the unmistakable yellow Canyon Ultimate CF SL bikes. That’s the fattest switch, but not the only one.

The dropper

“When I was looking for a dropper post, this was the very first one I spotted that had the lever underneath the saddle,” says Chad Moore, Mavic’s global brand manager. “They [KS] made us some custom-made posts to work on the road. And they made it so the post has a bit more range of height.”

The 27.2-millimeter dropper posts will permit riders to adjust the saddle height on the fly. The posts are based off the KS Lev Integra two hundred seventy two platform and have sixty five millimeters of travel. This should avoid the gangly, knees-out pedal stroke Froome suffered on Ventoux.

“Most neutral support services haven’t used a support bike in god knows how long,” says Moore, but Mavic intends to be ready in case it happens again. Once the rider is on the neutral support bike, the support car will pull up alongside the rider to ensure he understands how to adjust the seatpost decently.

Chris Froome railed a Mavic neutral service bike after the inopportune crash on Mont Ventoux. Photo: Tim De Waele | TDWsport.com

Other significant switches

The neutral support cars will be stocked with six bikes on the roof. Previously, the cars carried three. Instead of eight wheels in the car, Mavic neutral support cars will now carry six.

Of those six bikes, three will be set up in advance for the top-three GC riders on any given stage. Should one of those riders need a neutral support bike, it will be ready to go with that rider’s measurements pre-set.

“The idea is to have a multitude of sizes with a dropper, and pedals that are the most popular in the peloton,” says Moore. “One bike will have Look pedals, another will have Shimano, and a third will have Speedplay. If a rider needs something else, they’ll take one of the other three bikes. At the end of the day it’s tricky because you want the neutral support to be truly neutral, so to combine that with the top guys in the GC, while not alienating the other guys, it’s a tricky situation to figure out.”

The wheels that each neutral support car carries won’t switch much. They will carry a combination of Mavic Cosmic Ultimate, Cosmic Pro Carbon SL, and on certain stages, Comete Pro Carbon SL wheels. It’s unclear if it will be necessary to have disc brake wheels at the ready for the Tour. Mavic says it’s ready for that situation regardless. The neutral support cars will carry wheels with the UCI-standard 160-millimeter rotors. If a rider has a 140-millimeter rotor, neutral support won’t be able to help, but the teams already know that.

Adding disc wheels to the mix is no petite feat. It requires more than just a pile of fresh wheels. Each car’s bike and wheel racks require fresh fittings to accommodate thru-axle wheels. The same goes for neutral support motorcycles. Replenishing those wheels, should a moto or car run out, will work in much the same way it did before: Cars re-stock motos, or vice versa based on need. Then, a support van on course can replenish either the car or moto if necessary.

Listen to our discussion of fresh Tour tech on the VeloNews podcast:

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