Prototype Dura Ace wheels, an updated Canyon Aeroad frame and unreleased tyres from Specialized and Michelin - Opening Weekend tech gallery

We start at Omloop, in the vast hangar on the side of the velodrome in Ghent. This is Arnauld De Lie’s Orbea Orca Aero; he may have drawn the short straw here; my hunch is that he started with this camera and removed it as he progressed into the race. No pro would want this on their bars.

Lotto–Intermarché are very keen on stem-mounted fuelling notes. I didn’t see many other teams with nutrition plans like this. Fuelling is clearly important to the team during the races.

The aero Orbea Orca has a deep, aggressive head tube, spot the healthy spacer stack for a pro bike, this is a key theme from Opening Weekend.

The team also had some neat aero 3d printed computer mounts this year. More teams are doing this now; last year, it mainly seemed to be UAE.

Here’s a close-up of the nutrition plan, that is a healthy amount of carbs. Try it on your next five-hour ride.

Get yourself over the Bosberg, and the finish isn’t far away.

Separate bars and stems used to be very rare; I saw quite a few this year. This feels like a rider still finding their position to me.

And then there was this monster belonging to Mathias Norsgaard, it's not pretty, but it seems to work for him.

Here are the unreleased Bontrager wheels the team has been using. I took a good look at the hubs. The rim of this one looks like it’s had a good ding to me.

Here are the silver hubs with ‘RSL’ on them, which stands for Race Shop Limited in Bontrager / Trek speak. This could well be a new addition to the Aeolus wheel range.

The wheels have carbon spokes, and I spotted the Vonoa brand name, a Chinese brand whose spokes can be found on several brands' wheels.

Lidl-Trek signed a deal with Gatorade at the start of the year. The Madone is more aero with these bottles fitted, spot the '30' written on the rear, which I assume is the carbohydrate amount in the drink mix.

Lidl-Trek use these aftermarket disc lockrings to save weight.

Another 3D-printed computer mount, this time from Dutch company Leap components.

Lidl-Trek kicked off the SRAM 1X13 Red XPLR use this time last year, and now a lot of teams seem to have followed suit. They had fitted K-Edge chain catchers for extra security, which SRAM recommends.

Rose Rockets switched to SRAM groupsets from Shimano over the winter; they had a mix of double and 1X chainsets, but I think the riders' race bikes all had SRAM Red XPLR fitted.

Here's a 1X Red chainset; the team developed a custom Wolf Tooth chain catcher to go with its Rose frames.

This rider stopped to sign some autographs for some young fans. There were a lot of young cycling fans at Kuurne Brussel Kuurne in particular. The sport is alive and well in Belgium.

Here’s the bike that everyone was talking about or trying to spot at the beginning of the year. The new SuperSix Evo, these new Cannondale bars were designed specifically for the bike.

The Gen 5 SuperSix is slightly lighter and faster than the old one, though nearly every frame tube shape has been updated and changed.

I liked this custom EF race number holder, and several teams had cool custom ones.

The Van Rysel RCR-F machines look super agressive in the flesh, there's loads of deep, wide tube profiles, and that includes the Deda handlebars.

It was dim in places in the Omloop hanger; the lights of the team cars illuminated certain bikes depending on where they were. Note the thru axle lever here to help with faster wheel changes in the event of a flat.

Here’s the brand new 3D printed Fizik Arione, which launched just a few days before Opening Weekend. The Arione name has been around for a very long time now.

This is a lot of spacers, even for a pro. This is one of the Flanders-Baloise Eddy Merckx badged bikes, which are actually Ridley Falcon RS models; Ridley owns the Merckx name these days.

The team was using 32mm Vittoria Corsa Pro tyres and inner tubes. I’ve got a lot of time for this setup.

Here’s one of the as-yet-unreleased 32mm Specialized Turbo Cotton tyres. This size of Cotton isn’t currently available on the brand's website. There was some interesting stuff going on with Bora’s tyres.

Several of the tyres had a clear, silicone-like coating on the sidewalls that overlapped slightly with the tread. One of the mechanics I asked told me it was for protection.

Bora also had SRAM 1X chainsets with K-Edge chain catchers fitted.

Here’s that sidewall sealant again; it was definitely on several pairs, and I can’t say I’ve seen it on many pro road bikes before. Perhaps it’s something to do with the unreleased nature of those 32mm tyres.

The team appeared to be back on 30mm tyres for Kuurne, which has slightly less testing cobbled surfaces.

Bora had a bike or two with a separate handlebar and stem. I wonder if teams are simply waiting on custom integrated bars, or riders are starting to revert back to them to achieve a better position.

And here’s the Roval Rapide integrated handlebar; there was a mix on show.

Nils Pollit’s bike is huge. I couldn’t stop looking at it. He was running a high seatpost height on his Colngo Y1RS.

Carbon-Ti direct mount rear derailleur hanger on the UAE bikes. Spot the neat Di2 wiring.

Team UAE were also the only team riding on the Continental Archetype tyres, supposedly developed with the team. No one else had them fitted.

This Y1RS had some extra padding at the bar hood area, I think it’s so the rider can hunker down and hold an aero position more easily. This bike belonged to Rune Herregodts.

New Wilier Filante SLR machines for Groupama FDJ, the team told me they are still waiting to receive the new Miche wheels, which were recently launched.

The team was also the only squad on the 30mm brown sidewall colourway Continental GP5000 S TR tyres. They told me this was the only option when I asked, but a check on the Conti site shows both black and dark brown versions available, strange.

Simple stem notes from Picnic PostNL, sometimes this is all you need, especially when you're going hard for five hours.

For Omloop, a lot of teams were using the Zipp 303 SW wheels with the Bluetooth AXS tyre pressure sensor. Pro teams haven’t used these wheels much, but a lot had them on for Omloop. The whole Movistar squad were riding them, for example, over the deeper 454 option.

Bar-mounted dropper post lever for the Shimano neutral service bikes, which allows any rider to adjust seatpost height to suit.

Shimano neutral support has everything needed to help riders who can’t get a bike. The famous Shimano blue stands out a mile away. This was at the start of Kuurne.

Picnic PostNL were on Ursus Proximo wheels and 30mm Michelin Power Cup tyres, not the latest Arya wheelset from Ursus.

The Lapierre bikes reportedly have special light paint jobs to drop some weight.

This is Timo Roosen’s bike, a very intimidating setup. This is the Prologo T GALE TT saddle.

I spotted Alpecin Premier Tech riding an updated Canyon Aeroad frame this weekend. This is the regular Aeroad; note the smooth drive side dropout.

And this is the updated frame that has been made SRAM UDH ready. Canyon told me this isn’t a new Aeroad, just a small update.

This is Mathieu van der Poel’s race bike, pre start the team arrived last, and it was tough to get near the bikes. Van der Poel was riding prototype Shimano wheels, which we look at next.

The wheel hubs are stamped ‘Prototype’, the wheels have carbon spokes, and given the pro rider use, I assume this is how the next generation Dura-Ace wheels may well look.

I also found a Shimano product code that doesn’t currently exist. Current Dura-Ace wheels are listed as WH-R9270; this WH-R9370 code could well be for the new Dura-Ace.

The Total Energies Cube Litening bikes really pop this year, but the colour scheme is dangerously close to rainbow stripes territory.

They look aggressive and fast, and do stand out from the rest of the bikes in the peloton, which is what it’s all about.

The bikes had a mix of chainrings; some had these aftermarket Carbon-Ti chainrings, which are popular right now.

Some had these non-series 44-56 tooth Dura Ace chainrings.

There was a mix of stems on show again at Jayco-AIUla, bikes had separate bars and stems and integrated setups fitted.

The Cofidis look bikes had unusual looking 3D-printed rear mech hangers fitted that one could tell me much about, my guess is they are quite stiff and aid shifting.

It’s nice bling, that goes well with the exotic Campagnolo Super Record equipment.

Cofidis are the only team on Campagnolo, using the brand's wheels and groupsets. A fan asked me if any bikes had Campagnolo this year. Note the tall spacer stack again.

I spotted what looked like more sidewall sealant on these Visma Vittoria wheels. This wasn’t bubbling away, and looked like some sort of sealing product to me.

Cervelo updated the S5 and it’s handlebar last year, which makes for a very aggressive-looking front end.

This isn’t a saddle bag but a Velon data tracking unit; all the Visma race bikes had them fitted today.

The Cervelo S5 uses a bayonet-style fork and is widely regarded as one of the very fastest race bikes in the bunch.

This Cervelo Soloist stuck out and looked almost dated against the S5 bikes; this was Visma development team rider Matisse Van Kerckhove ‘s bike, who was riding up today.

The Ineos Pinarello Dogma’s have a new paint job, but looked largely the same as ever, bar the upgraded Scope Artech wheels.

Ben Swift uses the rarely seen Shimano axle extenders for a wider stance. Swift sadly crashed out of Omloop.

Ineos mount their race transponders to the bottom Dogma fork leg, most teams fit them mid fork leg and cover them with a section of cut inner tube.

The Uno-X Ridleys look as fast as ever; the team switched from Shimano to SRAM equipment in the winter.

They were also the only team using the Continental Aero 111 tyres; they must have believed them to be the fastest option, and there was a lot of wind at Omloop.

The team also had some neat 3D-printed computer mounts.

As well as setpost-mounted number holders.

I’ll say it, these might just be the best-looking bikes in the peloton, that blue and gold works very well for Pinarello Q36.5

This is Tom Pidcock’s bike, who didn’t have quite the day he wanted at Omloop.

Pidcock ran 30mm tyres and 165mm cranks; he also experimented with his bar setup this winter after experiencing wrist pain at times.

Blue and gold, it just works.

The Wolfpack were hunting this weekend. It didn’t quite work out, but their S-Works Tarmac SL8 bikes always look good.

This mechanic was using a Makita pump to inflate the teams Specialized Turbo Cotton tyres.

This was a spare bike, but I spotted more sealant bubble or sidewall sealer; it was tricky to tell.

The Tudor bikes always look smart, very neat bar tape wrapping here, the same thing I thought last year about Matteo Trentin’s bike.

Mechanics like putting their names on things, to keep them safe, often. This mechanic has stickered up his Makita inflation pump.

Modern Adventure were riding the insane looking Factor ONE race bike, though they could also choose the OSTRO as well.

I spotted a single pair of these Michelin prototypes at Modern Adventure, They were marked ‘work in progress’ and not for sale. There could be a new road tyre on the way from Michelin; the tread itself looked very slick.

Bahrain switched from Merida to Bianchi bikes for this season. The Oltre RC aero bikes are striking. This gaping computer mount ‘mouth’ on the bars caught my eye.

The team are also using Chinese Elilee chainsets with Dura-Ace chainrings.

These neat carbon fibre number holders were very neat.

Spanish squad Burgos-Burpellet are a UCI Pro Team, it’s nice to cover non-WorldTour machines that are less familiar, the team were using inner tubes.

Team NSN had some extra tape in place to quiet any computer rattle; the old tricks are the best sometimes.

They were also using 1X SRAM chainsets with chain catcher devices. I think we will see a lot more 1X during the classics this year, most SRAM teams seem to be using them.

We’ll finish with these big Biniam Girmay fans at the start of Omloop, one of whom was wearing a commemorative green jersey, and they were blasting music from their speaker outside the NSN team bus.