Tokyo Olympics: Cycling road race tech gallery

The Tokyo Olympics have officially begun, the distribution of medals is well and truly underway, with the opening weekend seeing plenty of cycling. The men's and women's road races were decided in exciting fashion, the men's triathlon was eventually completed after a strange false start involving a camera boat, and Mathieu Van der Poel's disappointment led to joy for Tom Pidcock in the cross country mountain biking.  

But while the major headlines on the road were made by Richard Carapaz grabbing Ecuador's first cycling gold, and Anna Kiesenhofer surprising the household names to take gold for Austria, there were plenty of hidden highlights in the respective pelotons.

As we suspected in our Olympics cycling tech predictions, there were plenty of notable equipment choices that caught our attention, from custom paint, limited-edition components and non-sponsor tech on show for all to see. 

For example, while we already rounded up a bunch of custom paint jobs ahead of the weekend, as the races rolled out we learned that we hadn't quite captured them all as Cervelo, Scott and others had supplied their riders with special designs, too. In addition, despite expecting the majority of the non-team-issue tech to come out to play during the time trials, there were still a few unexpected choices on the road. 

For those and even more tech, check out the gallery above to see what we've found.

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Josh Croxton
Tech Editor

As the Tech Editor here at Cyclingnews, Josh leads on content relating to all-things tech, including bikes, kit and components in order to cover product launches and curate our world-class buying guides, reviews and deals. Alongside this, his love for WorldTour racing and eagle eyes mean he's often breaking tech stories from the pro peloton too. 


On the bike, 32-year-old Josh has been riding and racing since his early teens. He started out racing cross country when 26-inch wheels and triple chainsets were still mainstream, but he found favour in road racing in his early 20s and has never looked back. He's always training for the next big event and is keen to get his hands on the newest tech to help. He enjoys a good long ride on road or gravel, but he's most alive when he's elbow-to-elbow in a local criterium.