Which bikes, wheels, and components won the most stages on the biggest stage?
(Image credit: Cervelo)
Have you caught your breath yet? It felt like an unusually frantic Tour de France this year, with outright favourite Tadej Pogačar in seemingly unbeatable form in the early stages of the race before being dethroned in the high mountains by a dominant team performance by Jumbo-Visma and the eventual winner Jonas Vingegaard.
As always the racing provides the main headlines, but in the background, there are trends, winners and losers aside from the crop of riders. Disc brakes finally put rim brakes to the sword, and tubeless tyres made big in-roads too against their established rivals.
The defending champion from 2021, Tadej Pogačar, valiantly helped Colnago to second place with three stage wins atop the V3Rs.
Incredibly, considering it bagged a whopping seven stages last year, the giant that is Specialized only managed two stages - the first two - this time around.
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Which bike brand won the most Tour de France stages?
Brand
Stage wins
Cervelo
6
Colnago
3
Canyon, Factor, Giant, Specialized
2
BMC, Cannondale, Pinarello, Trek
1
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Campagnolo came a valiant second in the wheel power rankings (Image credit: Graham Cottingham)
Wheels of fortune
By playing a part not only in Jumbo-Visma's stage wins but also those of Ineos Grenadiers and Alpecin-Deceuninck, Shimano sits head and shoulders above the other wheel brands with eight wins, twice as many as it had last year. It would have been nine had Van Aert not run Reserve wheels (a sister brand to Cervélo) on his TT bike for the penultimate stage.
As with the bikes, the Italians came in second, with Campagnolo picking up three wins under Pogačar, and one more under Bob Jungels.
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Which wheel brand won the most Tour de France stages?
Vittoria may have won the most stages, but the Continental GP5000 S TR was the most impressive tyre of the Tour under Tom Pidcock (Image credit: Getty Images)
Winning the tyre war
This is big news: More than half the stages on the 2022 Tour de France were won on tubeless tyres.
The same number of stages, 11, were also won by riders using Vittoria tyres, though not the same eleven.
This wasn't a case of a single brand using one system and skewing the results either, as Jumbo-Visma used a mix of both tubulars and tubeless depending on the terrain; tubulars for Vingegaard's high mountain victories, and tubeless for Van Aert and Laporte on the flats.
Pogačar and Jungels were still resolutely flying the flag for inner tubes on their Campagnolo wheels, but it's beginning to feel like, despite posh TPU inner tubes being used, it's a dying tech, along with tubulars. Specialized teams have moved away from the brand's 'inner tubes are faster' line and have gone tubeless too.
An honourable mention has to go to the set of GP5000 S TR tyres that Tom Pidcock descended like a man possessed on to set himself up for a historic victory on Alpe d'Huez.
One win for the new Madone and the only win for SRAM, too (Image credit: Peter Stuart)
A(nother) bad year for SRAM
Sixteen stage wins again for Shimano this year, which isn't a huge surprise given it's the largest equipment sponsor. Pogačar and Jungels again teamed up to ensure second place went to the Italian contingent, and Mads Pedersen saved the blushes of SRAM by bagging them a single-stage victory. This is the second year running that the Americans have only netted a single win. Considering Campagnolo only had three teams in the race, compared to the 16 of Shimano, it has a better strike rate despite fewer actual wins.
For stats nerds, this is exactly the same split as the 2021 edition of the race.
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Which groupset brand won the most Tour de France stages?
Brand
Stage wins
Shimano
16
Campagnolo
4
SRAM
1
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Even rim brake stalwart Pogačar went with discs this year (Image credit: Josh Croxton)
Rim brakes are dead
Pour one out for the valiant rim brake, for its time at the very top of the sport is done. This is it. It's finally happened. Every stage of the 2022 Tour de France was won on disc brakes, and the eventual winner rode discs for every stage of the race.
Despite the best efforts of Chris Froome in video format, and a few wins from Pogačar last year, it's time for some of us to admit defeat.
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Which braking technology won the most Tour de France stages?
Brakes
Stage wins
Disc brakes
21
Wins and losses for new bikes
The new Trek Madone and the new Cervélo S5 were the only new bikes to bag a stage win, with the new Pinarello Bolide, Colnago TT-1, Canyon Ultimate, Cube Litening, and KTM Revelator coming away empty-handed.
All the tech and trends from the 2022 Tour de France
Josh is Associate Editor of Cyclingnews – leading our content on the best bikes, kit and the latest breaking tech stories from the pro peloton. He has been with us since the summer of 2019 and throughout that time he's covered everything from buyer's guides and deals to the latest tech news and reviews.
On the bike, Josh has been riding and racing for over 15 years. He started out racing cross country in his teens back when 26-inch wheels and triple chainsets were still mainstream, but he found favour in road racing in his early 20s, racing at a local and national level for Somerset-based Team Tor 2000. These days he rides indoors for convenience and fitness, and outdoors for fun on road, gravel, 'cross and cross-country bikes, the latter usually with his two dogs in tow.
