Tour de France Femmes tech wrap-up: Who won with what?

The fourth edition of the Tour de France Femmes came to a close on Sunday, with Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma-Lease a Bike) storming to victory at 3:42 over the 2023 champion, Demi Vollering.

Ferrand-Prévot became the fourth different winner in as many years, with Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney and Annemiek Van Vleuten also claiming top spot in 2024 and 2022, respectively.

Ferrand-Prévot also became the first French rider to win the Tour de France since Catherine Marsal in the 1990 Tour de la CEE féminin (a race widely regarded as the women's equivalent of the Tour de France at the time).

She did so aboard the Cervélo bikes of her Visma-Lease a Bike team, but notably, both of her stage wins came aboard the lightweight R5, rather than the heavier-but-more-aerodynamic S5 also available to the team.

We'll get into why that might be a little later, but notably, her wins contributed to a very successful Tour for the team and her sponsors.

It's the latter we're more interested in here, though. My esteemed colleagues have already analysed every inch of the racing, but here we're going to tally up the wins and losses for the sponsors. Did Cervélo win more stages than Specialized, who supplied bikes to four of the teams in the race? Did Shimano, with its 15 teams, win more than SRAM, which had six?

We know that it's the rider that wins the stage, but which of the sponsors gets the bragging rights for another year? Let's take a look and find out.

Who won with what?

Bike brands

Starting with the bike brands, it’s a very close competition between Specialized and Cervélo for the top spot.

Both took three stages each: Cervélo's courtesy of Marianne Vos and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s brace, and Specialized’s through Lorena Wiebes’ brace and Kim Le Court.

Specialized technically walks away with a greater quantity of classification jerseys, thanks to Wiebes snagging the green jersey and Elise Chabbey (FDJ Suez) taking the QOM, not to mention FDJ Suez taking the team classification, too. But you can’t argue that Ferrand-Prévot’s yellow jersey is the more prestigious one to win.

It should also be said that Cervélo only sponsors one team (Visma-Lease a Bike) to Specialized’s four (SD Worx-Protime, AG Insurance-Soudal, FDJ Suez and VolkerWessels Women's Pro Cycling), so we think we’ll hand the bragging rights to Cervélo on this one.

Colnago will also walk away pleased, thanks to Maëva Squiban’s back-to-back wins on stages 6 and 7, while Liv can celebrate Mavi García’s stage 2 success. And finally, Lapierre can celebrate a white jersey win, courtesy of Nienke Vinke (Picnic PostNL).

Aero vs lightweight

While the lines between aero and lightweight are blurred quite heavily by the aero-all-rounders such as the Specialized Tarmac SL8, Trek Madone and Colnago V5Rs, I’m confident in saying that the Liv Langma and the Cervelo R5 are still dedicated lightweight machines, and between them, they took home three of the nine stages. That’s in contrast to the men’s Tour, in which even the high mountain stages were won by dedicated aero bikes.

The relationship between aerodynamics (CdA), power and speed is exponential, while the relationship between weight, power and speed is more linear. This means that at higher speeds (like those typically seen in the men’s Tour de France), aero gains have a much greater impact.

As a result, male riders benefit more from using aero bikes. In contrast, since women’s races are generally ridden at slightly lower speeds, the advantage of a lighter bike often outweighs the aero benefit, making the lightweight option more effective for many women riders.

Wheels and tyres

Many of the bike brands found in the Tour de France Femmes make their own wheelsets nowadays, and so the results here quite closely mimic the bike brands table above. The only real difference is that UAE Team ADQ raced with Enve wheels fitted into their Colnago bikes, since Colnago doesn't make its own.

Beyond that, though, Specialized’s wheel offshoot, Roval, swept up the same three stages, while wrapped in Specialized’s own brand tyres too.

Mavi García’s win for Giant Bicycle-owned Liv bagged Giant Bicycle-owned Cadex wheels the same stage, with Cadex tyres also used.

Reserve, the wheel brand borne out of Cervélo’s parent company, claimed the same three stages beneath Vos and Ferrand-Prévot, although they were shod with Vittoria rubber, rather than an own-brand option.

Interestingly, the tubeless takeover that we noticed in the men’s Tour continued apace here. Each of the nine stages was taken on tubeless tyres.

SRAM edges Shimano, but 2X takes all

Onto groupsets now, and whereas Shimano took a convincing win in the men’s Tour, the tides have turned in SRAM's favour.

It was a close battle, and ahead of the final stage, both Shimano and SRAM were on equal footing at four stages each, but Ferrand-Prévot’s iconic win in yellow on the final stage netted a fifth win for Chicago-based SRAM.

When you look at bikes in the Tour de France Femmes peloton, that tally begins to look even more impressive. Only six out of the 22 teams were sporting SRAM groupsets, while 15 teams were aboard Shimano. Campagnolo made up the final spot, supplying Cofidis.

However, it’s not clear how many teams get their groupsets as part of a sponsorship deal. Shimano only partners with a handful of teams each season, so the rest of the teams are either forced to buy their own groupsets or get them supplied as part of the deal with their bike sponsor. And this is perhaps why two teams were using Shimano Ultegra, rather than the top-tier Shimano Dura-Ace groupsets.

What’s also notable is that despite SRAM’s success, each of the nine Tour de France Femmes stages went to two-by (2X) chainsets. For some time, SRAM has touted the benefits of one-by groupset setups, which feature a single chainring up front instead of two, but all of its five stages were won using the more traditional double chainset configuration.