Unseen shoes from Giro at Tour de Suisse

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Taylor Phinney (EF Education First-Drapac) is wearing his own style of Giro shoes at the Tour de Suisse. Phinney seems to have taken a pair of Prolight Techlace shoes, which feature laces and Velcro straps, and removed the Velcro sections.

The current Giro Prolight Techlace weigh a claimed 150g for a size 42.5, and Phinney's pair probably weighs less with the removal of the Velcro panels and straps.

While the new shoes worn by Phinney lack the on-the-fly adjustability of the Prolight Techlace, a handful of professional cyclists prefer to wear laces over the more popular Boa dials, which dominate the cycling shoe market. Phinney was an early adopter of Giro's Empire lace-up shoes.

Phinney usually wears Giro Empire SLX shoes, with the same method of double wrapping the laces around the sole of the shoe. Laced cycling shoes are also popular amongst track cyclists, and Bradley Wiggins won the Tour de France wearing Bont Zero shoes, which also use a lace tensioning system underneath a Velcro aero cover.

While the majority of cycling shoe manufacturers focus on Boa dials and similar ratcheting tensioning methods, it seems Giro's laced range of shoes is still popular amongst a section of riders. The newly seen shoes join the extensive laced range from Giro, which includes the Republic R Knit, Republic LX, Empire E70, Empire ACC and the aforementioned Empire SLX and Techlace models.

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