- We've come to Northern France
with the help of our friends at Shimano
to see how the teams prepare for this savage one-day race.
In particular we're gonna be focusing on
the preparations of BORA-hansgrohe.
As they'll be wanting to replicate the success
of their star rider Peter Sagan who won last year.
Paris-Roubaix is the biggest and best
one-day race of the season.
And it's one of the few races where riders routinely change
and modify their bikes and equipment.
Why?
Well, it's because of these, the cobbles.
There's 54 kilometers of these bad boys strewn throughout
the 257 kilometer course and they take a massive toll
on the riders and their equipment.
(calm music)
Many teams use special bikes for Roubaix
in a bid to dampen the pave.
Sagan's team is no exception
they're using the new specialized Roubaix.
The cool thing about this is it actually has suspension
in the form of this Future Shock.
And that's intended to soften the cobbles
as much as possible.
And for 2019 it also has a lockout
so that it can be turned off to make the bike stiffer
and more efficient when it's not needed.
But to give you an idea of just how brutal this race is
they even have to modify the cars for Paris-Roubaix.
So this is one of the BORA team cars
and it actually has a special plate fitted underneath it
to stop the cobbles damaging the underside of the car.
It's pretty mental.
Particularly geeky modification the riders made
is to change their 39 Tooth inner chainring to a 42 or 44.
And Shimano specifically supplies
this chainset to the riders.
I'm not exactly sure why
and I've not seen it for sale before
so I'm gonna ask Bert who's from Shimano
to explain a bit more about it.
I'm here with Bert Roesems from Shimano.
Shimano sponsors seven WorldTour teams
that take part in Paris-Roubaix.
But I'm really interested to hear about how Shimano
supports those teams for Paris-Roubaix
'cause it's so demanding on the equipment.
- Yeah well our main support
is when we bring those special chainrings,
those special gears the guys want to use in Paris-Roubaix.
Mainly that 53 that can be combined
with the 44 inner chainring.
That 44 inner chainring is bigger than what your standard
can run as your biggest inner chainring and that is a 30/90.
- So the 53/39 is the standard chainset.
- That is the standard chainset.
- I can buy and you can buy in the shops
but why can't we get the 53/42 that they're using
and why do they use a 53/42?
- Yeah for sure they use a 42 or the 44
because they wanna go over those cobbled sections
with pretty high speed but try to save the legs
often when they have either a headwind
or when it's a cobbled section
that is more or less a false flat.
Also you would look at your gear chart
then you would see that with a 53/44 setup
with an 11/28 or 11/30 cassette,
you have a lot of gears that double up.
So from a consumer point of view
when you ride a double chainring in the front
and 11 sprockets in the rear
you want to have as many possibilities as you can have.
Which for these pro riders
for a particular race like Paris-Roubaix
for them it's not needed.
They wanna go high speed, full gas over those cobbles
they don't wanna have a nice spread of gears
because they also need to tackle
the special climbs or whatever.
- So how does it not drop it then what's the difference?
- We have a build up so an extra layer on the inside
of your outer chainring that prevents the chain
of getting caught in between.
- And this is only available to the pros.
- This is only available to the pros,
this is something from Sports Marketing Department
we provide to sponsored teams
and all the teams that run Shimano.
- Can I have one, can you get me one?
- We'll discuss off-camera.
- Okay.
(exciting music)
I've been looking at other teams bikes
but specifically with regards to BORA-hansgrohe
all the riders that are doing Paris-Roubaix
have something in common on their bikes.
And that is they've got round cross-section handlebars
not aero profile bars.
A lot of these riders including Sagan do use an aero bar
for the added aero benefit it affords most of the time
but for Roubaix they've switched them out.
And I wondered why this was and they've said
that it's because the round bar is a little bit more
comfortable, it's a bit more compliant
and doesn't quite transmit as many vibrations
as the aero bar.
So anything to mitigate the killer vibrations
of the cobbles I guess.
Something we often see at Paris-Roubaix
is modifications particularly in the cockpit
with additional shifters, shifter buttons
and brake levers on the top.
- Well we have like you see on this bike
you see those two small buttons.
So you can shift up with one hand
and shift down your gears with the other one.
So they resemble more or less
our first-generation sprint shifters
which was that only one tiny little button.
The difference is that this one can house firmware.
So you can play around with your settings
if you would have a light set or dropper post or whatever
which can connect with this one.
You can not only control shifting
but you could also do control other components
on your bike with them.
But this for sure makes that you don't need to reposition
your hands when they want to shift.
So when they go over the cobbled sections
they can keep their hands on top of the handlebars
and still shift.
- Something you may be wondering is that with all the bumps
that the cobbles create, why don't the riders choose to use
the Shimano RX rear mech with the clutch built into it?
We actually made a video about it
and it's really impressive how it works
and keeps the chain tight when it's going over rough bumps.
But I've wondered this too and I asked Shimano,
I also asked the team and they had a good answer.
Apparently Trek who is also a sponsored Shimano team
they tried it out last year and found that
there wasn't really any benefit to using it on the cobbles.
It does have a benefit but that's on rougher ground
typically gravel riding and real rough stuff.
But for the cobbles the standard DURA-ACE rear mech
is more than up to the job.
They don't find there's any problems with dropping chains
or anything like that on this shift.
In the recent past we used to see a lot more hacks
and bodgers like double wrap bar tap and gel inserts.
I haven't seen any of that this year and one of the reasons
is wheels on bikes are now designed to accommodate
wider tires which offer much more cushioning.
On the subject of wheels there's quite an interesting
thing we can see here and that is they are very deep.
They are 50s or 64s and this is quite unusual.
In the past, riders tended to favor
even though carbon wheels were available,
shallower depths because it was perceived
that they were more comfortable.
But now wheels have become optimized for wider tires
that can be offset by using the larger volume tire.
Now aero matters in Roubaix,
last year was the fastest ever edition
and so having in more aerodynamic wheel can be significant.
Matt Hamann famously won on an aero bike.
And riders are starting to realize this
and take it seriously.
And that's why the whole team
are using at least 50 millimeter deep wheels here
in this edition.
And it's also with aerodynamics in mind
that we don't see any levers
on the thru axles of the disc brakes.
Now believe it or not well this is a leading edge
so it can actually count significantly
towards the bike's aerodynamics.
You can actually save a couple of watts
by removing the thru axle lever.
And the BORA mechanics, well they have a crafty solution.
They're actually using this which is a drill set to a torque
with an allen extension key in the end
and they reckon it's like kinda Formula 1 pick gun.
They reckon that using this they can change wheels faster
than with a standard quick-release skewer.
How cool is that?
And it's because there isn't the little notches
where they have to get the wheel over.
They just simple pull it in, pull it out, pull it in, done.
I think that's really really cool.
But I'd love to see them do it
as a race against the quick-release,
maybe we should do that in a future video.
(exciting music)
You have to be a massive hard case to ride Paris-Roubaix
we know but I think the biggest unsung heroes
are the mechanics because they have to do
a ridiculous amount of work.
Probably more work for this race than any other race
because of all of the specialist equipment.
So for example the wheels,
they have to take all the tires off the wheels
that they normally use, typically 25 millimeter tires
and replace them in the case of BORA
with 30 millimeter tires.
But then once that's done,
they have to take those back off and put the 25s back on.
And this is a really big job it involves taking them off,
removing the tub glue cause they're tubulars,
applying the glue, curing it and that takes a few days
for each wheel, it's a massive job.
And then they've got to set up the bikes.
The Roubaix bikes with their suspension
that BORA use aren't really used in many other races
throughout the year, maybe one stage of the tour.
So again they have to fully set up a whole fleet
of bikes in full race mode to the specification
of each rider's particulars.
And it's not just one bike, every rider has a spare as well.
So there's actually a little number
on the back of Daniel Oss' bike.
That two, that means it's his second bike.
And well Peter Sagan, he's got four.
So you can imagine how much work it is for these guys.
Absolute heroes.
(exciting music)
Despite all the modifications
and preparations the riders can do,
there's no escaping that riding on cobbles
like these on the car folder lab, hurt.
It hurts a bit less than it used to 30 years ago
with the equipment they had back then
but it still hurts.
And only the most dogged, determined, tenacious
and strongest riders will ever be triumphant in a race
that's such a war of attrition like Paris-Roubaix.
You have to be lucky as well.
It's a very unpredictable race and that's why we love it
because as soon as sport becomes in any way predictable
it can become boring and Paris-Roubaix is anything but that.
So I hope you've enjoyed this video
and if you have please give it a thumbs up
and subscribe to the GCN channel.
And to watch more cobble-related content
you can click on the cobbles.