The Queen stage of this yr’s Giro d’Italia is a hilly one, with a full 5 categorised mountain climbs and lots extra stabby uncategorised ones in addition to. Upfront of the ultimate time trial, a stage of two halves with a flat opening adopted by an ascent of Monte Lussari, Primož Roglič‘s spare bike was noticed atop the group automotive sporting a single entrance chainring and a really huge cassette.
Whereas we have been speculating as to the setup, and why the bike was on the automotive right this moment upfront of TT, Roglič proceeded to cease upfront of right this moment’s closing climb and swap bikes, earlier than being paced again to the bunch by the ever-dutiful Sepp Kuss.
A dry run on new gear? An opportunity to check the bike change underneath decrease stress earlier than the massive day? Probably each, together with the truth that, as right this moment’s stage additionally finally ends up steep gradients, it’s most likely optimum for the excessive cadence fashion the Slovenian likes to make use of.
Uphill time trial setup
What’s been stumbled on Roglič’s Cervelo R5 then? From what we will see he is operating a single entrance chainring, as has change into de rigeur for time trial bikes of late, besides with a a lot smaller chainring.
To start with the simple bit, the rear cassette has been swapped out for what seems to be like, from the black largest sprocket, a SRAM ‘XPLR’ XG-1271 mannequin, a part of the model’s XPLR gravel subset of the top-tier Pink groupset, providing 10-44T and a gear vary of 440%, an additional 50% or so better vary than that supplied by even the wider-than-normal SRAM Pink cassettes.
The cassette is 1x suitable solely, so using a single entrance chainring is important, in addition to possible fascinating, and leaves Roglič with the choice of anyplace between 38t and 46t upfront. He could have additionally needed to swap from the usual Pink rear derailleur to the broader vary XPLR mannequin.
For now, we will solely speculate as to which entrance ring he’s choosing. Rumours on the bottom recommend it is a 44T, however we’re but to see it shut up to have the ability to affirm this. It is also understood that his crankset does nonetheless function an influence meter, completely very important in a time trial, mountainous or in any other case, even when his Slovenian reverse Tadej Pogacar attacked La Planche des Belles Filles with out one in 2020. Decrease gearing apart, this may occasionally even have aerodynamic benefits, a decrease weight, in addition to a mix of a greater chainline and/or utilizing larger sprockets leading to diminished chain deflection and decrease drivetrain losses.
