Pauline Ferrand-Prévot had already put the Gravaa adjustable tyre strain system to the check on the Tour of Flanders however the actual advantages had been felt on Saturday’s Paris-Roubaix Femmes the place the Visma-Lease a Bike rider made her successful debut.
“We tried it on the Tour of Flanders however the system was 400 grams heavier so I mentioned, ‘perhaps however perhaps not’,” Ferrand-Prévot, who got here second ultimately weekend’s cobbled Traditional, mentioned of the race which included 12 climbs. “For the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix there isn’t any query as a result of the burden was not tremendous necessary as it is a flat race.
“We had been very fortunate to have this technique.”
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There was by no means any doubting the French rider already held a bonus on the roughest of terrain, delivered by the notoriously brutal cobbles, given the rider has simply switched again to the street from mountain biking the place she holds 5 world titles and Olympic gold. Nevertheless, the adjustable tyre strain system, which numerous members of the staff have tried throughout quite a lot of races in latest seasons, added a noticeable edge within the 148.5km race to the Roubaix velodrome.
“For positive it was tremendous good to have decrease strain on the cobbled zones,” mentioned Ferrand-Prévot on the publish race media convention. “I might see that we had been rather more snug, with much less leaping there was extra adherence on the again wheel.”
“To have the ability to pump (up the tyres) once more on the tarmac was tremendous good,” added Ferrand-Prévot, who made her escape from the main bunch on the street however then dropped her break companion, Emma Norsgaard (Lidl-Trek), and prolonged the hole on the cobbles. “There have been just a few circumstances the place there was various tarmac. On the finish of the race on the street to complete, I had 4 bars and that makes a giant distinction.”
The Gravaa system, which our senior tech author examined on the cobbles of Roubaix this week, is managed by a pair of wi-fi buttons, one to deflate and one to inflate. Deflation is a fast course of whereas urgent the inflate button engages a crankshaft within the hub which compresses air and forces it into the tyres, taking round 800m to 1km to realize one bar of strain.
Ferrand-Prévot mentioned she’d put in a substantial quantity of effort within the run as much as Saturday’s Monument to establish simply precisely the place she would alter the strain to ship the optimum benefit.
“I wanted to check a bit the place to should strain up and extra,” Ferrand-Prévot mentioned. “For positive, the final 15km it helped so much. I had a strain of 4 bars within the tyre, whereas on the cobblestones, I used to be at 2.1 or 2.2.”
It was a relentless technique of adjusting by means of the race with 17 cobbled sectors.
“I modified nearly each sector. It is tremendous fast whenever you put much less strain, it is ‘phshhh’ and goes down,” mentioned Ferrand-Prévot. “To go as much as 4 bars takes a couple of minutes, so it’s worthwhile to be affected person.”
Whereas Ferrand-Prévot and Marianne Vos – who had already ridden the system to victory on the UCI Gravel World Championships in 2024 – had been utilising the expertise at Flanders the lads’s staff did not have it on board final weekend. That, nevertheless, is predicted to alter at Paris-Roubaix with Wout van Aert seen utilizing it on his last reconnaissance journey.
The query now’s whether or not he can deploy it simply as successfully as Ferrand-Prévot did to assist ship a successful final result for Visma-Lease a Bike on the 30 cobbled sectors of Sunday’s 259.2km males’s race too.
