At the end of the first week of the Giro d’Italia, we take a look at the bikes being raced by some of the pro teams…

Photos by Stefano Sirotti

The 218km seventh stage of the Giro d’Italia sent riders into the high mountains with the finish at an altitude of 2,130 metres. With 3,900 metres of elevation, it was billed as “one of the toughest stages of this edition”. That may be the case, but for the GC riders a strong headwind in the finale prompted something of a stalemate and a trio from the early break arrived at Gran Sasso d’Italia over three minutes ahead of the race favourites.

Davide Bais of the Eolo-Kometa wildcard team took the stage win ahead of Karel Vacek (Corratec Selle Italia) and   Simone Petilli (Intermarché-Circus-Wanty), with the first GC leader of the 106th edition, Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quickstep) leading a group of 27 over the line 3:10 behind Bais.

Andreas Leknessund (Team DSM) retains the maglia rosa as race leader, with the mountains of stage seven prompting minimal changes to the general classification.

Evenepoel, the winner of the opening time trial, is in second place at 0:28 with stage four winner Aurélien Paret-Peintre (AG2R Citroën Team) in third at 0:30.

Before the start of stage seven, Stefano Sirotti captured a series of photos of the riders going to the sign-on. It offers a chance to look at the bikes being raced now that the Giro is in the mountains. There are some special-edition frames, some changes from the flat stages, some interesting little tweaks here and there… and plenty of top-quality cycling exotica on display.

Scroll down the page to get a look at some of the team bikes being used at this year’s Giro d’Italia…

 

Part of Remco’s Specialized collection

With the Giro now in the mountains, Evenepoel has swapped the white-framed special-edition Specialized S-Works that he rode on the flatter stages (and for the team presentation a week ago, below) for an all-black climbing bike.

Evenepoel swapped bikes as often as he changed his clothing during the first week. The 23-year-old started the Giro wearing the Belgian champion’s colours for the opening time trial which were duly replaced with the maglia rosa of race leader for three days. He also collected the maglia ciclamino as leader of the points classification after stage one, and three white jerseys for his stint as leader of the youth classifications.

Special-issue pink Oakley Kato sunglasses for the race leader in the opening week.

When it was wet, his rainbow-themed kit was predominantly black… and when the sun came out for stage six, he was finally racing the Giro in the traditional rainbow jersey as world champion… and riding a white Specialized bike, complete with rainbow colours on the top tube, seat tube and rear stays.

Once in the mountains, the white S-Works was replaced by a black one which we can assume weighed a little less without all the world champion’s coloured paint of his flat-land bike.

Soudal-Quickstep has maintained a relatively classic aesthetic for the world champion’s outfit, albeit in the form of a skinsuit rather than jersey and knick – even for the mountain stages.

Black knicks, white jersey, plenty of sponsor logos… and then rainbow stripes on the knicks, sunglasses, helmet, shoes and socks. There’s only one Remco, but he has a considerable haul of kit for the Giro…

Mix of Cannondale SuperSix Evo bikes

EF Education-EasyPost issued riders with special-edition Rapha kit and custom coloured Cannondale Lab71 frames for the Giro. Not everyone is opting to use the multi-colour bikes which, we are told, “limits waste by using leftover paint”.

Rigoberto Uran likes the style, Ben Healy and Hugh Carthy seem to prefer the traditional team coloured Cannondales – with the Irish rider’s frame featuring an oversized seat tube, and the Brit’s larger frame more elongated and akin to the SuperSix Evo Lab71 frame on test at RIDE Media since February.

Hugh Carthy on the standard team-issue Cannondale SuperSix Evo Lab71 edition, with Jefferson Cepeda (in the background) on the multi-coloured Giro-edition frame option.

Also launched during the Giro are the new POC Elicit Ti sunglasses (as worn by Uran and co at EF Education-EasyPost). These are 22g (saving a whole one gram from the already-fabulous Elicit sunnies in the POC range).

Trek-Segafredo’s stage winning Madone

Mads Pedersen and his cohort from Trek-Segafredo put the aero benefits of the Madone (and Ballista helmet, etc) to good use in stage six when they chased down the day-long escape by Simon Clarke and Alessandro De Marchi and set the Dane up for the win in Napoli.

Trek’s helmet range (and other components and accessories) is starting to be rebranded. What was labelled as Bontrager not so long ago, is now called Trek.

Pedersen and Bauke Mollema are different kinds of riders – one a sprinter, one a climber – but they both used the Madone frame for the first stage in the high mountains on Friday (see below).

Pedersen’s Trek with SRAM components features the new-style chainring while Mollema (below) still rides the first-generation SRAM Red AXS set-up.

For now, the shoes (new style for Pedersen, old style for Mollema) and wheels remain branded as Bontrager but this is likely to change as the new-season ranges are launched.

 

Rounding out the gallery

We finish off this series of equipment photos with a look at the bikes raced in stage seven by Bora-Hansgrohe’s Aleksandr Vlasov and Bob Jungles, which seem largely unchanged since the 2022 Giro d’Italia when Jai Hindley took the title with a stunning display of climbing on the penultimate stage.

And then have a look at the bikes of choice for riders from Jumbo-Visma, Groupama-FDJ, Jayco-AlUla, UAE Team Emirates, before rounding out the gallery with some shots of Andreas Leknessund and the Scott bike he’s using while leader of the Giro.

Roglic, fifth on GC after the opening week, swapped the Cervélo S5 that he used for the flatter stages (and the team presentation, below) for the lighter framed R5 (above) when the race arrived in the mountains.

In his farewell Giro, Thibaut Pinot (above) wore the blue jersey as KOM for four days, relinquishing it on Friday to the stage seven winner, Davide Bais. The Frenchman’s Lapierre Xelius frame has a few subtle colour differences to the much larger equivalent bike raced by his Swiss team-mate Stefan Küng (below).

Giant is one of the bike brands that can boast a stage win in the opening week of the Giro of 2023, thanks to Michael Matthews, who finished off the great work of his Jayco-AlUla team on day three. A few days later, Alessandro De Marchi (below) almost pulled off a coup in Napoli… only to be caught inside the final 200m after a big effort along with Simon Clarke in a day-long break.

Pascal Ackermann (below) was third in stage two and sixth in stage six. The German parades the UAE team-issue Colnago before the start of stage seven.

Team DSM nominated Andreas Leknessund (below) as the leader for the Giro but there doesn’t seem to be any particular special additions to the Scott bike being used by the Norwegian who has now worn the maglia rosa for four days after finishing second in the first climbing test of stage four.

The Giro continues on Saturday with a 207km stage from Terni to Fossombrone.