UP CLOSE: PRIMOZ ROGLIC’S TOUR DE FRANCE CERVELO S5

By Dan Cavilarri

PRIMOZ ROGLIC’S CERVELO

Primoz Roglic and his Jumbo-Visma teammates are all riding new, as-yet-unreleased Cervelo S5 bikes at the 2022 Tour de France. While Wout Van Aert’s bike gets a special fork paint job in the Belgian colors, Roglic and the rest of the team are on standard, black and yellow bikes.
While the bike itself has undergone a redesign that’s tough to spot, the characteristic two-arm stem reminiscent of a Star Trek spaceship remains. It does appear slightly different than the previous version, but Cervelo has not yet released any information on the redesign, so that’s purely speculation at this point.
With revisions to the UCI design regulations, much of what defines the new S5 hides in subtle details. Tube shapes likely got elongated or otherwise altered for improved aerodynamic performance.
The 2022 Tour de France starts in Copenhagen with an individual time trial, so Roglic’s S5 won’t get any exercise until the flat stage 2. Roglic will run a 54/40 Shimano Dura-ace chainring combo up front.
Also on the menu for Roglic is Shimano’s Dura-Ace C60 wheelset. It appears the tires are set up tubeless, which seems to be ubiquitous among teams as they prepare for the early flat stages of the Tour.
Roglic’s handlebars feature a somewhat traditional drop shape, with some sprint shift buttons embedded on each side.
What’s that white wrapping on the fork? It looks like part of an inner tube. Trek-Segafredo also had inner tubes secured to the forks of their bikes in the same location. I’m not sure what purpose this serves exactly, but it could be a protecting layer between the fork and a timing chip, or something else that will be secured to the fork. I’ll do some more digging and see what I can find out.
Without information from Cervelo to go on, it’s hard to tell what exactly has changed with the new S5. It’s likely the devil is in the details: we’re talking marginal gains here, probably as the result of subtle tube shape tweaks done after CFD testing of the previous S5 model, combined with the UCI’s rule revisions.

 

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