Time Trial blog

Well, we all followed the biggest bike race of the world and saw the time trial in yesterday's stage 4. Wow! Did anyone noticed this bad boy...?

That's Bert Grabsch's new TT rig on which he won the German TT Nats 2 weeks ago with a blistering time of 46'51" (!) for the 39.8k course. That's 50.8kph (31.36mph) for almost 50minutes of riding time.

And yesterday, the other fast German Schumacher (Michael retired from Formula 1 racing a few years ago), put in an amazing ride to win Stage 4's 29.5k TT in a time of 35'44" which translates to 49.5kph (30.5mph)...

Interestingly, the publicity gets totally fooled when looking at his bike. It says big time Specialized on it even though Specialized doesn't own any patent rights on that one other than the white sticker with their brand name on it. It's a Walser frame, a tiny company based in Switzerland which makes some sweet bikes.

As always, the TdF always reveals some new toys which won't go into series production til next year. One of those things were the Di2 electronic shifters by Shimano featured on Sebastian Lang's (Gerolsteiner) TT rig...