From what we could tell, the Bianchi-Lotto Jumbo and Giant-Alpecin teams were riding stock parts and bikes currently available, but never hurts to take a closer look.
Like so many other teams at Le Tour, Lotto Jumbo was running FSA cockpits, coupled with Selle San Marco saddles and otherwise full Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 groups and wheels. The road bikes are the Oltre XR2 in Bianchi’s trademark Celeste green. Sadly, this full green colorway doesn’t appear on their website for us commoners. Closeups and more below…
The Oltre XR2 debuted at Eurobike 2013 as a 2014 model and carries over here. Fortunately for Bianchi, they also introduced a disc brake model at the same time, which means the team will be perfectly comfortable on the disc version for testing in some late season events.
Considering the Oltre was originally introduced in 2010, it was in the early adopter camp for aero road bikes.
Oversized graphical logo treatments under the downtube are far better (IMO) than plastering the brand name around every possible facet.
About the only thing on the bikes that matched their yellow-and-white team kit were these custom yellow Pioneer power meter caps.
For the TT stages, the team road the Bianchi Aquila CV, with CV referring to their CounterVail vibration reduction technology that sandwiches a damping material between carbon layers.
The front end of the bike is both menacing and beautiful.
Unfortunately, we didn’t spot any of the new lightweight Specialissima climbing road bikes in the pits, but word is they were floating around somewhere.
GIANT-ALPECIN
Much like Bianchi kept the Specialissima hidden away in the early stages, Giant-Alpecin kept the new TCR Advanced SL race bikes hidden away until later stages (and a win on 17). Instead, the team used the Propel aero road bikes for warmups and early stages. Spec was almost all Shimano and Pro components…
…with a camera-friendly white Pioneer PM cap.
For the time trials, the team used Giant’s sporadically available Trinity frame. For the U.S. market, it hasn’t been officially available since 2014, some models are currently available in parts of Europe, and triathlon-happy Australia gets a full run of carbon and alloy options.
Check out the team at TeamGiantAlpecin.com
