What’s Next in Cycling Tech?

Electronic shifting, GPS, a power meter, carbon fibre – a bike can be a pretty high-tech machine. More innovations are coming. Here’s a glimpse into the future.

On the Côte de la Redoute, one of the decisive inc lines of Liège-bastogne-liège, the sun is scorching the camper vans that dot the climb’s narrow single lane. It’s unusually hot at this year’s race – more than 27 C. After a particularly long winter, the fans inside cycling’s spiritual homeland who are known to celebrate weather both good and bad don’t seem to mind.

Yellow, red and black Belgian flags fly in the afternoon sky. Bikes whiz up Redoute’s two steepest ramps; their modern drivetrains are a symphony better than any in sport. These are the lightest, stiffest, most-advanced road bikes in cycling’s history. Still many in the industry think they could all be made better.

Two days earlier, in a simple Belgian business park, Toon Wils, a senior engineer at the country’s biggest bike manufacturer, Ridley, has just finished a presentation on carbon-fibre frame manufacturing. Before lunch, he spent four hours wind-tunnel testing Lotto Soudal’s current helmet sponsor. His analysis will inform the shape of next year’s designs.

In conversation afterward, Wils discusses the Fenix SL Disc – a bike used by several pro and continental teams, primarily during Classics season. With the Fenix, he says, the combination of aerodynamics and comfort is unmatched, but like all technology in cycling – inside Ridley and elsewhere – there is always room for refinement.

“For some time now, cycling has been preoccupied with weight and aerodynamics,” he says. “But very soon this thinking will change: stock bikes with no cables, more componentry integration and more electronics – power meters, for example, built inside the frame. There are many possibilities.”

Cycling – as with much of modern industry – is looking at technology with wide eyes, anticipating that it will revolutionize the next generation of product design. Bikes, soft goods, hardware – through the meticulous application of data, analytics and technology – will all be subjected to tinkering, prototype development and even radical change. But how?

The answer, it turns out, is hard to come by.