We’re in the middle of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, and if you’ve kept a close eye on the peloton, you may have noticed some very fetching custom bikes floating about. That’s because the biggest race of the season isn’t an opportunity that brands waste; it’s the one guaranteed race that will draw the eyeballs of millions. Perfect for promoting their products to the biggest audience possible. And it would seem that, compared to the men’s race, many teams at the Tour de France Femmes have gone all in on custom bikes for the 2025 edition.
At this year’s race, there seem to be quite a few custom bikes on the start line, from national champions with one-off paint schemes to celebrate. Their recent wins (more of that in a future video) to brands seemingly rewinding the clock to the early 1990s. There was even a bike celebrating birthplaces, or at least a job that a certain superstar of the women’s peloton’s parents had. Let’s delve in.
Lidl-Trek goes back in time
Trek has most definitely pushed the boat out for their teams at the Tour this year. For the men’s squad, they were lucky enough to dash around France for three weeks and to green success on Matisse-inspired Madones. But the women’s squad may have outdone the men this year.
There’s no artist-inspired design this time around; instead, it’s an era-inspired fresh lick of paint. If you were around in the 1990s, you’d be well schooled in paint-splattered bikes. Every company seemed to do it at some point. Personally, I for one had flashbacks of an Alpinestars mountain bike that I once dreamed of with a colour palette that wasn’t too far off what the Lidl-Trek team is using.
Demi’s got Flower Power!
Over at the FDJ-Suez team, the hot favourite for the GC, Demi Vollering, has been treated to a fancy paint job by Specialized.
The bike design celebrates and harks back to her youth. Demi grew up on her parents’ flower farm, and Specialized has gone to town on adorning the bike with a glossy, understated, yet eye-catching design involving a plethora of flowers. Up close, it reminded me of the black scratch drawings that kids get, where you scratch away the dusty back surface to reveal a multi-coloured surface underneath, all the while getting black soot over the living room. If you’re a parent, I’m sure you’ll be nodding in agreement.
MyCanyon custom-painted bikes galore
For our final team, I have two bikes. Much like every Canyon team sponsored at the men’s Tour de France, including Alpecin-Deceuninck and Movistar, Canyon has issued each rider at the Tour de France Femmes with a custom bike.
The idea behind this is to showcase that Canyon now has a custom paint program, much like many other manufacturers, from Trek’s Project One to Orbea’s MyO program. For Canyon, it’s originally named MyCanyon. While the MyCanyon system doesn’t offer quite the extensive paint options of the other programs, MyCanyon offers several artist-curated options that look fantastic.
I picked out two to focus on, and of course, one had to be last year’s victor, Kasia Niewiadoma Phinney. The other goes to Chloé Dygert. Sure, Dygert’s bike has been blingged out and given the “team leader” treatment, but it’s arguably Dygert’s bike that stands out more due to its cosmic-looking paint scheme.
I’m not going to delve into the build here; instead, let me direct you to the video where I’d do the usual deep dive on the complete builds and weights of these bikes.
Cheers,
Dave
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