Mathieu van der Poel's Tour de France bike is monochromatic, aggressive and hides a new seat clamp design

All-Shimano build is clean as a whistle

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By Jack Luke

Published: July 16, 2023 at 5:00 pm

Mathieu van der Poel started out his 2023 Tour de France campaign onboard this custom-painted Canyon Aeroad CFR.

The super-clean white bike is one of three bikes the Dutch multidiscipline superstar has ridden at this year’s race.

Van der Poel has since switched to his regular metallic-red Canyon Aeroad after racing this and a special-edition Raymond Poulidor tribute bike in the first week of the Tour de France.

While subdued, this all-white paintjob – officially dubbed ‘MvdP white’ by Canyon – is handsome in a muted sort of way.

Let’s take a closer look.

The integrated cockpit of van der Poel’s bike is as good as slammed with only a teeny-tiny spacer sitting beneath the stem.

Though not as extreme as the setup used by some riders, van der Poel hasn’t been able to resist the urge to tilt his hoods slightly inwards in chase of further aero gains.

Jasper Philipsen’s lead-out man will want to ensure he’s efficient as possible when pushing watts in a sprint.

In terms of measurements, van der Poel’s Canyon’s CP0015 cockpit has an 11cm stem length, with the width-adjustable handlebar set at 40cm.

With many riders at the 2023 Tour running a 36cm or 38cm bar, that’s a fairly conservative setup.

A neat 3D-printed out-front mount is fitted to the underside of the bar.

Van der Poel’s Aeroad features an exposed expander wedge on the top tube just in front of the seatpost. A similar design is used on many of the best aero road bikes.

This design is different to both that seen on the existing consumer version of the Aeroad and the bike he rode to victory at Milan-San Remo.

The bike seen at Milan San Remo hid the expanding wedge inside the top tube. It is exposed on van der Poel’s Tour de France bike.

The original seat clamp – used on the consumer version of the Aeroad to date – adopted a design similar to that of the Canyon Ultimate, clamping as low as possible on the seat tube to enable the post to flex. This is said to improve rear-end comfort. The clamp was accessed from the rear of the bike between the seatstays.

Looking at the Canyon web store, it appears the change seen on van der Poel’s latest bike has carried over to at least some of the brand’s top-end versions of the Aeroad.

A Selle Italia Flite saddle slammed all the way back on its rails sits atop the deep aero-profiled seatpost.

Van der Poel’s build is dominated by Shimano parts, covering both the groupset components and wheels.

When we saw van der Poel’s bike at the Grand Départ in Bilbao, it featured Shimano Dura-Ace C50 wheels, shod with a pair of 28c Vittoria Corsa Pro TLR tyres.

Those tyres inflate to 29.3mm on the C50’s 21mm internal rim width.

That’s still wide by modern standards – but not as wide as the tyres seen on Tadej Pogačar’s Colnago V4Rs.

On Pogačar’s bike, the (nominally) 28c Continental Grand Prix5000 TT TR tyres inflate to 31.3mm (front) and 32.2mm (rear) on the 25mm internal rim width of the ENVE SES 4.5 wheels.

Back to van der Poel’s bike, and the wheelset is paired with the near-ubiquitous Shimano Dura-Ace R9200 Di2 groupset, with van der Poel opting for 54/40t chainrings.

The Aeroad is Canyon’s aero road bike, with the Ultimate sitting alongside it at the top of the German direct-sales brand’s range as a lightweight all-rounder.

We put van der Poel’s bike on the BikeRadar scales at the Tour de France – and, in full team trim, it comes in at 7.94kg.

Deputy editor

Jack Luke is the deputy editor at BikeRadar and has been fettling with bikes for his whole life. Always in search of the hippest new niche in cycling, Jack is a self-confessed gravel dork, fixie-botherer, tandem-evangelist and hill climb try hard. Jack thinks nothing of bikepacking after work to sleep in a ditch or taking on a daft challenge for the BikeRadar YouTube channel. He is also a regular contributor to the BikeRadar podcast. With a near encyclopaedic knowledge of cycling tech, ranging from the most esoteric retro niche to the most cutting-edge modern kit, Jack takes pride in his ability to seek out stories that would otherwise go unreported. He is also particularly fond of tan-wall tyres, dynamo lights, cup and cone bearings, and skids. Jack has been writing about and testing bikes for more than six years now, has a background working in bike shops for years before that, and is regularly found riding a mix of weird and wonderful machines. Jack can also often be seen zooming about with his partner aboard their beloved tandem.

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