We’ve been totting up the stage victories from this year’s Tour de France by bike brand and there can only be one winner. It's an emphatic one at that, scooping up no less than a third of the 21 stage wins.
Specialized mopped up seven wins. With two teams (Quick-Step Floors and Bora-Hansgrohe) on its roster, featuring the Tour’s star early-stage sprinter Fernando Gaviria (although he didn’t make it to Paris), top climber, Julian Alaphilippe, and the world champion and prolific green jersey winner, Peter Sagan, riding its machines, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion.
Four of the wins on Specialized bikes came from Quick-Step Floors: two sprint stages from Gaviria and two mountain stages from Alaphilippe. Bora-Hansgrohe’s wins were a bit less diverse: all from sprints won by Sagan. Wins were spread across two of Specialized's new machines: the S-Works Venge and the S-Works Tarmac.
The runner up was less obvious, but Bianchi came out with three wins with LottoNL-Jumbo: two back-to-back sprint wins for Dylan Groenewegen and the other for Primož Roglič on the last climbing stage.
Primoz Roglic goes clear on a descent on stage 19 of the 2018 Tour de France (Sunada)
(Image credit: Yuzuru SUNADA)
Then come three teams with two stage wins each: there were back-to-back wins on Argon 18 bikes for Astana and on Pinarello for Team Sky, both taken by Geraint Thomas. Finally, Colnago bikes were ridden to victory in both stage six and stage 21 by UAE Team Emirates.
Dan Martin got a stage win for Colnago as well as the super-combativity award. Photo : Yuzuru SUNADA
(Image credit: Yuzuru SUNADA)
Other brands with one stage each to their names are BMC, Trek, Canyon, Lapierre and Giant.
Pinarello of course sealed the overall victory thanks to Thomas's two stage wins and strong performance throughout the three weeks, making it the sixth win in the last seven Tours for Pinarello thanks to their partnership with Team Sky.
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Paul started writing for Cycling Weekly in 2015, covering cycling tech, new bikes and product testing. Since then, he’s reviewed hundreds of bikes and thousands of other pieces of cycling equipment for the magazine and the Cycling Weekly website.
He’s been cycling for a lot longer than that though and his travels by bike have taken him all around Europe and to California. He’s been riding gravel since before gravel bikes existed too, riding a cyclocross bike through the Chilterns and along the South Downs.
