Why does Evenepoel continue to use inner tube tires?

Despite tubeless becoming practically the standard in road racing cycling, relegating traditional tubular tires to oblivion, there are still cyclists who have good reasons to continue using tires with inner tubes on their bikes. These are the reasons why we can still see tires and tubes on the bikes of some of the world's best cyclists like Remco Evenepoel.

The tires that gave Evenepoel a scare at the Olympics are still the fastest

Final kilometers of the road race at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Remco Evenepoel, after a surprising attack at just under 40 kilometers to go, rides towards victory without knowing the distance to his rivals. Suddenly, with less than 4 kilometers to go, while entering a cobbled section to cross the Louvre museum area, disaster strikes as one of his wheels loses air. Nervously and anxiously, he urgently asks for a bike from his team car, which luckily was close by due to his lead over his pursuers, resulting in a few seconds of tremendous tension and an anecdote.

But why did Remco Evenepoel risk using tires with inner tubes on his bike for this important event knowing that there is a higher chance of getting a flat tire with them? The answer is very simple and can be found not only on Remco's bike but also on the bikes of most cyclists who ride Specialized bikes, specifically those from Soudal-QuickStep and Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe: the Turbo Cotton tires, already a classic in the Specialized catalog, are the fastest option, even faster than the S-Works Turbo RapidAir 2Bliss Ready tires that the brand developed to provide a high-performance tubeless tire to its cyclists.

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However, tests conducted by teams on the different available materials continue to show that the Turbo Cotton tires, with their super-flexible 320 TPI cotton casing and a lightweight of only 240 grams in the 700x26c version, are still preferred by teams despite the higher risk of punctures due to using inner tubes.

This risk, in any case, with the current TPU inner tubes, is not much higher than what they already assumed when they used tubular tires. By the way, tubular tires are ruled out simply because the brand no longer has wheel models available for this type of tire.

Specialized's plans include keeping the Turbo Cotton tires in their catalog due to their great popularity, but they also acknowledge the need to develop a tubeless tire for their cyclists that can make them forget about this legendary model.