1980 Tour de France Winning Bike vs Modern Road Bike

The 2025 Tour de France will be raced on carbon fibre road bikes that claim to be better than ever…but what’s it like to ride a road bike that won the Tour de France in 1980? With his trusty set of Favero Assioma Pro RS2 pedals Jamie set about finding out in this modern bike vs retro bike test.

Road bikes have changed quite a bit over the last 40 years, there’s now wide road bike tyres, Di2 and disc brakes but have they got any faster? To find out we pit a Trek Madone against a TI Raleigh – A replica of the bike that won the 1980 Tour de France

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This is a TI Raleigh, a very pretty and very limited edition of the bike that Ju selt won the 1980 to de France on. And this is a 2025 Trek Madone. It is the epitome of a modern race bike. It has carbon fiber tubes, it’s got carbon fiber wheels, it’s got disc brakes and gears that go bebo. But how do two bikes that are 45 years apart actually filter ride? Well, thanks to Vera’s new Oma Pro RS pedals, we’re gonna find out looking at these two bikes and they couldn’t be further apart. Disc brakes have replaced these fan favorite rim squeezing contraptions. The tires have absolutely ballooned. The gears now require electricity to operate and modern bikes seem to sometimes have extra holes somehow. Up until now I have managed to evade ever riding a bike with down shoot shifters. So, uh, today we’re gonna change all of that to find out the difference between the two bikes. We’re gonna be subjecting them to a series of tests. First of all, we are gonna do a flat test riding a set power output. Then we’ve got hill climb test and then finally a sprint test to see how both bikes behave. First of all though, gotta get these Vero power pedals on. I think probably the pedal threads are about the only thing, the only standard which hasn’t actually changed in the last 45 years. To make matters even easier, all of the technical stuff is inside the pedal axles. So the batteries, the strain gauges, the gyroscopes is all in this stainless steel axle and that’s really good because it means there’s not pods to knock or damage or I’m quite clumsy. So it’s nice that everything’s housed inside there. There’s also the added benefit ’cause they’re pedal based, you can fit them to one bike on one day of the week and if you’re lucky enough to have a second bike, you can swap ’em over at the weekend and get your power data on that as well. Also, because I already use Shio cleats, I won’t need to change those over and these new pedals are a hundred percent Shimano compatible. We’ve just discovered that. Uh, we’ve got a hack putting on pedals, uh, camera and Ed has apparently wasted many hours not doing this. So if you just do the first few threads and then uh, hold the axle and just wind the pedals backwards, it’s done up. Then you get your paper spanner, do the final bit. There you go. Hack right it is time for our first test and I have a feeling that this one is gonna be my favorite because it’s flat. Now the aim of the game here is to ride at a set power output for the lap and then we’ll get back, see which one’s fastest, and uh, if there’s any meaningful differences between the two bikes. So as with any real world testing, you do need to take the results with a little bit of a pinch of salt because it’s not a wind tunnel, still haven’t got one of those. But we have done everything in our power to make it a fair test. So we’ve chosen quite a still day. We’ve chosen traffic free roads so there’s nothing to pull us along or hold us up. And we’re gonna obviously be using the Ferrero power pedals to measure our power to plus or minus 1% accuracy. Whoa, right, enough procrastinating. Let’s get going. The course for our flap test was a 10 kilometer loop, not planned flat but about as flat as most real life rides get. And as you can see from the numbers from the Vero power pedals, I managed to get pretty close to my 250 watt target on both efforts. On the rally I finished the loop with a time of 17 and a half minutes and on the trek I was 26 seconds faster. Now it should be said that this difference probably wasn’t all down to the aerodynamics of the bikes. I definitely felt more confident when cornering on the modern bike, probably in part because that’s what I’m used to. If we wanted to ride the rally at the same speed IE about a kilometer per hour faster than it would require about 15 to 20 watts more. So next up hill climb test, the all important weigh in. So there’s three things that are gonna make the difference when riding up a hill. A, the stiffness of the bike and how that translates the power onto the road. B, the rolling resistance of the tires and C, the bike weight. So I’ve gotta hold the boot up so I now can’t see where it weighs. 9.8, 9.8, what did I guess? 9.8. 9.8. Although we do have to take the weight of the pedals off of this one, but they claim to be the lightest power meter pedals in the world. 123.5 grams per pedal, which is pretty impressive. But we are gonna validate that we’re gonna put ’em on a set of scales. We’re gonna use Ed’s drug scales to uh, give ’em away. We’ll validate that claim right time to get the trek on it. My drug scales Right, the track, it should be lighter. Um, it is not the lightest madone build, but this madone is a lot lighter than the previous generation Madone, which was full on Arrow. The wheels aren’t the lightest 1 0 5 DI two also got a bit more weight over Al Tegra or race. So I’m gonna guess what did I guess for this one? 8.6 something. Gotta hold the boot up but less 8.45, 8.45 on on track. You’ve outdone yourself. So to find out if this weight saving makes a difference, I’m gonna need to go and ride up a hill. Ah right, yes. Well it’s time for Hill Climb test and uh, Ed’s chosen me that, well that wasn’t very friendly. That tractor can’t even get up it now I’ve gotta get up on this. Let’s go. Oh Christ, that’s a long hill. Oh, how was that? They quite fit in the eighties. Oh, you’re such an arss. You could have picked so many nicer hills, but we’ve got time. Uh, I dunno if back in the day they have different shaped hands. It’s flat test and the drops are absolutely fine up here. There’s just these bits get in the way, which is rather annoying. Yeah, so it wasn’t the most comfortable experience gears, I was actually really impressed with how well they work. They’re indexed beautifully. You can feel each gear and that is absolutely lovely. But I could have done with a few more up there. Yeah, I was at the saddle for most of it. Right back down. Gotta do it all over again. No, I Right, let’s get these swapped over. So yeah, Trek has most definitely taken on the, uh, one bike, one race bike to do it all concept. Um, they used to have the Madon, which was their aero bike and then the Armando, which was their climbing bike. And this, this latest one is designed to do both. So it’s got much skinnier tubes than the old Arrow one. Much more Armando like, but it supposedly is as Arrow, although that was with a set of arrow bottle cages fitted. Let me know what you think of this paint job. I don’t know about it. I, I do rate that trackers made the logo a lot smaller, but um, let me know in the comments below and wash you there. Make sure you’re subscribed to the channel. The hill climb that Ed chose me was near enough one kilometer long, an average gradient of 10%, but the times were really, really close on the rally I set a time of three minutes and 27 seconds, but despite being lighter, I was only two seconds faster on the madone. In fairness though, that was at a lower wattage and I think the downside of all that gear range is I probably wasn’t forced to push myself as hard that and maybe there was some fatigue in the legs by this time in the day looking at the data from the Pro Rx pedals and we can see that my average cadence on the retro bike was eight RPM slur for the effort than on the modern bike. By no means an insignificant difference, Uh, I dunno about easier, definitely different. Uh, this bike is a lot smoother. Um, But you wouldn’t think you’d feel that much at low speed. Yeah, you can just apply that power just that little bit smoother. And also I changed gear a lot more on that one just because it was easier. And there’s also more gears. Not only is this 12 speed, so more quantity of gears but also more range of those gears. Also, I think because of that smoothness and the gearing, I did a lot more of that sat down. I think that this one probably was quicker and not because it’s slightly lighter. Now I think this test really does highlight the benefit of using a pedal based power meter over a crank based or spider based version because we can fit it to basically any bike. It doesn’t matter if it’s a bike that’s going on a bit like this one, you can use ’em on a new bike and because the pedal bodies are actually removable with an Alan Key, you don’t even need any proprietary tools. You can swap them out for the pro MX SPD pedal bodies and that means that you could use ’em on your mountain bike or gravel bike. So for our test we’re using the dual-sided version which cost this much, but there is also a single-sided version which cost this much. And you can also upgrade from the single-sided to the double-sided version for this much. I didn’t know you were gonna do that. I I didn’t know I was gonna do that. If that sounds tempting then we’ll pop a link in the description below. And the other really good thing about these pedals is it’s not gonna change how either bike rides. So that’s because it’s got a really low stack height that’s the distance between the pedal axle and your cleat. That’s 10.5 mil, which is really rather low for a, for a power meter pedal. And also the Q factor, that’s how far away my feet are from the crank arm. It’s the same as on a standard SPD SL pedal. So 53 mil. So it’s not gonna affect how either bike rides because I wanna ride this in all of its glory and for my final very scientific test I’m gonna be sprinting on both bikes. Now this one is less scientific because we are not gonna be measuring how much power gets put through the frames or anything. I literally just wanted to see what it was like to sprint on a bike from the eighties. I think this might be where we feel the biggest difference because there’s obviously a huge difference in materials. The new bike is composites everything. It’s got carbon fiber, handlebars, carbon fiber frame carbon fiber wheels. This one I’m pretty sure, well it was state of the art in the day, but it’s got Reynolds 7 5 3 tubing, which is obviously steel. And back in the day it was very special because they managed to make the tubes so thin that they then had to soldier it with silver shoulder so that they could do it at a lower temperature as to not damage the walls. I think the only bit of composite on this bike is the lightweight pedal bodies of the fro paddles. So, uh, yeah, there’s quite a difference there. Let’s see how it handles. I mean it’s a, it’s a bucket list item ticked off. Um, it was a bit nerve wracking because I really didn’t want to crash on this lovely bike. Um, I think one thing that’s weird is the gears. I think it’s just a case of getting used to them to be honest because obviously well a, you can’t change gear whilst on the hoods or drops. There’s no sprint shifters either. Uh, I have them on my bike, none of that. Yeah, it’s just like, am I in that gear? Am I half in between it? And then you sort of get out and to sprint it actually felt like felt pretty good. I I can only imagine like what it would’ve felt like, you know, mass bunch sprint with everyone like playing with their gears and stuff like that would be cool. But yeah, I’ll, I’ll stick to my bike for for sprints for now, right, sprint number two. It should be a lot more like what I’m used to. Let’s go. Ah, It’s amazing how a bike can be both stiffer and more compliant isn’t it? I, I’ve never really got my head around that but it is a thing. Um, the bottom bracket does feel like it translates that power a bit better but then you sit back down, you don’t feel all those boat road vibrations through both your bum and through your hands. Um, I must admit I’m getting on with this cockpit much better. Um, that’s the main change that feels different to ride both bikes like this bars on the rally are just so skinny, whereas these are really quite, quite chunky. I find the hoods much more comfortable. Obviously that doesn’t matter so much while sprinting it wasn’t all in favor of this one though. Um, like the rally is just so much more involving to ride. It feels like a bit of an an event, whether that’s a sprint or just riding it. Like if I could choose one bike to go and ride to the cafe on a Sunday, I think it’d have to be the rally. Like it feels like an adventure going out on a ride. It feels like you have to do something whereas on this you just kind of sit there. Does that make sense? So how much difference have the last 45 years or so made? Well if you look at the results from the power pedals, then potentially less than you might think. You see, the thing is even with bikes that are decades apart, they couldn’t be more difference in their frame construction and in their componentry and wheels. And yet the difference is still mainly made by the rider and that shouldn’t really be any big surprise. 80% of your air resistance comes from your body and not from the bike. I’ve been dropped by many people on much worse bikes than me because they’ve just got stronger legs or bigger lungs. I dunno what it is, but they’re just much stronger. So if you want to get faster on the bike, probably just do some more training rather than buy a new bike. But don’t worry, the last 40 years or so haven’t been a complete waste of time. The track was so much more comfortable and I think that’s true of if we’d chosen any modern race bike, it would be so much more comfortable than this ti rally. No doubt the frame material comes into that. Um, but I think in Maine that is down to the tires. The track’s got 28 mil tires on it. Our ti rally’s got 23 mil tires on it and that was actually fairly large for the time. The other thing is that you can get on the track and thanks to its geometry and the geometry of a lot of modern race bikes, you can just get on it and you can ride to your potential. You can get on it and you can do a sprint. You can get on it and smash it up a hill as hard as you can without having to worry about anything else. They’re very pretty, this gear set but down tube shifters, they look cool and they’re definitely of their time. But for actually riding a bike, I don’t think anyone will argue that they actually function better. You, you can argue with me in the comments below, but keeping your hands on the bars with the STI shifters just so much nicer and I think that’s what it comes down to. The geometry, the frame materials, that is where the evolution has been. Yes, it is probably a bit faster. It was a little bit faster in our testing, but the biggest difference was its comfort and its ease of use. So there you go. There’s some progress. Let me know which of these two bikes you would choose to have in your garage down in the comments below. If you want to find out any more details or get it yourself a set of those Vero pedals, then we’ll pop a link in the description. Make sure you subscribe to channel, give this video a like, and we’ll see you next time.