Lidl-Trek’s Mads Pederson pulled in a one-two alongside team-mate Jonathan Milan at Gent-Wevelgem on Sunday, and on some unusual equipment: a Trek Madone race bike, running a 1x SRAM XPLR set up, designed with a gravel bike in mind.
Pederson rode the team-issue Madone SLR 9, his and Milan’s triumph bringing the total number of spring podiums achieved on this XPLR set-up, with its 13-speed 10-46 cassette, to four.
The Classics have always rewritten the ordinary and often staid rules of road racing, simply because of the brutality of the parcours. But mullets - the term coined to describe the mixing and matching of groupset components where MTB and road parts mix to give desirable shifting characteristics or ranges - haven’t become that commonplace, yet.
Lidl-Trek certainly thinks they should be with Glen Leven, team technical manager, stating “we did three days testing with Mads and Alex Kirsch on the cobbles. They said we will never go back to 2x on the cobbles because this is insane how good it is.”
That’s quite some endorsement, albeit one published by a sponsored team on its own website.
This is certainly not the first time we’ve seen 1x in road-racing, Aqua Blue Sport’s 1x Strada was unveiled in 2017 ahead of the 2018 season, but the technology available to make these set-ups work has seen huge development. And, this is arguably the first time a team has confirmed a performance advantage in such strong terms. If the benefits are so great, can we expect rivals to follow suit in time for Paris-Roubaix?
Well, no, we don’t think so.
SRAM’s ‘pick and mix’ approach gave rise to the term ‘mullet’ groupset in the first place, so, we’re much more likely to see the approach adopted by a SRAM sponsored squad. More importantly, the other key part of this puzzle is that Trek’s Madone is running a UDH (universal derailleur hanger), which makes it compatible with SRAM’s gravel groupsets, vastly increasing the options available. No other WorldTour bike can make the same claim.
UDH is SRAM’s attempt to provide a single hanger design that all manufacturers can adopt. However, as yet, it’s not been widely adopted for road bikes. SRAM’s Red level XPLR rear mech, won’t run on a non-UDH frame.
Many more of the leading manufacturers do offer a gravel bike in their range with a UDH hanger, but the last time we saw anything of a more endurance nature win at Roubaix, it was the Specialized bike of the same name, which Philippe Gilbert rode to victory way back in 2019.
This weekend’s victory for the less conservative, therefore, arguably leaves teams with more formal barbering rules at a disadvantage, at least for the remaining Classics. Pederson reportedly called the setup not just more reliable, but faster too: “Mads told me that in the past, he felt like he’d lose two to three seconds shifting from the small chainring to the front, just making sure that the chain is on before we accelerate again,” Leven states.
Our view? It’s unlikely the derailleur itself is faster, and there are some minor (on the Classics courses at least) disadvantages to having fewer gears to play with. But, the set-up it is likely giving the riders greater chain retention and more reliable shifting, leading to the confidence to get on the power sooner.
We will be watching with interest, to see if the mullet is still in fashion after the remaining Monuments conclude.
