Shimano has revealed details of its sponsorship of the new Jumbo-Visma women’s team, as well as renewing its 25-year sponsorship of the men’s team, which was most famously known as Rabobank between 1996 and 2012.
While the Dutch team switched from Bianchi to Cervélo for 2021, ending a seven-year bike deal with the Italian brand, Shimano has been a constant throughout the team’s equipment sponsorship.
Team Jumbo-Visma Women will race with Shimano’s Dura-Ace drivetrain and pedals, the development team will race with Ultegra drivetrains and pedals, and the men’s WorldTour team have opted for Dura-Ace drivetrain, wheels and pedals.
As for the bikes, they will have four Cervélo models at their disposal: the aero S5 (pictured below), the lightweight R5, the P5 time trial bike and for the Classics the Caledonia-5.
Photo: Bram Berkien/Jumbo-Visma
The entire Jumbo-Visma squad will be on Shimano’s disc brake specification (Dura-Ace ST-R9170 or Ultegra ST-R8070) on all bikes. The men’s team will also use Shimano’s R9100P Dura-Ace power meter.
As well as Shimano components, all Jumbo-Visma riders will use Shimano’s S-Phyre RC902 premium white competition-level shoes in road races. For cyclo-cross, riders including Wout van Aert and Marianne Vos will also use Shimano’s S-Phyre XC901 off-road race shoe.
Despite narrowly missing out on the Tour de France victory with Primoz Roglic, Jumbo-Visma had a stellar 2020. Their wins included three Classics (Strade Bianche, Milan-San Remo and Liège-Bastogne-Liège), multiple Tour de France and Vuelta a España stage wins, plus the Vuelta overall victory with a resurgent Roglic.
Photo: Jumbo-Visma
Myron Walraven, Shimano sports marketing manager said: “Not only is Team Jumbo-Visma team aligned with our goals of inspiring people to get out and ride, but strategically they are also very much on board with the development of our company and the representation of our brand. So I'm very happy to reach a new level of agreement within our long-term partnership.”
Richard Plugge, Team Jumbo-Visma director, said: “I am extremely proud and grateful that we are continuing our longest-running collaboration and even able to expand it to our new women's cycling team. Quality is the key for us and we know that we can rely on it at Shimano. Together we have been building continuously through years of innovations, that is characteristic of this partnership. Hopefully we can achieve many more successes on Shimano equipment in the future.”
The 2021 partnership officially started on January 1, 2021, but the teams won’t be in race action until the Volta a la Comunitat in February (men’s, February 3-7, and women’s, February 18-21).
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Simon Smythe is a hugely experienced cycling tech writer, who has been writing for Cycling Weekly since 2003. Until recently he was our senior tech writer. In his cycling career Simon has mostly focused on time trialling with a national medal, a few open wins and his club's 30-mile record in his palmares. These days he spends most of his time testing road bikes, or on a tandem doing the school run with his younger son.
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