'We'll have rounder wheels than everyone else' - Team GB confident in new Olympics tech

The Great Britain Cycling Team will compete on the best equipment of any country at the Paris Olympics this summer, performance director Stephen Park has said. 

Team GB has developed mounds of new tech for the Games, including state-of-the-art skinsuits, a 3D-printed frame and an updated model of its Hope-Lotus HBT bike. 

The cut-off for registering equipment - homologating it for use with the UCI - was last year's World Championships in Glasgow. There, Team GB homologated 64 pieces of kit, many of which have since been kept behind closed doors. 

"For those of us that are into tech, it's quite interesting times," Park said. "Some pieces of equipment are limited and set by that homologation. Some have some degrees of freedom within them. It's even more so on the apparel side, the clothing side."

GB's tech advances in recent years have focused mainly on the track, where the winning margin often comes down to a fraction of a second. In previous Olympic cycles, the squad has opted to keep its new tech veiled in the run-up to the Games, preventing rival countries from seeing its benefit in competition. 

Park confirmed that GB’s new Hope-Lotus bike, announced last July and ridden just once at the World Championships, will not be used until "the first race of the Olympics". He also said that there will "certainly be some 3D-printed products involved in the line-up".

Likewise, the performance director highlighted that "there's been a lot of equipment homologated by other teams" that GB can now also use. 

"We'll still make sure we've got rounder wheels than everyone else," Park said, echoing a tongue-in-cheek remark made by his predecessor, Dave Brailsford, at the 2012 Olympics. "[We'll also have] slippier frames than everyone else, and hopefully better apparel than everyone else.

"I am confident that, when we go to Paris, no other team will have an equipment and an apparel set-up that will be better than the one that we will be able to provide our riders to give them the best opportunity to deliver their best on the day."

Team GB topped the medal table in cycling at each of the last four Olympics. During the current Paris cycle, British Cycling bolstered its advantage by acquiring a wind tunnel from Halfords for £1, which was installed a short walk from the National Cycling Centre in Manchester in 2022. 

"We've been able to run lots more tests and positioning than we’ve ever done before," Park said of the new tool. "We've been able to offer it to the Paralympic riders, which we’ve never done before. That has provided us with a great opportunity to progress testing."

Still, Park stressed, with each new cycle, come "diminishing returns" on new equipment. 

"You're still looking for every half a percent," he said. "It's a challenge, but it’s a good one. We've got some really smart people doing some really good work in that space. I'd be quite happy if I was a rider."