Beginning of the end for Tubular tyres?

There are going to be quite a few clincher firsts this year if things go to plan for Deceuninck-Quickstep. The winningest team of 2020 is riding clinchers – with tubes in them – almost exclusively this season. Sunday’s Tour of Flanders was, as far as we can tell, the technology’s first Flanders win.

Kasper Asgreen and the rest of his DQS team were on Roval’s latest wheels, mostly the deeper Rapide CLX, matched with Specialized Turbo Cotton Hell of the North tires in a 28mm. Inside those tires were latex tubes.

Though Roval’s Rapide and shallower Alpinist rims have most of the hallmarks of road tubeless setups, they are not approved for tubeless use. (We remain confused by this.)

When the wheels first came out last year, the team swapped back and forth between the newer, much wider, and more aerodynamic Rapide and Alpinist wheels and the tubular CLX50 that came before it. Julian Alaphilippe, for example, won the 2nd stage of last year’s Tour de France on Turbo Cotton clinchers paired with Alpinist wheels before swapping back to tubulars for most of the rest of the Tour de France.