Pro bike: Jérôme Pineau’s Omega Pharma-Quick Step Specialized SL4

Omega Pharma-Quick Step’s Jérôme Pineau was riding the recent Tour Down Under aboard this Specialized SL4. Pineau is a 33-year-old French cyclist who has been riding with the Quick Step team through its various incarnations since 2009. He’s been a professional since 2002.

He’s considered a classics specialists, and has finished 10th in the Liège–Bastogne–Liège and two top ten finishes in the Amstel Gold Race, and won the Tour of Normandy, Paris–Bourges and Grote Prijs Jef Scherens. He’s a handy climber as well, which he proved in the 2010 edition of the Tour de France, where he wore the King of the Mountains jersey for eight stages. And he won stage 5 of the Giro d’Italia in 2010, a rain-soaked occasion.

Enough about Jérôme, let's have a look at his bike. With nearly all professional cyclists now racing at the moment, we're getting a good chance to see all the latest kit. Well, we say latest, some of the teams have been riding last year's bike and equipment, while they're waiting for deliveries of the 2013 stock.

Not Omega Pharma-Quick Step though, they're on the current Specialized SL4 (riders also have the choice of the Venge, which Mark Cavendish is racing) and the full support of SRAM. And when we say full, we mean groupsets, wheels and finishing kit. No other brand gets a look in. SRAM isn't supplying as many teams as last year, deciding to focus on supporting a few teams, and going deeper with their level of support. Now SRAM is well established they don't really need to supply as many teams, and it proabably now makes more marketing sense to work with fewer teams.

As SRAM Red, their flagship groupset, was released some time last year, there's been no delays and all the team were riding it at the Tour Down Under. It's allowed Campagnolo to get more of a foot in the pro peloton this year, with markedly more teams on the Italian company's product.

As well as the latest Red groupset, they team also use Zipp wheels (owned of course by SRAM) as well as Zipp handlebars, stem and seatpost.

Deep-section wheels are getting wider, as current aerodynamic theories suggest that the wider rounder rim profile creates a faster wheel that is easier to handle in crosswinds. The new Red calipers have been designed with wider rims in mind. Jérôme was running the 303 Firecrest wheels, a good all-round wheelset.

Jérôme ran a 11-26t cassette in the Tour Down Under which combines with the regular 53/39 chainset. The route isn’t the most demanding in terms of hills and is a generous spread of gears

His frame is a regular 56cm size frame, and he's fitted a short, by pro standards, 100ml Service Course SL stem. He is 5 ft 9 in tall though, so clearly doesn't feel the need to be anymore stretched out. And what's that, a couple of spacers under the stem? Clamped into the stem is the Zipp CSL super short reach bars which keep the reach to the hoods and drops within range. SL Speed carbon seatposts feature on all the team bikes, this one has a 20mm setback.

The team have been using SRAM’s Quarq power meterThey reckon the power meter is accurate to +/-1.5% and that you can swap chainring size without affecting that accuracy. Power Balance technology captures separate data for each leg, so you’re given the ratio of power generated on the left and right side.

Thanks to www.sram.com for the photos.