Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team

Larry Warbasse is an American road cyclist who currently races for the Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale team.

A former men’s US national road champion and winner of a stage at the Tour de Suisse, Warbasse has forged a successful career in Europe as a solid and dependable domestique also capable of competing for top honours. A 10-time Grand Tour starter, Warbasse joined BMC Racing’s WorldTour team in 2013 and stayed with the American team for three seasons. He moved to IAM Cycling in 2015 before joining Aqua Blue at the start of 2017 and winning a stage of the Tour de Suisse that year.

Aqua Blue folded in the middle of the 2018 season leaving Warbasse scrambling for a contract. He eventually signed with AG2R and has thus far spent five seasons with the French WorldTeam. The American rode 89 race days in 2023 - not including a few gravel appearances - and has spoken openly about his excitement about AG2R launching a development side in 2024, with the experienced rider gradually moving into a road captain role.

Lawrence Warbasse

Tech

Pro Bikes

Vuelta a España pro bike: Larry Warbasse’s BMC Teammachine SLR 01

Larry Warbasse's bike uses a range of Campagnolo components, including the Super Record EPS wireless groupset.

AG2R Citroën BMC Teammachine SLR 01 for the Vuelta a España

 was synonymous with cycling glory. Gino Bartali, Fausto Coppi, Eddy Merckx - the century’s biggest cycling stars all used the Italian brand’s groupsets to great success.

Things have changed. Though the success hasn’t fully dried up, now there is only one team at the Vuelta a España, and at WorldTour level more generally, using Campagnolo groupsets: 

The French squad teamed up with Campagnolo at the beginning of 2021 and the partnership is now into its third year. During that time, earlier this year, Campagnolo unveiled the Super Record EPS - 

For many years Campagnolo fell behind its rivals in the wireless arms race but this year, they bridged the gap with Super Record EPS, which is used across all AG2R Citroën’s bikes, including 

Teammachine SLR 01. Will the new technology instigate a WorldTour resurgence for the historical Italian brand? Only time will tell.

The Teammachine is BMC’s climbing-orientated bike and sits alongside its Timemachine aero road and time trial bikes.

We caught a glimpse of Warbasse’s bike ahead of the second stage of the Vuelta, and the first road stage. It was a rolling day with only three relatively tame climbs. For it, Warbasse’s bike was specced with a 54/39t chainset, a standard size for pros. The Vuelta is notorious for its viciously steep climbs so Warbasse could swap that for something more compact for the tougher mountain stages.

They might have played catchup on the wireless front, but Campagnolo was ahead of its rivals in some areas. The Super Record EPS is 12-speed, something the Italian brand first introduced to the market on certain road groupsets way back in 2018. The wireless groupset’s predecessor, the Super Record (along with the Record) used 12 speed technology. Having an extra cog on the cassette reduces the incremental changes between the gears, although not by a huge amount.

AG2R Citroën sticks with Campagnolo for their wheels too. In this case, it was the Bora Ultra WTO 45s which, as the name suggests, are 45mm deep - a nice balance between aero and lightweight. They’re combined with Pirelli’s P Zero Race tyres, in a 26mm width, thin by modern standards - from what we’ve seen at the race, 28mm appears to be the dominant choice. Campagnolo offers shallower wheels which could be swapped in for more mountainous stages, cutting weight.

BMC components are used for the handlebars and seatpost, which hoists a Fizik saddle into position, while Warbasse uses Look Keo Blade pedals and a Power2max power meter.

Larry Warbasse’s BMC Kaius 01

Larry Warbasse, five days from finishing the Giro d'Italia and one day removed from a trans-Atlantic flight, was still tinkering with his setup the eve of his first gravel race

Unbound is a race where marginal tech choices can lead to massive benefits. Or, at least that is the theory. With lots of miles, the little advantages add up.

Most years, this can lead to riders tinkering with ways to get aero, reduce rolling resistance, or maximise efficiency. Often, riders will ride in road shoes with road pedals to have the increased efficiency from the larger surface area connecting rider to pedal and the typically stiffer sole of a road shoe. Additionally, with the length of Unbound, many riders are doing significant training miles on the road with road bikes, so oftentimes there is a level of personal comfort in road shoes over their mountain bike counterparts. The trade off is that if, at any point, a rider is called to walk, the road shoes quickly and dramatically lose their efficiency.

It is, realistically, the biggest gamble in gear choice a rider can make in Unbound.

For Larry Warbasse, the choice had different stakes. With three weeks of intense racing in his legs, the switch to mountain bike shoes and pedals is not so simple. Any discrepancy in the set up, which is common in the different profiles of the two choices, could cause severe discomfort or even overuse issues for a rider coming off the unrivalled repetitive intensity of a grand tour to a race that is diametric in nature and demands.

“I had run through a lot of scenarios in my head for the race and other riders told me they had never unclipped before,” Warbasse told 

of his choice to run road pedals. Warbasse is good friends with Ian Boswell, the 2021 Unbound champion, and said they had been chatting in the lead up to the race, as Warbasse had warmed to the idea of giving the race a solid go. Presumably, it was Boswell, a veteran of grand tour racing himself, who gave Warbasse the tip that walking wasn’t typical at Unbound.

Boswell, however, started the race with mountain bike pedals, as did the vast majority of the contenders, bar John Borstleman. Borstelman, to say the least, did not have a successful outing.

With the knowledge from riders like Boswell, and the understanding that even if there might be a slight penalty, Warbasse came into the race feeling reasonably confident, as he told us before the race: “I'm here to do my best, but I am no expert in gravel. I know I have good legs but I might get myself five miles in getting my ass kicked out the back in the first gravel section.”

Nevertheless, the mud at Unbound doesn't care about where you came from and Boswell’s experience has been limited to years where mud has not defined the race in the ways it has in 2015 or 2011. When there is mud and even the quickest riders are forced out of the pedals, the choice of road shoes quickly becomes a bad bet.

“I didn't ever expect mud like that, nor have ever seen mud like that, so I didn’t really know what to do,” Warbasse said of his encounter with the mile 11 mud bog.

“Everyone got off their bikes and started running into the grass and I didn’t know where they were going and I went straight into the mud and I got stuck after about two feet. I could hardly walk in my shoes, I mean I can barely walk in the kitchen in them let alone slippery mud and grass and it was hard to clip in every time after so I was well off the back.”

Warbasse was eventually able to get into a groove again and had a reasonably smooth run through the final 150 miles of the race, making it through without punctures and with legs that had enough freshness to muster a comeback to 19th after coming through the first time check in 74th place after 21 miles.

The story of riders like Warbasse, and to a lesser extent John Borstleman, is important in the tech discussion at Unbound. With more and more european horsepower arriving in Emporia every year, there is the potential for the race to become more and more professional, and thus the marginal efficiency that will always come from road shoes will be a gamble riders will continue to try and make work

Kansas’s weather in June, however, will never change.

Some years, road shoes and pedals will certainly be faster. If they get lucky, a road pro fresh off of the Giro or the spring classics might rip the doors off the pro field.  Yet, with the capacity for the weather to turn the B-roads of Kansas into slop at any moment – and the commitment from the organisers to keep those B-roads no matter what the elite riders say – they can also live like Larry and languish behind, hampered by their inexperience and road limitations.

It is all part of the full Unbound experience that everyone is learning each time the race is run.

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Lawrence Warbasse

Race Program

Lawrence Warbasse's Bikes

Vuelta a España pro bike: Larry Warbasse’s BMC Teammachine SLR 01

Larry Warbasse’s BMC Kaius 01

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