From outsider to cycling domination: 50 years of Shimano Dura-Ace

Shimano Dura-Ace has long been considered the gold standard of bike components. Bikes with Dura-Ace on have won 18 of the last 25 Tours de France (if we include a certain Lance Armstrong). But how did we get to this point?

2023 marks the 50th anniversary of Dura Ace, and the story is one that every cycling nerd, and even some normal people, need to know. So we partnered up with Shimano to tell it.

Along the way, we'll look at some of the most important Dura-Ace-equipped bikes in history, including Sean Yates' 7-Eleven team bike, a Lance Armstrong-era Trek OCLV, and Mark Cavendish's Tour de France stage-winning Specialized McLaren Venge.

The very first Dura-Ace

Let's wind back the clock to 1973. Pink Floyd released The Dark Side of the Moon, the Sydney Opera House was completed, the first ever mobile phone call was made, and Shimano released Dura-Ace, its first groupset aimed at high-performance road racing.

The Japanese company had already had a lot of success in the US, supplying derailleurs and three-speed hub gears to the American behemoth, Schwinn. However, they knew that in order to crack Europe, they needed to have some success in road racing. And so, the Dura Ace project began.

Origins of the name

Now, why the heck is it called Dura-Ace? Apparently, the name is a combination of Duralumin, which was a specific type of aluminium alloy used in the first edition of Dura-Ace, the word durability, and also the word 'ace'. Because who doesn't want their groupset to be ace?

First generation Dura-Ace looked a lot like everything else available at the time, and for good reason; us cyclists, even now, are quite sceptical of anything new and different. Shimano realised that in order to get its foot in the door, it needed to work with a pro team, but it came up against a narrow-minded, dogmatic and Euro-centric peloton.

It did, however, manage to find one team: the Flandria team from Belgium, who happily took the groupsets, but on condition that Shimano listened to their feedback and then implemented changes, which, actually, when you think about it, is kind of the blueprint for how Shimano's been working with teams ever since.

In that first year, they were rewarded with a Tour de France stage win and second place in the Men's road race World Championship.

Most important Dura-Ace innovations

Shimano Index System, 1984

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Dura-Ace on Sean Yates' 7-Eleven team bike

In 1978, Shimano introduced an 11-tooth sprocket, but it wasn't until 1984 that it really started shaking things up in the industry. it added clicks to shifters with Shimano Index System, or SIS. Prior to this, levers and derailleurs had been able to move freely, and they were held in place only with friction, meaning that you, the rider, had to manually adjust your gears on the fly.

By adding clicks, Shimano sped up shifting, and dramatically reduced the amount of rider input required. Friction shifters still had their die-hard fans, but having that pre-set click was revolutionary. You could shift gears without giving it a second thought.

It's fitting that this 7400 is on a 7-Eleven team bike, because like Shimano, 7-Eleven were also responsible for just broadening that very Euro-centric peloton. Alex Steeder was the first North American to wear the yellow jersey. in 1986. And then in 1988, Andy Hampsten was the first American to win a Grand Tour, and also, the first rider to do so on Shimano Dura-Ace.

We've got a documentary about that 88 Giro and the utterly epic conditions the riders put up with, over on GCN+.

Shimano Total Integration levers

The next big innovation was the creation of Shimano Total Integration (STI) levers in 1990, still as part of that long-running 7400 groupset. In it, Shimano moved the gear levers from the down tube to the brake levers, enabling riders to change gear without taking their hands off the handlebars.

STI levers were completely revolutionary. For the first time, you could change gear whilst riding out of the saddle. For the first time, you could change gear whilst sprinting, and even while braking. It was a total game-changer for pros and mortals alike.

Shedding weight and refining everything

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An Armstrong-era Trek kitted out with Dura-Ace

This Lance Armstrong-era Trek is equipped with Dura-Ace 770, the successor to 7400.

On the face of it, it doesn't have a big, headline bit of revolutionary tech that the predecessor had. In reality though, the amount of invisible refinements made to this groupset are, in total, just as game-changing as the technological leaps Shimano made with each previous iteration of Dura-Ace.

It's 500 grams lighter than 7400. These days, we're so used to trading in a single gram saving here or there, that it's unthinkable that a groupset could be half a kilogram lighter than it's predecessor.

The weight savings were down to Shimano's new Hollowtech technology. For the first time, the crank arms and bottom bracket were hollowed out, shedding a truckload of weight.

Dura-Aces goes electronic with Di2

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The first Dura-Ace came with a silver crank but had no power meter

The 7800 version came before this, with a strikingly new-look crank and changed lever ergonomics, but the next big step forward, was in 2009, with Dura-Ace Di2 on the 7900 version.

Shimano wasn't the first to go electronic, but it's fair to say they were the first to do it in a way that was both reliable and improved performance. Crucially, Di2 was lighter than the mechanical version, as well as being faster.

In 2011, Cadel Evans became the first rider to win the Tour de France using an electronic groupset, while Mark Cavendish, also using Di2, took home the green jersey.

The first generation of Di2 featured an external battery, which hadn't yet migrated to its hidden place in the seat post. Shimano also hadn't yet got a power meter for Dura-Ace, which was to come in the next generation.

Power meter, hydraulic disc brakes, and a black design

You do sometimes hear murmurs from certain corners of the internet that tech innovations have become less significant somehow on the more recent generations of Dura-Ace, but even with a tiny bit of hindsight, it's quite clear that that is not the case.

In 2016, we had Dura-Ace hydraulic disc brakes for the first time, complete with utterly tiny lever bodies, which somehow they had managed to engineer everything into.

There was a power meter as well for the first time. Synchro shift meant that your Di2 could be changed to be semi automatic. Gear ratios continued to evolve, responding again to the needs of pro riders. An 11-30 option was added. Even the mechanical version improved with a new front derailleur design.

In 2016, Dura-Ace also went black, and the world was aghast. But that wasn't actually the first time that Dura Ace had been black. Oh no, there were several iterations in the earliest years where you could buy a two-tone black and silver Dura-Ace groupset. You could be forgiven for not knowing that, but it is true.

Either way, the dominance of Dura-Ace solidified. In 2017, that groupset completed the Grand Slam at the Tour de France; all stages and jerseys were won using Dura-Ace, with Marcel Kittel even taking five stage wins on a bike with disc brakes.

The present day

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The latest Dura-Ace Di2

The latest version of Dura-Ace is the 9200. We have got 12-speed system, with double the amount of gears that we started out with 50 years ago.

The shifting is wireless, so no cables and barely any wires to speak of either. We have got the fastest shifting ever and the smoothest shifting ever because Shimano has refined all of the complex architecture of ramps and pins and chamfers on the cassette and the chain and the chain rings.

We've got 11-34 cassette option, despite pro cyclists going faster than ever, and almost incredibly, despite 50 years of improvements, there is no mechanical shifting option at all. Shimano simply said mechanical shifting doesn't meet the criteria of their Dura-Ace level anymore. The world has moved on.

Si Richardson's view

"Having ridden four vintages of Dura-Ace that span over 30 years, it is incredible to experience how both simultaneously so much has changed, but also in a way so little.

"I mean, the process of riding each bike is, of course, the same. The speed with which you're propelled down the road is ultimately about how much power you can get from your legs, and the efficiency that you get from a chain drive system kind of feels the same.

"It's a brilliantly efficient system, but yet also at the same time, you can really feel just how much more refined your interaction with the bike has become. The amount of feedback that you get from the brakes, and how little input you need to put into shifting now, that means that the process is basically subconscious.

"And then also there's the ergonomics of your levers and how they've improved, and the broader gear ratio that means that you can spend more time in an optimal cadence on a wider variety of roads. It's quite mind blowing, really.

"And whilst, if at any point over the last 50 years, someone had put a stop to tech innovation, I think we'd all be happy with wherever we ended up. But as a cycling nerd, this had made me even more excited about what's potentially to come in the future. I have got no idea. If you do, get involved in the comments section down below."

Simon Richardson

GCN Presenter

Former pro road and mountain biker racer