Tudor releases carbon fibre automatic watch for Tudor Pro Cycling team

If cycling bling is your thing, we’d say this is a far more interesting choice than a set of oversized pulley wheels.

Swiss watch brand Tudor has released a carbon fibre watch designed around the needs of their Tudor Pro Cycling team, who are currently making their Grand Tour debut at the Giro d'Italia.

The new watch is a cycling-specific edition of their existing Pelagos FXD Chrono, an automatic (self-winding) watch with a stopwatch.

It's a luxury Swiss watch with a price tag to match. In fact, at £4,560 / 4850 CHF, it’s one of the few things that makes high-end cycling tech seem like good value.

© Tudor

The Tudor Pelagos FXD Chrono 'cycling edition' has various nods to the demands of cycling

The watch has several cycling-specific features that set it apart from the standard edition. Most obviously, there is the carbon composite case. Carbon fibre is a material synonymous with performance cycling. Although Tudor has not published the weight of the watch, it’s likely a touch lighter than the usual stainless steel.

Of course, the timer (or ‘chronograph’) could be handy for timing efforts on the bike, but there are a host of more subtle features too. The case has fixed strap bars, rather than the spring bars you’d find on most watches, so there’s no chance the strap will spring open while riding.

© Tudor

The tachymeter can estimate your average speed over a given distance

Around the stopwatch is a spiral of printed numbers, designed to show how fast you’re riding using a simple ‘distance over time’ calculation. It’s called a tachymeter, and it’s a common feature on motorsport-inspired watches. For this one, though, Tudor has scaled the speeds to be useful for cyclists — between 20kph and 60kph. It certainly won’t compete with the precision of a GPS head unit, but it’s a neat feature.

Although this watch has several nods to the needs of cyclists, this is more of a cycling ‘lifestyle’ piece rather than a piece of performance tech. Tudor Pro Cycling Team riders, who were invited to the Giro for the first time this year, have not been wearing the watch during stages, although they have been seen wearing it at press conferences and sign-ons.

© Getty Images

Matteo Trentin wears the watch to the sign on to stage 2 of the Giro d'Italia

It might not provide a marginal gain, but this is luxury bike tech taken to the next level.

More information about the watch can be found here.

For more of the latest tech updates, visit our tech news page.