Tour de France pro bike: Richard Carapaz's Cannondale SuperSix EVO LAB71

We recently sent Si Richardson over to Spain for the Grand Départ of the 2023 Tour de France to see what cool tech and bikes he could discover. While there, he managed to get his hands on Richard Carapaz’s Cannondale SuperSix EVO LAB71 - a bike worthy of an Olympic Champion.

Unfortunately the EF Education-EasyPost rider’s race was prematurely cut short after a crash on the opening stage. He’s now back at home recovering and we hope to see him back in action soon.

We still thought we would share Carapaz’s bike with you though because, well, it’s seriously cool.

Where else could we start than with the gold and black colourway on the forks. As the Olympic Champion, Carapaz is the only rider in the peloton allowed to have a gold paint on his bike. It’s not an enforced rule, but one of the sport’s many unwritten ones which we fully approve of.

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The forks have a sleek gold and black colourway.

The bike underneath the paint is the Cannondale SuperSix Evo LAB71 which the American brand says is the fastest all-round bike in the peloton. It’s a common claim in the war of words between brands, and while we can’t confirm that it is the fastest, it certainly looks rapid.

It’s a new edition of the bike for 2023 and LAB71 is the label used for Cannondale’s most premium frames.

With the new high-end model come some noteworthy changes, including a switch to a threaded bottom bracket. Cannondale were the early pioneers of press-fit bottom brackets, introducing their BB30 in 2000, and they’re by far the most dominant type now used on performance bikes, so it’s surprising to see the American brand revert back. It’s a move that is sure to please Alex and Ollie who listed press-fit bottom brackets amongst their tech bugbears in a recent video.

The bottom bracket is paired with Shimano’s Dura-Ace groupset although it’s undergone a few changes with an FSA K-Force crankset and Power2Max power meter both swapped in.

We’re increasingly encountering cassettes with larger gears and Carapaz’s bike is no different, specced with an 11-34t. That’s paired with a 54/40t chainset providing ample gears.

Impressively, Carapaz has three different ways of shifting through those gears. A standard Di2 setup has two paddles per shifter plus a button on the top of the brake hoods. On Carapaz’s bike there are extra sprint shifters on the inside of the hoods too. That means that there’s an impressive eight different shifters in total.

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Cannondale surprised many by reverting back to threaded bottom brackets for the SuperSix EVO LAB71.

Finally, in a move that is sure to please the EF Education-EasyPost mechanics, Carapaz is using a tubeless setup with Vittoria’s Corsa Pro TLR tyres. A tubeless setup in itself isn’t anything special, the team used them at last year’s race too. They also used clincher and tubulars tyres alongside these, meaning the poor mechanics had to deal with three different setups. That’s changed in 2023, we’ve been informed, and the team are now only using tubeless.

Check out the full list of components below.

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Cannondale SuperSix EVO LAB71

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Bike Specification