In professional cycling, sponsorship agreements shape much of what we see on race bikes. Frames, wheels, groupsets and clothing are usually dictated by contracts. But pedals remain one of the final pieces of equipment where rider preference and marginal gains still outweigh sponsor alignment. At least, for the riders of the men’s and women’s Visma-Lease a Bike squads, it seems.
The Dutch WorldTour outfit spends tens of thousands of euros every year on Speedplay pedals, despite having no sponsorship agreement with Wahoo. In fact, team partner SRAM, which owns pedal brand Time, could easily supply pedals as part of its contracts, as it does for other teams including SD Worx-Protime, Lidl-Trek and Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto.
Marginal gains
Speedplay Aero pedals as seen on Jonas Vingegaard’s Vuelta winning bike
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Of course, Speedplay is hardly new to the WorldTour. Long before marginal gains became cycling’s dominant language, the brand’s distinctively shaped pedals were already a familiar sight in the peloton. Who doesn’t remember the bright green lollipops under the feet of Peter Sagan and his Liquigas teammates? Or the minimalist, cross-shaped Zero Pavé pedals on Fabian Cancellara’s Paris-Roubaix-winning bike? At the Tour de France, Bradley Wiggins won on Speedplay, as did prolific stage hunter Mark Cavendish.
Yet despite the pedigree, Speedplay has always occupied an odd space in the WorldTour, drifting in and out of fashion. In adopting Speedplays, Visma-Lease a Bike is firmly in the minority today, and it did so only after significant research.
At the WorldTour level, performance departments routinely test equipment both within and outside their sponsors’ offerings. When riders and staff believe a component delivers measurable benefits, be it in aerodynamics, efficiency or comfort, teams are often willing to absorb the cost.
“Of course, we carried out extensive testing to decide which pedals we would recommend to our riders,” a Visma-Lease a Bike spokesperson told Cycling Weekly.
But it’s a recommendation, not a directive.
“Ultimately, it is up to the riders themselves to choose which pedals they ride. This mainly comes down to the riders’ personal preferences. In the end, the choice lies with them.”
The most obvious reasons Speedplay appeals to Visma-Lease a Bike are stack height (the distance between the sole of the shoe and the pedal axle) and aerodynamics.
“This setup brings your feet closer to the bike’s axle, offering a significant aerodynamic advantage and improved pedalling efficiency,” says Victor Campenaerts, one of the team’s more outspoken riders when it comes to equipment.
(Image credit: Wahoo)
Speedplay pedals have among the lowest stack heights in the road market: roughly 11.5 mm in a standard configuration, and as low as 8–8.5 mm when paired with Speedplay-specific four-bolt shoes, such as those supplied by Nimble for Visma-Lease a Bike. That brings the rider’s foot closer to the crank axle than most competing systems.
Lower stack height may also marginally improve power transfer and cornering clearance, but it is the aerodynamic implications that appear to have tipped the balance. The Speedplay Aero pedals used by many riders are widely regarded as among the most aerodynamic pedals available, complementing the team’s aero-optimised bikes, apparel and helmets.
The aerodynamic cover does remove one of Speedplay’s traditional advantages of dual-sided entry. And so, for particularly muddy races or events where frequent re-clipping is likely, some riders opt for Speedplay’s Nano model instead, as was spotted on Marianne Vos’ Paris-Roubaix setup.
The team’s widespread adoption of Speedplay pedals has not come without challenges, however. After joining Visma-Lease a Bike, Campenaerts described the stress of adapting to a completely new set of contact points.
“The change of frame itself isn’t that difficult to get used to,” he explained, “but every contact point of my body with the bike is new. That adjustment caused me quite a lot of stress at first… getting the cleats positioned correctly was no small feat.”
“A Wildly Misunderstood Pedal”
(Image credit: Simon Scarsbrook/Cycling Weekly)
The complexity of Speedplay cleat positioning is both a drawback and a defining feature. That same adjustability has also shaped the pedal’s long-standing reputation as a solution for riders with knee issues, rather than as an outright performance choice.
“Speedplays are the bike fitter’s and physio’s friend, but they’ve got a bit of a medical stigma,” says Phil Burt, former consultant to Team Sky and Head of Physiotherapy at British Cycling. “They’re a wildly misunderstood pedal. They’re also a bit more complicated to set up, so a lot of people feel scared about them.”
That fear, Burt argues, stems partly from the pedal’s small appearance and partly from a fundamental misunderstanding of how riders interact with their bikes. Cyclists, he says, do not arrive at the bike as neutral, symmetrical systems.
“We walk on bikes; we don’t pedal. We take our walking biomechanics and put them on the bike. Some people walk duck-footed, some pigeon-toed, some straight on, and some do different things with each leg,” he says.
Those asymmetries become relevant once a rider starts pedalling at high loads and high volumes, and it is here that Speedplays diverge from many other pedal systems. Rather than fixing riders into a narrow, pre-set position, Speedplay allows a wide degree of adjustment: fore–aft, laterally and rotationally, with float adjustable between zero and 15 degrees. Crucially, each side can be set up independently.
For riders with asymmetries (something Burt says is far more common than generally acknowledged, particularly after significant injuries), that independence matters.
“If your left leg wants to do one thing and your right leg wants to do another, that’s really hard to achieve with most pedals,” he says. “But if you’re in your preferred position, surely that’s more powerful. You’re not fighting against yourself.”
Speedplay also offers four different axle lengths, allowing stance width to be adjusted to better align a rider’s feet under their hips. Burt points to Bradley Wiggins’ Tour de France win as an example of how that adjustability can be performance-critical rather than remedial.
“Brad had to win on Speedplay because his hip was kicking out as he got a bit older,” he says. “I don’t get why stance width is the same on an extra-extra-small bike as it is on an extra-extra-large bike. We already accept that saddles need to change. Why wouldn’t pedals?”
Burt argues that the pedal’s injury-management stigma is a short-sighted view that ignores its proven performance advantages.
“We put them on the track team for the Rio Olympics because they’re more aero. And the fact that Visma is buying them is a big endorsement [for the performance benefits],” he says. “But honestly, I think they’re more comfortable.”
(Image credit: Future (Andy Jones))
Visma-Lease a Bike has been somewhat coy about sharing a definitive reason for the widespread adoption of Speedplay pedals across its team. But taken together—the aerodynamic gains, low stack height and degree of adjustability—the appeal is easy enough to understand.
Have you ridden Speedplay pedals yourself? Do you see them primarily as an aerodynamic gain, an aid in injury prevention, or simply another tool for fine-tuning fit? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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