Gallery: Custom cockpit shaping for Aleksandr Vlasov's Specialized Tarmac

Text by: Ben Delaney Photos by: Daniel Benson

Tour de Romandie champion Aleksandr Vlasov raced in Switzerland with a few custom details on his bike that allowed him to get into a race-winning position.

Like the rest of his Bora-Hansgrohe teammates, Vlasov races a Specialized S-Works Tarmac. Unlike his teammates, he doesn’t use the stock Tarmac stem that integrates cleanly with the bike’s unique spacers, the top one of which features a channel for the brake hoses. His use of a PRO stem also means that he doesn’t have the integrated computer mount on the stem’s faceplate.

So, his mechanic team improvised with a file.

Check out the gallery below for the details. And check out our Pro Bikes collection for other special bikes of the top riders.

Aleksandr Vlasov’s Tarmac looked to be a fairly straightforward, high-end affair.

Specialized’s Aerofly aero road handlebar has snap-in inserts to allow for a relatively easy routing and ideal aerodynamics. Here, Bora mechanics reshaped the right one to fit a K-Edge mount for Vlasov’s Wahoo Bolt. That was necessarily because Vlasov isn’t using the Tarmac stem, which has a faceplate-mounted Bolt mount.

Another look at the sculpting work.

Speaking of sculpting, check out the filed and Sharpie’d spacer. Like an increasing number of “integrated” bikes these days, the Tarmac has spacers that dovetail with the stock stem, but don’t align with other stems, like this PRO model.

“We used the spacer from the normal Tarmac frame and then put in a brown spacer underneath and filed it out,” a Bora mechanic told VeloNews. “Then we shaved it to look nice. He uses it for positioning, so he can get to the proper position. It’s nothing special.”