This article was produced in collaboration with Van Rysel and was first published in Rouleur Issue 139
The historic French Flanders region isn’t the most obvious location for a world-conquering lair, but for Van Rysel, it was perfect.
Home to two of road cycling’s five Monuments – the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix – the area lives and breathes the sport, and its flag, which depicts a black lion rampant on a yellow field, is as iconic in cycling’s story as the cobbled secteurs it can be found flanking come March and April.
Its largest city, Lille, is also where Van Rysel was founded, in the southwestern corner of this historic merchant town – a fertile ground for performance and innovation. But Van Rysel (which translates as ‘From Lille’) and its logo inspired by the Lion of Flanders were not simply a rebranding of Decathlon’s well-known value-driven road bike range.
“In 2019, the small team that launched the project saw an opportunity to focus on more advanced and expert cyclists compared to what we had done at Decathlon for the previous 40-plus years,” says Van Rysel’s head of product, Jérémie Debeuf.
“Historically, cyclists would go to Decathlon, discover road cycling, try to progress, and at some point, Decathlon wasn’t able to provide the product and experience they expected. Van Rysel was created to complete this part. It’s really ambitious to be one of the leading brands of the market, especially on the premium side.”
It would need to reverse the way it had traditionally done things, starting with a pro-level product and trickling down the technology, adjusting the specs and componentry to fit the needs of customers at different price points. “But we would also make the pro product available,” adds Debeuf, who started with Decathlon as a mechanic and sales assistant 20 years ago before making his own meteoric rise. “That was very important for us.”
To develop a product good enough for the professional peloton, it would need a seat at the table. While Decathlon had a history of supplying bikes to AG2R Prevoyance (a precursor to Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale – DAT) between 2000 and 2007, a lot had changed in race-winning bike design in its absence. Disc brakes, wireless groupsets and tubeless tyres were now the norm; aerodynamics’ influence was evident on every piece of componentry and clothing.
“It took us between 2019 and 2023 to prepare the offer and the partnership to be ready to race in the WorldTour with a WorldTour team,” says Debeuf. “We wanted to develop the best road bike and best TT bike to serve the pro needs and win some races straight away and show that it’s not just marketing.”
The team they courted – the same outfit as their last involvement in 2007 – was not only France’s biggest WorldTour team, but in riders such as general classification hope Felix Gall and sprinter Sam Bennett, had varied race strategies and therefore needed a complete package.
To help it achieve its lofty goals, Van Rysel looked beyond its internal resources and built a performance ecosystem. “We’re quite strong in terms of engineering, research and development – especially on the carbon layup and the aero aspect. But we also wanted to be open-minded, and we developed some specific partnerships to get the benefits of their expertise and to combine all those strengths to make the product happen.”
ONERA – the French national office for aerospace studies and research – was chosen to develop the aerolight road bike, the RCR Pro, while Swiss aero expert Swiss Side’s Formula One-honed insights helped craft the XCR Pro time trial and triathlon bike.
“ONERA was interesting because they did not have experience with bikes,” he says. “They develop rockets, helicopters, submarines, and planes – they have this high-speed experience, and it was interesting to see how they could transfer things for low speed. They developed some specific tools for the bikes, and they also put some key points on the table that were really interesting; at high speeds, they were really important and as we see them that much at lower speed, you don’t think about them, but when you transfer from high speed to low speed, you can sometimes save a few watts here and there.
For Swiss Side, it was a bit different, because they had experience in triathlon and some experience in the bike industry. Its founder, Jean-Paul Ballard, spent 20 years working in Formula One, and it was interesting to be able to capitalise on that and develop the TT frame to make sure we reduced the drag as much as possible.”
Swiss Side also created a piece of software that enabled Van Rysel to simulate 30 of the WorldTour calendar’s most iconic races. “You put in the rider’s data, the race data, the product data; you can change the wheels, tyres, pressure, stufflike that, and it gives you the fastest set-up.”
But it also highlighted that one road bike wouldn’t be enough. “Trying to find the right balance between aerodynamics and lightness is one of the kicker questions. When we started the simulation, we saw that it was important to develop two road bikes to perform at the highest level in every race. For races below 1,500 metre elevation per 100 kilometres, aerodynamics are the most important aspect of the bike, and the reason the bike will be fast; you can even add one or two or more kilos – if it improves it by a few watts, you have a faster bike. We really wanted to provide riders with the perfect bike for the Classics, especially the cobbled classics. We are from Nord, so Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders are very important races.”
Tight timings meant that Van Rysel would only be able to launch at the start of the 2024 season with the RCR Pro aerolight road bike and XCR Pro TT bike, but the second road bike project wouldn’t be far behind. First spotted at the 2024 Tour de France and launched in March 2025, the RCR-F Pro (‘F’ standing for ‘fast’) has a 7% stiffer headtube than the RCR Pro, weighs 600g more as a complete WorldTour team setup (7.5kg to 6.9kg), and is 13 watts faster at 45kph. “When you simulate both bikes with the same conditions on the Tour of Flanders route, the RCR-Fis just under 90 seconds faster than the RCR Pro.”
The riders of DAT are not only Van Rysel’s pro-focused range’s intended end user, but are integral in its development, too. “We have a specific organisation that takes insights from them while they test a concept product, measure sensorial feedback, and then do several loops to finalise the product and validate during a race,” explains Debeuf.
“For example, we developed the RCR-F directly with them because we were already partners. The first time they tested the initial prototype was in May '24 after 4 Jours de Dunkerque. The Classics team – Sam Bennett, Dries De Bondt, Oliver Naesen and Pierre Gautherat – came to Lille and we went for a ride to get their feedback, and measure their data. From that, we were able to validate the layup.
“We then went to Sierra Nevada in Spain to do the same validation process with the Grand Tour riders in different conditions. From May, we were ready to race the Tour de France for the final validation as a prototype. It was important for us to validate on a big race like the Tour de France to make sure the bike was 100% ready – not only frame, fork and cockpit, but also all the small parts we developed ourselves – before making sure we could deliver them for the 2025 season and launch it commercially as well.”
This process isn’t limited to bikes, either. “We are the only brand on the market that is developing all the products to practice cycling – it’s the same for helmets, sunglasses, cycling gear, shoes, socks, and even turbo trainers.” Van Rysel’s pricing approach isn’t elitist – price simply isn’t the focus of Debeuf’s mission.
“For the pro product, the most important thing for us is the value expected without compromise, and we define the price as a consequence to make it available, and as much as possible, sell it to customers who want to buy the same bike as a pro. For the commercial range, price is in the balance and we want to be competitive regarding the value we put on the product.
“There’s no bullshit – when we develop a layup, this is the best layup. For the RCR, we have two layups because we know that it will be difficult for some sportive-focused cyclists to ride a stiff bike, so we adjusted the layup to reduce the stiffness but keep something very dynamic, lightweight and aero. But we only do two layups – we will not do three to try to do something quite cheap, which will not be satisfying for cyclists.
“We are authentic, we focus on product excellence, we innovate. This is why we are in the WorldTour. If a WorldTour rider wins with your product, it’s because they are good. You can’t win with luck. All the brands are doing great jobs, so if you win, it’s because you have a good product. By combining the two – product excellence and fair marketing – we believe cyclists will hopefully trust us, and will love the brand more and more.
The results on the world stage speak for themselves. In Van Rysel’s first season as DAT’s partner, Ben O’Connor recorded a stage win and was runner-up in the general classification at La Vuelta a España, while 2025 has seen two top-10 finishes at the Tour de France and La Vuelta for Felix Gall and Nicolas Prodhomme’s win on stage 19 of the Giro d’Italia.
Next year already looks promising for the team too, with Classics specialist Tiesj Benoot and La Vuelta white jersey winner Matthew Riccitello coming on board. While for Van Rysel, there are even more developments in the pipeline.
“In the WorldTour, there will be some new products – not only bikes, but clothing, helmets, sunglasses and shoes,” he says, before adding that customers can also expect continuous improvements to existing products as it builds towards becoming one of the world’s top five brands by 2028 – an ambitious, if achievable, target given it launched in 2019. “We are only at the beginning of the story,” concludes Debeuf, “but we are going in the right direction.”
Read more from Rouleur Issue 139:
