Introduced last year after many years of development, Shimano’s Dura-Ace Di2 electronic groupset has been causing waves of excitement and speculation among the cycling world, but are Pro riders, never ones to commit to untried technology, using it?

Well, we’ve been seeing in the last few days of the Tour de France that all Shimano sponsored riders are now aboard Shimano’s latest mechanical groupset, Dura-Ace 7900 (with the exception of SRM users where 7800 cranks are used), but there are a few ready to race on Di2.

The riders to look out for on the new Di2 include Columbia-HTC’s Michael Rogers and George Hincapie on their Scott Addicts for the road stages, while for the time trial stages the entire team will ride Di2 equipped Scott Plasma 3 time trial bikes.

It’s a similar situation in the other big Shimano sponsored team too, with just Bradley Wiggins, David Millar and David Zabriskie opting for the new groupset on their road bikes. The full team will use Di2 for the time trial stages, where the new groupset allows for some novel arrangements on the handlebars.

Other riders to spot on Di2 are Francaise des Jeux’s Sebastien Joly, Benoit Vaugrenard and Jeremy Roy, Rabobank’s Oscar Freire and Skil‐Shimano’s Koen de Kort, Jonathan Hivert, Kenny van Hummel and Cyril Lemoine.

We’ll aim to keep an eye on these particular riders, but judging from the racing we’ve seen so far no technical problems have been occurred with the electronic groupset. It’s interesting that more riders are adopting it for the time trials and favouring 7900 for their road bikes.

More at www.shimano-eu.com and www.madison.co.uk