Two-time Tour de France champion Jonas Vingegaard has been spotted using unusually short, 150mm cranks on his road bike.
The debate surrounding the best crank length for cycling has been raging in recent years, with many high-profile riders – including Vingegaard’s key rivals, Remco Evenepoel and Tadej Pogačar – opting for shorter cranks.
Following suit – and going further – Vingegaard has switched from the 172.5mm cranks he used previously to a set of the shortest cranks we’ve seen in the WorldTour peloton.
Details of Vingegaard’s new setup were spotted at the 2025 Volta ao Algarve (where VIngegaard took overall victory) and posted on Instagram by @ibike_studio.
Let’s take a look at exactly what cranks he was using and examine why he might have decided to make such a drastic change to his bike fit.
The shortest cranks in the pro peloton?
As far as we can see, SRAM doesn’t list any cranksets shorter than 160mm in its product catalogue.
Given this, Vingegaard’s 150mm cranks are likely to be a prototype or custom model.
At a glance, they bear a resemblance to aluminium cranks used on SRAM's Apex and Rival AXS groupsets (albeit with the branding removed), but SRAM lists 160mm as the shortest option for those cranksets on its website.
These would also doubtless be heavier than the hollow carbon cranks that form part of SRAM’s pro-spec Red AXS groupset (although clearly being short would help on that front).
Assuming he decides to stick with this setup, we expect SRAM will have sorted Vingegaard a set of lightweight Red AXS cranks by the time the Tour de France rolls around in July.
At 1.75m, Vingegaard isn’t the tallest pro cyclist, but he’s certainly not short.
Switching to such an unusually short crankset, then, looks to be a choice made for performance reasons.
Might short cranks make Vingegaard faster?
It’s a common misconception that since short cranks produce less torque than longer ones, it can be difficult to produce as much power with shorter cranks.
According to Phil Burt, a physiotherapist and bike fitter who worked previously with British Cycling and Team Sky, “crank length is not important in sub-maximal power production, within a range of 80mm to 300mm".
This is because your power output is a combination of the force (or torque) you put through the cranks multiplied by your cadence, and with short cranks your cadence tends to increase (because your feet travel a shorter distance per pedal revolution).
The move likely won’t help or hinder the Dane when it comes to his power output, then – at least not in isolation.
Burt does say, though, “shorter cranks put less load on your joints and hip flexors” and can therefore help deal with or prevent injuries.
Perhaps more importantly, Burt says short cranks can potentially improve your power output in aggressive riding positions.
“For aero or time trial positions, short cranks are 100 per cent the way to go,” he notes.
“If you’re riding in an aggressive position using long cranks, you’re going to be closing up your hip angle. This can constrict your breathing and negatively affect your power output.”
Given the increasing speeds of the pro peloton, then, it could be that Vingegaard is looking for ways to improve his performance aboard his Cervélo S5 aero bike – a bike he commonly opts for even on big days in the mountains.
