With the Gran Fondo 2.5, Fuji has gone all out to tame vibrations.

Its high-modulus carbon-fibre frame contains polyurethane-treated natural fibres in strategic positions, which Fuji claims will dispel high-frequency vibrations to give you a smoother, more comfortable ride.

The seatstays have an exaggerated curve to them, for the same reason, and the Fuji comes with 28c tyres as standard rather than the more commonplace 25c for an even smoother passage over any rough tarmac that the road might throw at you.

Frameset

The Fuji Gran Fondo frame’s is constructed from high-modulus carbon-fibre, with the judicious addition of polyurethane-treated natural fibres to add the frame’s compliance.

The Fuji’s frame lay-up is visible through its lacquer, giving it an attractive, almost ‘unfinished’ appearance.

A sloping top tube descends to its junction with the seat tube, exposing a serious length of carbon/alloy mix seatpost, which further enhances the vibe-killing ability of this bike, while bowed seatstays act as mini shock absorbers.

But the frame isn’t all comfort over excitement – deep, box-section chainstays extend from a chunky expanse of frame at the bottom bracket ensure this big old smoothie also has the capacity to transfer your watts efficiently.

Cabling is routed internally and although our test bike had 28c tyres, the frame has clearance allows for 30c.

A head angle of 73.5° ensures dynamic handling, while an even sharper angle of 74° at the seatpost positions you over the front end, ready for beast mode.

Groupset

The Fuji packs a full complement of Shimano 105 kit – including 50/34 compact chainset, shifters, front and rear mechs, plus the 11-28 cassette, with its 11-speed set-up easily upgradable should you wish to shave bulk from the bike’s 8.78kg weight.

Braking is dealt with by TRP’s mechanical Spyre disc arrangement, with 160mm discs running both front and rear.

Finishing kit

It’s Oval Concepts kit all round for the Fuji, with a firm set of 420mm-diameter, compact-drop alloy bars. The carbon/alloy 27.2mm seatpost (alloy at the tip, carbon along its lower length) is topped by a deeply padded Oval 300 saddle.

It’s all-day comfortable, and a decent last line of defence against vibration.

Wheels

The bike’s Vera Corsa DPD22 rims are double-walled, and run a 24/28-spoke arrangement, both front and rear.

The 28c Vittoria Zaffiro Pro Slick tyres wrapped around them are super grippy, providing huge confidence in cornering thanks to their fat contact patch.

They’ve a maximum inflation of 100psi, but we found that 80psi is near-perfect for most conditions.

The ride

From the off the Fuji delivers on its magic carpet ride promise.

Its wider tyres are clearly helping to keep our hands and derriere from anything but the harshest potholes that we aim for (all in the name of science!).

Pinch flats thankfully non-existent, we aim the Gran Fondo downhill, select the 50-tooth chainring and fire up the block…

The beauty of the Fuji’s riding position is that its steep seat angle positions your body weight further over the handlebars, whether on the drops or the hoods.

This in itself helps to minimise weight-bearing on the saddle and lessens the amount of vibration you’re feeling from the road.

What contribution the frame make-up is making to the overall sensation of rear-end comfort is hard to quantify, given that the saddle is so forgiving, the seatstays so inherently springy, and the tyres running moderately low pressures.

What we can say, however, is that covering serious distance in comfort on the Gran Fondo 2.5 is easy.

Balanced package

What you’re looking at is a balanced package that provides long-distance ride comfort, while allowing you to get some serious watts to the ground, with a taut feeling at the rear when you stamp on the pedals.

Although not the lightest bike around, the Fuji is an adept ascender, with not a slip from the slick rear tyre on the steeper ramps peppering our route.

As ever, the now-common 11-28 cassette provides ample ratios for uphill, downhill and flat-out rolling roads.

The very fact that you’re automatically positioned over the front of the bike gives you good leverage over the 420mm bars, and the acute head angle makes easy work of direction changes.

Quick but predictable

Don’t be fooled into thinking the agility of the bike translates into a filling-jarring riding experience, though – the trick the Fuji pulls off is that it provides quick steering but predictable performance.

Although it can be cranked over with impunity, it’s not going to catch you out. TRP’s Spyre braking set-up is what we reckon to be the pinnacle of what you can achieve with a mechanical disc system.

Not only is braking force easily metered, but the brakes are also simple tweaked by way of an inline adjuster, making routine twiddling a doddle, and ensuring you’re gett ing consistent performance. The opposing twin-pad set-up also eradicates uneven wear.

RATINGS

Frame: Looks cool and cancels out plenty of road buzz. 8/10 
Components: It's got Shimano 105 in all the right places. 8/10 
Wheels: The double-walled rims are a quality touch. 8/10 
The ride: Plenty comfortable but not short on excitement either. 8/10 

Verdict: A vibe-reducing smoothie that still delivers plenty of thrills thanks to the aggressive ride position.  

Geometry

Spec

Canyon has revealed that from this point onwards its entire road range will offer the possibility of disc brakes, with the latest launches of the disc-equipped Aeroad and Ultimate models completing its already-burgeoning lineup. 

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Image 4 of 10

Canyon Aeroad CF SLX Disc 9.0

The imminent launch of both bikes was suspected earlier in the year when Canyon rolled out prototype versions, and Katusha's Alexander Kristoff Instagrammed a picture of him 'with his new training bike - a disc Aeroad. But the confirmation is now public.

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Image 10 of 10

Canyon Ultimate CF SL Disc 9.0

The official launch today confirms that the bikes will be available to buy, and with the re-introduction of the UCI's disc brake trial, its highly probable that we'll see both in the pro peloton in 2017 too. 

The brand new Aeroad CF SLX Disc and Ultimate CF SLX Disc will be priced £5,199 and £4,899 respectively, joining the Endurace CF SLX Disc at £5,199 as well. Each of the bikes feature hydraulic systems, with 12mm thru-axles and internal cable routing. 

canyon.com

By the time you finish reading these next two sentences, 1,667 Big Macs will have been eaten, 77,160 hours of video will have been watched on Netflix (of which 23% will concern Kevin Spacey), 250 babies will have been born and 37 litres of blood will have been pumped around your body. There will also have been at least two award ceremonies entitled Bike of the Year 2016, and it’s a good bet that at one of them, the award for best paintjob will have been given to the Cinelli Nemo. 

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Image 2 of 8

Coming to the surface

Back in the late 90s Cinelli decided to have a crack at the mountain bike market and released the steel Capitano Nemo, named after Jules Verne’s inimitable antihero and Nautilus commander from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. It was made from Columbus Nemo tubing, billed at the time as being ‘as light as titanium but as strong
as steel’ thanks to aggressively butted tubes.

Accompanying the Capitano Nemo – a bike so rare that by all accounts Cinelli didn’t even bother issuing serial numbers to frames – was the Nautilus, also made from Nemo tubing. It was TIG welded and comprised a telltale seat tube and binder bolt lug, which also, somewhat curiously, made it a brazed frame as well. TIG welding and brazing are at such polar opposites of the framebuilding spectrum that to put them together is like a duet between Lady Gaga and Lulu.

Neither bike still exists in Cinelli’s range, although the Nautilus has in part resurfaced in the form of the all-new Nemo TIG. But don’t be fooled, this is no nostalgic reissue – the Nemo is a steel-framed racer that means business. 

The wonderful thing about TIGgers

‘Cinelli and Columbus have been partners since Antonio Colombo, president and owner of Columbus, bought Cinelli from Cino Cinelli in 1979,’ says Fabrizio Aghito of Gruppo SRL, the company conglomerated out of both brands. ‘Columbus therefore made specific tube shapes for the Nemo, starting with the standard tubeset.’

What that means is while you might see the Nemo’s Columbus Spirit badge on other steel frames, you won’t see the same tubeset anywhere else. Columbus has taken a regular Spirit steel alloy tubeset and custom drawn it to Cinelli’s precise dimensions.

Like the tubes, the frame is made in Italy, although Cinelli now farms this work out to a ‘quality external subcontractor’. It’s therefore one of the few ‘big brand’ bikes to be made exclusively in Italy, and while purists might mutter about the frame’s manufacturing origins, there can be no question about the craftsmanship. The TIG welds (tungsten inert gas, created using an electric arc welder as opposed to a gas-burning brazing torch) are simply stunning, with joints almost as seamless as wrapped carbon. Those around the head tube look as if the little ‘fish scales’ indicative of TIG welding have been filed off, but Aghito says the welds’ smoothness is simply down to the ‘skill of the welder’. Indeed, around the bottom bracket, where acute angles call for more filler when welding, the fish scales are more prominent, and the seatstays have been fillet brazed to the Nemo-engraved lug. But no matter. The result, together with the metallic ‘purple haze’ paint, is worth the admission price alone.

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Image 6 of 8

The main attraction

I’d almost buy the Nemo purely on looks. The mostly round-tubed construction and understated graphics combined with a 44mm tapered head tube (no mean manufacturing feat in steel), BB86.5 bottom bracket, cowled rear dropouts and colour-matched Columbus Fel carbon fork create a bike that looks both traditional and modern. And if this colour is not quite for you, Cinelli has a full palette of five stock colours and 25 custom colours (a £250 charge applies) from which to choose. Cinelli will even colour match its Neos series finishing kit to a frame. However, pretty bikes are all very well, and for a while I felt that was ultimately all it was.

The Nemo is most widely available as a frameset only or in this build, with Campagnolo’s new Potenza groupset, Miche Altur 35mm deep alloy clinchers, Cinelli finishing kit, Selle Italia X1 Flow saddle and Vittoria Rubino Graphene tyres. This off-the-peg build left me wanting.

On the one hand, the Cinelli components and saddle proved that you don’t have to spend mega-bucks to get a comfortable perch (RRP £26) and serviceable bars (£29), stem (£25) and seatpost (£13). It highlighted the value of quality rubber too – Vittoria’s new Rubinos are excellent, the 25mm-specced width a welcome choice. But it also underlined that you get what you pay for when it comes to groupsets and wheels.

Out of the traps the Nemo felt sluggish. Once rolling, it cornered well enough and descended assuredly, but acceleration was met with resistance, and shifting – though crisp – was lacking Campagnolo’s masterstroke, the UltraShift, whereby the right thumb lever can go through up to five clicks in one sweep to dump the chain into a bigger gear like a race car. 

But once I adapted to the Potenza’s way of thinking and stopped bemoaning the lack of UltraShifting found in Chorus, Record or Super Record, the groupset faded into the background in being entirely dependable. It’s also aesthetically pleasing, sharing form with its older siblings (if not materials, which are alloy not carbon). However, I just couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that the Nemo had more to give. I decided a wheel change was needed, and then suddenly the bike lit up.

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Finding Nemo

In the interests of fairness I stuck with the original tyres, tubes and cassette, but swapped the wheels to a pair of mid-section carbon hoops. A pre-installation weigh-in showed a 773g drop in overall weight, all saved at the wheels, and with that the Nemo was transformed.

The sluggishness vanished and was replaced by rapid turns of speed, highlighting just what a stiff frame the Nemo has. The Columbus fork was a beneficiary too, with steering now taughter and lighter, the slight spring in the steel frame helping the Nemo track racing lines expertly. Climbing, which was previously a chore, became that much more pleasurable, and the only exception to the list of improved grades was descending, which was slightly the worse off. Carbon just doesn’t brake as well as alloy, whether through excess heat build-up or rain.

In the Miche Altur’s defence they are £280 a pair of alloy wheels. The hubs are smooth, and previous experience with Miche tells me they’ll last well. The brake track is also evenly machined, so there’s no judder from heavy braking, and stopping in all weather conditions in excellent. Yet the fact remains that the Nemo deserves more, and when it received it this pretty bike became a truly mean machine – if one around £900 more expensive. In fact, make that £950 as switching to a carbon post also just took a slight edge of harshness out of the ride.

I’d stop short at recommending changing out other parts too – as I said those here all work perfectly well, and realistically the only major difference would be further weight reductions. But if you wanted a project build, and had the cash, just imagine the Nemo dripping in Record or Super Record and some colour-matched Cinelli finishing kit. I already am. It’s a frame that deserves it.

Last night, during the run up to the announcement of the Sports Personality of the Year award, Sir Bradley Wiggins posted a curiously cryptic message to instagram.

Wiggins’ instagram post shows his face, photoshopped in the war paint of William Wallace in the film Braveheart, with the message, ‘They Can Never Take My Package!!’

The quote is clearly an ode to William Wallace’s famous line, ‘They can take my life, but they can never take my freedom!’ That said, it doesn't what exactly Wiggins intended the post to mean.

Wiggins was looked over for a shortlist for Sports Personality of the Year despite becoming the most decorated British Olympian in history, likely on account of the recent scandals relating to his use of approved medication in 2012.

First was his TUE for use of corticosteroid triamcinolone before his win at the 2012 Tour de France, which several commentators have claimed would have offered him an unfair advantage. This was exacerbated by the investigation into a mysterious medical package received by Wiggins from team doctor Richard Freeman, likely the subject of his post.

But, why braveheart?

Well, we might speculate that Andy Murray’s Scottish nationality may have had something to do with it. Murray was quick to condemn Wiggins’ TUE use, and the secrecy surrounding it, and was obviously favourite for the SPOTY win while Wiggins failed to make the shortlist.

The timing may also have something to do with the hearing at the select committee today, where Sir David Brailsford and other figures from British Cycling have faced questions about how doping has been combatted in the sport, closely focussed on the mystery package. Wiggins may be attempting to assert that he is standing his ground in the face of the investigation.

Wiggins’ post, making light of the package controversy, may be a sign of confidence about the income, especially given an article in The Times earlier this month which indicated that charges ‘are not anticipated’ for Wiggins on account of the package. The hearing has revealed that the mystery package contained a decongestant named Fluimucil, and Brailsford suggested no wrongdoing had taken place.

For some it will be seen as making light of the turbulent few months in Wiggins’ career, for others a slightly audacious statement in the face of controversy, and ultimately confirms Wiggins’ slightly unconventional approach to public relations.

Historically Shimano has always worked on a three-four year cycle for its top tier groupsets, progressing methodically through the range.

Dura-Ace, as the flagship group, obviously gets the royal treatment, receiving the highest level of technology and utmost premium enhancements ahead of the rest.

Inevitably though, this always benefits the lower tiers, Ultegra and 105, that can borrow from this learning next time they find themselves on the engineer’s drawing board.

2016 was Dura-Ace’s turn, having been without an overhaul since the 9000 groupset was launched mid-2012 (for 2013 model year). Enter then, Dura-Ace 9100.

New look

The changes in its appearance are instantly noticeable.

The chainset, the centrepiece of the group, has bulked up even more than its already chunky predecessor.

It has also acquired a new glossy surface finish that, like the other components has a fade from black to a sort of gun-metal or pewter grey.

It has retained the same asymmetrical four-arm configuration, supposedly to improve power transfer, but for my money the more crucial feature (that thankfully has also been retained) is the hollow outer chain ring.

Still the best

I believe it is this alone that gives Shimano supremacy in the front shifting department, and the 9100 upholds this accolade.

Shimano’s hollow chainring design is unbelievably stiff laterally, such that as the front mech shoves the chain sideways into the back face of the outer ring (during shifting from the inner to outer ring) there is no loss of efficiency in the system and the shift is made without hesitation. Every time.

It’s impressive for a mechanical shift to be practically as flawless as a motorised electronic shift, but Dura-Ace 9100 manages it, as 9000 did before. 

Shifting perceptions

Part of that process is of course the shift levers themselves. Shimano claims to have reworked the internals of the Dura-Ace 9100 shifters to further reduce the lever stroke required to make the shift, theoretically leading to easier, faster shifts.

I wouldn’t say this was particularly noticeable over its predecessor though, at either end of the drivetrain.

To be fair though, Shimano trying to improve on the 9000’s shifting is like trying to improve on the acceleration of a Formula One car – without some major new innovation, you are only ever going to be making tiny gains.

Staying with the shift levers, the hood ergonomics feels much the same too, although apparently also reworked slightly to be a little slimmer this was not overly discernable.

The textured rubber hood does make for a slightly more secure feel in hand though.

Redesigned derailleur

As more and more features commonly seen on mountain bikes – disc brakes, suspension systems, wide tyres and so on – seem to be finding their way onto modern road bikes, so it is fitting that the new Dura-Ace 9100 rear derailleur has taken cues from Shimano’s top-tier mountain bike components.

The ‘shadow’ derailleur was first introduced in the mountain bike range to try to tuck the mech in much closer under the chainstay and behind the cassette, in short, so it didn’t stick out so far where it was vulnerable to being struck by rocks, tree stumps and the like.

That’s an important asset for off-road riding, but arguably less essential on the road. Although, that said, it may save the mech from some damage in a crash.

Regardless, it looks more techy, and the higher cable entry point means a shorter run of outer cable, plus there is now the opportunity for direct mount, once manufacturers get fully on board with thru-axles and dropouts accordingly.

Front mech alert

A few people had warned me the front mech was complicated and a bit of a headache to set up, but although it is more complex than the previous design it is really not of huge concern.

In fact the cable-clamping mechanism is actually less fiddly than the outgoing tall-arm mech – a design that had a little pin to direct the cable’s entry point depending on its angle of approach.

At least that has gone. It never really worked as well as it should have in principle anyway.

Now the cable entry is self-explanatory, and easily achieved, but what happens after is the slightly more tricky part.

Instead of just cutting the cable off, usually about an inch or so from the clamp and crimping on a cable end, the cable must now be fed back around behind the mech and positioned in a kind of loop, held in place with a small plastic cap, before it’s cut and crimped. 

Redesigned

The reason is the new mech activates with a sort of a twisting movement, rather than the older lever design.

This is supposedly to lighten the shift action, but also to increase the clearance behind so as not to foul against wider tyres.

What’s more, and ‘praise be’, there’s an integrated cable tensioner, via a grub screw on the top of the mech.

Why was this little gem never thought of sooner? It’s a superb feature, arguably the best upgrade of the entire 9100 Dura-Ace groupset.

It’s super easy to use and thankfully spells the end for unsightly in-line cable adjusters forever. Great news.

Better braking?

Shimano claims the braking force on the new 9100 callipers is improved too, compared to its predecessor, thanks to an internal brake booster.

Like the shifting advances though, I’m at pains to try and actually detect the enhancement out on the road.

The old 9000 brakes were considered by many as the benchmark in the industry, and these are still every bit as good with a solid feel at the lever and powerful, progressive braking on tap, for confident stopping.

The quick release mechanism has been repositioned such that the lever now sits entirely in-board, rather than poking out the side.

Shimano hasn’t made any aero claims about the roughly 0.01 watt saving this might bring, but every little helps. Of course I jest, but regardless it looks a little neater.

The most relevant element to the new shape of the calliper is that it’s more sculpted to take up to 28mm tyres, keeping it in line with current trends.

Worth the upgrade?

Overall, would I rush out and buy the Dura-Ace 9100 groupset? Not if I already had Dura-Ace 9000.

The changes, to my mind, are 90% aesthetic, and 10% functional improvement (and aesthetics are subjective anyway), plus most of the 10% functional enhancement is in the front mech.

So with that knowledge, and as the shifting actuation has not changed, which means there is cross-compatibility between the 9000 and 9100 components, I might be tempted to just buy the new 9100 front mech.

However if you’re dreaming of a new bike equipped with this latest range topping kit then 9100 is still very much worthy of the Dura-Ace moniker, and deserving of the top slot in the Shimano’s hierarchy.

You won’t be at all disappointed.

Verdict: Not a huge leap forward from Dura-Ace 9000, but front mech improvements and future-proofing versatility keep Shimano at the head of the field. 

madison.co.uk

Yesterday saw the launch in Caen, France of the long awaited, yet much-leaked new Dura Ace groupset, the 9100 (although technically 9150 for the Di2 fans). For in-depth ins and outs of the specs and tech, CLICK HERE, but for a summary of our first impressions and a cursory first ride, read on.

Big impression

First thing’s first, Shimano brought no power meters to play with; according to Japanese road production manager, Takao Harada, they’re all with pro team FdJ. It’s a similar story with the fully finished Di2 version, the Dura Ace 9150, so this article mainly concerns the mechanical 9100 groupset plus a look at Shimano’s fully automatic and semi-automatic sync shifting system on the 9150.

For more information on the basics of the groupset click here: Shimano Dura Ace 9100 unveiled

Overall impressions of the mechanical 9100 are very positive, although the aesthetics are potentially divisive – if there’s a day the traditional road bike died, it might well be this. Angular, sci-fi and functional are all words we’d level at the new Dura Ace.

That, and black. But no ordinary black. The Terminator-style claw (you know the one, in the glass case at the beginning of Terminator 2) of the rear mech is a smoked grey/black fade of an exoskeleton, with a carbon mech cage and a elements like the honeycomb back plate of the mech body hollowed and lightened to within an inch of its alloy.

If you liked those smooth organic lines of DA mechs in the past – the 7800 was a particularly fine vintage – you’ll probably have something to say about this new 9100 mech. However the STI levers remain very pleasing to the eye, as well as to the touch. The hoods are that bit tackier and comfier compared to before, though maintain a virtually identical size, and the size of the down-cassette shift lever paddle has been increased to make it easier to reach in the drops.

If there’s an area of a new groupset that always divides it’s the chainset. Remember when Campagnolo lost that fifth spider arm? No you don’t because you obliterated that awful memory with excessive drinking to numb the pain. So it is with the 9100 chainset. It will divide, not least in its chunky smokey blackness and asymmetric crank arm design that Shimano says is more efficient at transmitting power. You could be forgiven for thinking it’s carbon, but actually it’s alloy.

The front mech is a mechanical joy to behold. A cam with wrap-round cable (no more pinch bolts gnawing away at you expensive cables) helps provide the leverage in place of the lost long swing arm of the 9000. It’s all very compact and neat, and while we haven’t yet used it, the addition of a grub screw on the mech for tensioning the cable that replaces a regular inline adjuster is a stroke of genius. Provided it works. Which it will. This is Shimano.

The last thing to add is the brakes, which look exceptionally slick, Shimano having tucked the quick release for the wheel in under itself, as opposed to jutting down at 6 o’clock. It keeps the brake looking homogenous and smooth, and helps offset the fact it’s now that much wider to accommodate wider tyres and clearances.

Last word goes to the wheel quick release skewers. Well, two words actually: bang on. 

First ride: mechanical 

We must stress the first ride lasted less than an hour around the muddled streets of Bayeux, which though requiring lots of shifting, did not exactly test the drivetrain to its limits. Therefore we’ll keep it brief.

The mechanical groupset feels, well, entirely normal, very much like the 9000 before it. However, this is no bad thing, since the 9000 was – and is – an exceptional groupset: slick, fast and reliable. The tangible differences are therefore small. New hoods, lever shape and increased paddle size are an improvement, though given the subjectivity of ergonomics not everyone will agree.

There is a patterned effect to the tackier rubber hoods, a little like Sram, that feels nice to the touch and grippy in the rain. The paddle is also definitely easier to reach in the drops, as too the slightly set back lever itself.

Actuation ratios (cable pull) is apparently the same as before, so you could feasibly use old levers – remember, this is still 11-speed – with new mechs and callipers, or old mechs and callipers with new levers. Old cassettes and chains are fine too, says Shimano.

The lever throw (the movement the lever blades/paddles go through before the ‘click’) is shortened, which isn't obvious unless you’re really looking for it. However, the downshift, when the chain goes to ever smaller sprockets, is definitely snappier than before, the chain dropping quickly and cleanly. We couldn’t tell you if the upshift was better or not, but both front and back felt positive and smooth – no better or worse than before.

Likewise, the brakes. The excellent PTFE-coated Shimano cables carried over from the last generation are super slick, giving great lever feel; the brakes themselves seem to work just fine on this limited test. Longer term will reveal more. 

First ride: sync shift

This is where it gets really interesting. The bikes we got to ride were still prototypes, using old 9070 mechs (an indication of further inter-generational compatibility), but the system ostensibly functioned like the proper 9150 groupset will.

The idea of sync shifting is the brains in the Di2 system, making front chainring choices so you don’t have to in order to make pedalling seamless and cadence constant. In full sync mode, that means as you buzz up and down the cassette, the front automatically shifts when you get to the extremities of the cassette. For example, imagine starting in big front, small rear. Go up the cassette by holding the right hand shift button and when the chain reaches a middling sprocket, the front mech automatically shifts into the small ring as you seamlessly progress into the largest sprocket. Think of it like a car’s sequential automatic gearbox compared to selecting gears in a manual.

All the shifts are carried out using just the buttons on the right lever. You can use the left lever to override it though.

Semi sync is a lesser version of the same system, and one we find harder to fathom. Imagine starting in big-big. Click the front shifter to drop to the inner ring and the rear mech automatically shifts up one. The inverse is true when shifting from small-small: shift up to the big chainring and the rear mech automatically goes one down into a larger sprocket.

The idea in both systems is to help riders keep cadence between shifts and make the gear jumps more incremental. It is important to note that it’s a feature that can be turned off – in fact, usual Di2 shifting is still the default setting. The question, then, is do we need it? The answer will be entirely personal. Many riders will claim they can make all the Di2’s decisions as well, if not better, Then again, people sniffed at Di2 altogether when it came out, and now look. It's not quite ubiquitous, but is certainly de rigeur. It does feel kind of lazy, but it works seamlessly well and feels totally natural. Plus, it has a wonderful novelty factor that had us grinning.

We think in the long term, just like Di2, the sync shift will be a game changer. Campy is rumoured to have been working on its own version for a while now – after all, the mechanics are there in any electronic system, it’s just a matter of intelligent programing to utilise them. So for Shimano to do such an amazing job of it in its first attempt already surely means the others will have to follow.

Whether you’ll be glad of it, only you can decide, but for Cyclist’s money this sync shift is the most important development since Di2 arrived, and we’ve no doubt it will win over a huge number of fans. It’s also the most exciting thing we’ve seen from this launch. Until the power meter finally arrives…

vs. Sram and Campagnolo

So how does Dura-Ace 9100 mechanical compare to the competition? Operationally and ergonomically it is of course very different to Sram and Campagnolo. Shifting remains Dura-Ace’s strongest suit, feeling significantly slicker going up and down the cassette than both Sram and Campagnolo. Likewise front shifting, which is the lightest action amongst the top mechanical groups.

Brake feel is supremely smooth and positive, and just edges both Red and Super Record in terms of power and modulation. However, which groupset’s ergonomics are preferable is a subjective matter, though for Shimano fans the good news is the 9100 lever body size and shape is very similar to the last generation.

Shifting up (ie, going to smaller sprockets) is still a one click, one move affair, so here arguably Super Record with its five-at-a-time Ultrashift mechanism trumps the 9100, but all three groupsets still happily make multiple shifts down (ie into larger sprockets) for a single lever push.

Shimano has yet to release every individual component weight, but judging by the ones it has published it’s fair to assume 9100 won’t be lighter than the class leading Red 22 at 1,740g. The 9100 STI shifters, for example, weigh a claimed 365g, whereas Red shifters are 260g. The 9100 rear mech is 158g, a Red rear mech 145g.

Aesthetics is a deeply personal thing, but there’s real departure here from any road groupset gone before, and that’ll undoubtedly polarise opinion and have Campyphiles waggling their judgemental fingers.

A full Di2 Dura-Ace 9150 groupset wasn’t available for test, only a prototype system, but based on that we’d say there was plenty on offer to challenge Sram’s eTap, even though Shimano has stuck with wires.

The revision of the charging port into a little frame or handlebar bung is very neat, though both home and pro mechanics will no doubt prefer the ease of eTap installation. But it’s the Synchro Shift system that steals the show, putting the 9150 in a different league to both Red eTap and Super Record EPS. That said, both Sram and Campagnolo could – in theory – programme their existing electronic groupsets to perform in a similar way. Whether they will is another story, with hydraulic disc versions of EPS and eTap on the way, the window of opportunity is there.

It was almost a year ago when the Cervélo C5 broke cover, and it proved to be a bit of a shock.

The Canadian brand with a historical laser focus on performance and aerodynamic speed teetered away from road and into the nebulous region of a slack endurance ride with off-road persuasions.

This is far more than another addition to the new genre of ‘gravel’ bicycles, however.

This, in fact, is Cervélo’s attempt to rethink how a bike should be made for endurance riding.

Altered geometry

In a similar vein to the bikes that sit squarely in the gravel sector, the C5 boasts a slightly altered geometry to a normal endurance ride coupled with wider tyre clearance and disc brakes.

The C5 was Cervélo’s second leap into discs for the road, following quickly on from the release of the R3 disc, although the brand has since launched disc-equipped models across its range of aerodynamic and lightweight bikes.

Importantly, where we might have expected to see an R5 frame crudely repurposed for use with disc brakes, the C-series was a complete rethink of how disc brakes could alter, and improve, the character of a bike.

‘We noticed a change in the road cycling landscape – lots of cyclists love to participate in gran fondos and do not want to race,’ says global product manager Phil Spearman.

‘Unfortunately, bicycle sport has often failed bicycle participation in terms of bike design.’

Cervélo’s solution with the C5 has been to concentrate on delivering more comfort and versatility, alongside increased stability.

These can be vague concepts in bike building, and Spearman is keen to establish exactly what that means for Cervélo.

‘By lifting the head tube we hope to eradicate the situation whereby riders stack numerous headset spacers on the R-series, because this makes for
a twitchy ride,’ he says. 

Slacker angle

Not only is the head tube of the C5 taller than that of the R-series, but the angle is slacker as well.

The rear chainstays are slightly longer and the bottom bracket position has been dropped. What all this means is that the C5 should handle more predictably and with more stability than the R-series, having lost a bit of the latter’s racy feel.

While the C5 certainly appeals to a wider range of riding scenerios, it arguably lacks some of the commitment to the looser gravel tracks that the likes of the GT Grade were designed for.

The maximum tyre clearance, for instance, is a relatively skinny 30mm, compared to clearance that allows for 35mm tyres and beyond on many pure gravel bikes. 

‘Obviously gravel was considered throughout the development, but we prefer to say the bike is mixed surface,’ says Spearman.

‘All of the best roads in the US seem to be dirt, so we built it to be able to ride those surfaces, but that single-track dirt road really isn’t as demanding as a serious gravel trail. So primarily this is built for road riding.’

Smooth rider

At first glance, I had a few criticisms of the C5. The brown colourway isn’t particularly fetching, and I feared it would quickly look dated.

The price, too, seemed out of proportion with the offering. The Dura-Ace groupset, Rotor chainset and HED Ardennes wheelset are all excellent components, but with a total pricetag of more than six grand, I estimated that the frameset alone must cost in the region of £3,500-£4,000.

It certainly put a lot of expectation on the bike’s performance.  

The bike gave me quite a shock when I first set it on the road. That’s largely because it didn’t feel like a gravel bike at all – it felt like a race bike.

It’s relatively light at 7.55kg, and with ample stiffness at the rear it sprung up to speed where normally an endurance disc bike would have a heavy-duty feel.

There were downsides, however. The C5’s stiffness was a plus point when it came to both descending and general handling, but it also meant the bike could feel a little harsh.

Oddly, it seemed to soak up off-road gravel really well, but on rough tarmac – of the kind found pretty much everywhere in Britain – I felt a little too much jolt. The bike pounded over disturbances rather than striding over them. 

That aside, the Cervélo C5 was generally a joy to ride. It handled well on all terrain, and I found myself diving down gravel trails with a sense of total control.

Similarly in the mountains, the bike descended with stability, and the higher front end didn’t render it floppy or less responsive. 

Decision time

After spending a few weeks in the company of the C5, my impressions of it changed.

At first it seemed slightly undercooked to me – an all-road bike that didn’t seem to commit enough to off-road riding – but the more time I spent with it, the more I came to consider it an excellent solution to the problem of bringing performance road riding to a broader audience.

It offers an entry point to Cervélo’s extremely high-level engineering ability, but without requiring riders to contort themselves to the geometry of pro race bikes.  

Would I like to own a Cervélo C5 Dura-Ace Disc? Certainly.

Would I pay £6,199 for it? That’s a trickier question.

While most manufacturers have moved their mid and high-end bikes to carbon, Cannondale is one of the few firms that has continued to develop and improve alloy frames with the CAAD (Cannondale Advanced Aluminium Design) range of bikes.

The latest model, the CAAD12, offers a frame shape that’s hard to believe is made from aluminium, with neat and subtle hydroforming at the joins, improving strength and stiffness and keeping the weight to a minimum.

Initial reactions when riding are positive, with lightning reactions and very little in the way of flex or sluggishness when sprinting.

Comfort is also good, and although it can’t match endurance machines for all-round balance or ultimate rear comfort, for a traditional road bike it certainly isn’t uncomfortable and despite the alloy frame - which can sometimes be harsh - the CAAD 12 is on a par with many carbon frames.

Comfy roads

Tyre clearance is reasonable, with space for 28mm tyres, but perhaps the quickest way of improving contact point comfort would be to change the thin bar tape for a slightly more cushioned option.

The components used are good for the price, with mostly Shimano 105 matched to Cannondale’s own Si chainset and FSA chainrings, which can’t quite match Shimano’s shifting performance but win on weight.

The Mavic Aksium wheels are solid, reliable performers and although they are quite narrow compared to modern wheels, with many following the trend of increased width for decreased rolling resistance, Aksiums have proven themselves as an extremely reliable training wheel over the years.

While the CAAD12 frame can’t match the very lightest carbon frames for weight, it is still an impressive 1,100g claimed frame weight and at a very competitive price point. Overall bike weight is good with potential to upgrade components and drop further weight quite easily.

What really shines through with the CAAD12 is the geometry and ride appeal with fantastic handling at all times and especially on smooth, fast downhills where the ability to tackle technical sections with lots of sharp bends really shines through.

Spec

Bianchi’s Intrepida is a more affordable carbon-fibre endurance bike for those of us not well-heeled enough to buy into the famous Italian brand’s ‘Intenso’ range.

Its geometry is designed with all-day rides in mind, and the build features a smattering of Shimano Ultegra parts, as well as mid-level groupset components, to keep the package affordable.

In a break with tradition this beauty forgoes Bianchi’s iconic ‘celeste’ bluey-green/greeny-blue paint job in favour of a more rugged yet understated battleship grey.

Frameset

Bianchi’s carbon monocoque frame (it’s a one-piece construction) uses classic endurance bike geometry.

A tapered head tube measured at 154mm isn’t particularly tall for a 51cm frame size, and there are a further 35mm of spacers available on the steerer to stack above or below the stem.

An oversized hexagonal-profile down tube extends from the head tube to meet a beefed up bottom bracket area before extending rearwards into some seriously braced chainstays providing a solid platform from which to get power down.

Narrow seatstays flow into the seat tube, joining the frame via a carbon-fibre bridge to provide damping. A barrel adjuster for the rear mech is a useful addition to the front end, allowing on-the-fly adjustments to how your gears mesh.

Groupset

While the headline feature of the Intrepida’s groupset is its Ultegra shifters, the only other component from Shimano’s second-tier groupset is the rear derailleur.

A Shimano 105 chain, front mech and 11-28 cassett e combine with a non-series Shimano chainset to form the drive chain.

Its 50/34 compact set-up is decidedly sportive-friendly, and matched to the 11-28 spread of ratios on the 11-speed Shimano 105 cassette should help even the most tired rider get up a hill.

The brakes are badged as Reparto Corse and their fuss-free single-pivot operation makes them very easy to set up and adjust.

Finishing kit

Reparto Corse finishing kit is also used for the compact-drop alloy handlebars and stem, while a well-padded Selle San Marco Era Start saddle sits atop the alloy seatpost.

Interestingly, the seatpost itself is a 31.6mm diameter component, which, unless it’s made from carbon, we wouldn’t normally expect to provide as vibe-free a ride as something like the Genesis Zero’s 27.2mm component.

Wheels

The Bianchi rolls on Shimano’s own RS010 alloy clinchers – by no means a performance wheel, but reliable enough – and undoubtedly used here to keep the price down.

That said, they should survive years of abuse. Vittoria’s Zaffiro Pro Slick rubber, in the now everyday 25c size, takes care of road holding. 

The ride

The Intrepida is clearly a well thought-out package, offering a ridiculously good fit straight off the bat.

As the miles fly by, our confidence in its comfort doesn’t budge – it remains well balanced in its handling, and cosseting at our body’s contact points with the bike.

It’s soon apparent that it’s not a super-quick, rapid-handling race bike, rather that it’s built for the long-haul, and early signs are that it’s got that nailed.

The overriding sensation is one of surprising stiffness, which is kept just the right side of harsh on rough road surfaces by running the tyres with 85psi.

The chainset is strong (if adding a little to the overall weight), and works well with a traditional threaded bottom bracket.

The bike’s chunky chainstays provide a feeling of direct connection with the road. However, the handlebars are a little unyielding, which means long distances on very pitted tarmac can be fatiguing. The seatpost, too, suffers for its thickness.

What this does translate to, however, is a package that isn’t afraid to climb, and which allows you to put everything you have into ascending. Gear ratios are spot-on for the type of terrain this bike is likely to see, however.

But the unescapable fact with this otherwise solid endurance offering is its substantial rotational mass.

We weighed the RS010 wheels at 2,496g, without tyres and quick-release skewers. This goes a long way to explaining their slowness to spin up when you fancy a sprint.

A wheel upgrade would reward you with better acceleration and climbing ability.

The Intrepida’s easy-going geometry makes it easy to get into a comfortable position on a long ride.

And once on the move, corners are taken with confidence, if not with a marked difference in steering quickness.

The Bianchi’s measured head angle of 70.3° is so relaxed it’s pretty much got its feet up, which has the effect of slowing the steering a little.

It’s most noticeable when attacking downhill corners, affecting the bike’s flickability.

The Reparto Corse-branded brakes work well, while all the bike’s durable groupset components operate slickly.

If you’re planning some century rides for the spring, you won’t go wrong with the Intrepida. And if, by the summer, your fitness exceeds the wheels’ capabilities, a modest outlay on new ones will get you even more from it.

RATINGS

Frame: Easy-going geometry is built for comfort. 9/10 
Components: A decent mix of Ultegra, 105 and Reparto Corse. 7/10 
Wheels: The Shimano RS010s are ripe for an upgrade. 7/10 
The ride: Handles well, built for comfort rather than speed. 8/10 

Verdict: A sensitively equipped Italian that's perfect for any long-haul rides you might have planned for 2017.  

Geometry

Spec

A sneak peak from the logos of 12 major bike brands. Simply click on the image logo when each of the 12 brands appears.

It wasn’t long ago that a dream road bike started life as a frame in your hands.

You would then pick the parts – wheels, groupset, bars, seatpost, saddle – that best suited your preferences and wallet.

While this is still entirely possible today, at the top end of the market it’s a lot trickier, as brands design their own components to function with the frame. 

Take the latest Trek Madone – it will only work with the supplied cockpit, seatpost and brakes. All that’s really left to play with are the wheels and drivetrain.

Specialized’s Venge ViAS, Canyon’s Endurace and BMC’s Roadmachine are similar stories.

Walled garden

The result is that the consumer is required to stay within the manufacturer’s walled garden as the industry pursues its latest goal: system integration.

‘In the days before the Lugano charter [the UCI’s rulebook to curtail outlandish bike designs], crazy bikes were coming out. We started to realise there was such a lot to be gained, especially aerodynamically, from integration,’ says Mark Cote, head of integrated technologies at Specialized.

‘In 2005 we were just speccing Reynolds Ouzo Pro forks on a frame. You can’t imagine that now. Now practically every frame and fork is designed together. Now you ride a bike, not a frame.’

Ben Coates, global director for road at Trek, agrees: ‘If you look back 10 years, the most advanced bikes out there still used a whole bunch of products from the likes of Zipp or Hed or whoever.

‘It was all bolt-on accessories that were universally compatible,’ he says. ‘In that short period of time almost every major manufacturer has chipped away some of those gigantic restraints.

‘Whether it’s seatposts or brakes or cranks or having their own wheel brand, major manufacturers are chipping off the pieces one at a time.’

Integration, integration, integration…

It’s easy to assume the main reason for designing bikes with proprietary components is to ensure customers are obliged to spend all their money in one place, even when replacing parts, but the manufacturers assure us that this is not the case.

‘I see integration going in two clear directions,’ says Cote. ‘Where performance benefits are obvious, we will integrate.

‘Where there ends up being a rider detriment because of a lack of choices, we won’t. On an aerodynamic performance bike such as the Venge ViAS it makes perfect sense.

‘We couldn’t have achieved the result we did without using integrated components. But you still need bikes that can be completely personalisable, like the Tarmac.

‘We left it this way on purpose. A rider can customise everything from an anthropometric and geometry standpoint [bike fit] to the aesthetics.’ 

Compromises

According to Cote, if you want the best-performing bike there might be some compromises in terms of how much adjustment and personalisation is possible.

Coates agrees, saying, ‘For some, integration has a potentially negative connotation, but we’re looking at optimisation. Our goal is not to integrate for integration’s sake.

‘In fact we would rather not integrate. It’s harder for us, it’s harder for retailers, it’s harder for consumers. But the real gains that are coming in road bikes are coming from integration of the main parts.’ 

‘It’s not all about aerodynamics,’ adds Cote. ‘Aesthetics is also key, and system integration also makes a lot of sense for saving weight too.

‘Just switching out bolts from steel to titanium only saves so much weight, but if you can get rid of the need for that bolt or even the clamp entirely it saves so much more, so why not?

‘That said, from a system design standpoint, aero is the major benefit. If we saved 3% of a bike’s total weight but at a cost of losing all its adjustability, then OK, it might save you measurable time on a steep climb, but integrating for aero, as we did on the ViAS, showed that versus a standard road bike it will save you 116 seconds over 40km.

‘Aero is always on – you can’t turn that off unless you’re not moving.’

Drawing the line

‘Is there a limit to how far you can go with integration before consumers will feel negativity towards it? Yes,’ says Coates, ‘but the limit is not how much can you do, it’s how well can you do it.

‘Nobody is giving us a hard time for the Madone brakes because they work really well. If they sucked, there’s every reason for people to say, “Hey, I can only get this bike with these brakes, and I don’t want that.”

‘We’ve seen that happen where manufacturers have not executed integration to at least the level that standard parts operate on.

‘If our bar and stem work perfectly and it costs less money or makes the bike faster or looks cooler, or hopefully all of the above, then why is anybody going to say, “I don’t want that integrated bar and stem”?’

‘You can’t force anyone,’ says Cote. ‘Our hope is that the products we make lead to genuine benefits, not back people into a corner. If it feels like we’re holding riders hostage, we’ve failed.

‘Ultimately the rider decides. If a brand goes too far then a bike will simply not sell. So, although they don’t always know it, the consumer ultimately holds the power, not the manufacturer.’

Step by step 

It’s true that a bike will only sell if people like it, so for the moment the big brands are feeling their way forward, adding integrated elements and gauging the response before moving on to the next concept. But where is it all heading?

‘Fast forward five years from now and I’m fairly confident that we can see the road bike industry moving in a new direction,’ says Cote. ‘Integration is the start of that shift.

‘Bikes are crazily adjustable right now – we have 12cm of reach adjustment through seven sizes of bike and stems, plus around 16cm of vertical stack adjustment.

‘As we start to understand two-wheeled vehicle dynamics a bit better, I think we can go towards bikes more intensely focused on handling.

‘There could be a situation where we see brands starting to develop parts based on optimal cockpit geometry, which may lead to a decreased range of adjustment, or more specifically a tighter range of fit.’ 

And what of the final pieces of the jigsaw? Will the big brands such as Trek and Specialized start producing components such as groupsets?

‘We always have to ask ourselves, can we create something better than what is already available?’ says Cote. ‘Can we make groupsets better than Shimano or Sram or Campagnolo? That’s a big ask! But hey, not impossible.’

Would Coates want Trek to have a crack at producing a groupset?

‘Today there are things about the drivetrain that hold back bicycle development, for sure, but there are other things still available – lower-hanging fruit– that can potentially make a bike better and more enjoyable to ride.

‘This is stuff that’s more cost-effective to develop. There’s an opportunity with every single product to be optimised to make it faster, lighter, more comfortable. At the point where the lowest-hanging fruit is the drivetrain, then it will get attacked. That’s human nature.’

The day could come when every part of a bike is produced under the same brand, with components that won’t work with any other brand.

That thought might fill you with excitement at the performance possibilities it could offer, but if it makes you feel nervous that personal choice will be thrown out the window, then you’re not the only one who thinks like that.

‘I really hope it doesn’t turn into a proprietary world,’ concludes Cote. ‘If I could look into my crystal ball right now, I would say that we will move more towards having more integration, but in a way that still leaves choice for aftermarket components.’

So don’t throw out that box of spare parts just yet.

Exhibit A

Specialized Venge ViAS Disc
From £3,900, specialized.com

With its own wind-tunnel in its Californian headquarters, an already established working relationship with the McLaren Formula One team and a penchant for producing seriously fast bikes (such as its Shiv TT bike), Specialized was perfectly poised to pounce on performance gains through integration. 

The Venge ViAS is the consummate example of system integration, thanks to Specialized having total control over virtually every component on the bike.

Only the derailleurs, shifters, disc brakes, chain and cassette are not made in-house.

The result is a bike that, Specialized claims, will be 116 seconds faster than a standard road bike over 40km.

That’s a saving not to be sniffed at, and depending on your tastes this is a seriously cool looking bike.

Exhibit B

Trek MadoneFrom £3,600, trekbikes.com

Trek really made waves when it launched its latest Madone 9 Series, with its engineers displaying some unconventional thinking for system integration.

Most obvious is the front brake, fitted neatly into the front fork such that it requires a pair of hinged flaps at the front of the head tube (which Trek calls Vector Wings) to enable the bike to turn.

The upshot of such outlandish design is a seriously fast bike, which Trek says it couldn’t have achieved without being able to take a more holistic approach, for example by producing more components such as its bar/stem combo in-house to maximise the performance benefits. 

Exhibit C

Look 795 AerolightFrom £6,210, zyrofisher.co.uk

Look was an early pioneer of system integration.

A decade ago it created its own hollow carbon crankset and integrated bottom bracket system, plus its E-Post seat mast on its 595 model.

More recently, in 2014, its 795 Aerolight took integration to a whole new level. With fully integrated brakes, a proprietary stem plus the ZED cranks and integrated E-post, Look claimed it was the world’s most aerodynamic road bike.

Its appearance was divisive, though – the market simply wasn’t accustomed to such unorthodox designs.

‘Alloy is still in the game,’ says the Uriel’s maker, Renzo Formigli.

A veteran of the Italian framebuilding fraternity, Formigli has been crafting frames in Florence, Italy, for the past 26 years, and the fully custom Uriel for the last 16. 

‘The Uriel is the longest-running frame in my line-up. The only thing that’s changed is the quality of the aluminium, as I’m sourcing higher grades to keep the frame competitive.’

What's in a name?

The Uriel is made from 7003-T6 aluminium alloy. For those into metallurgy, the ‘7’ refers to the principal alloying element, zinc, the ‘0’ denotes no modification to the original alloy, the ‘03’ is an arbitrary number to identify the alloy, and the ‘T6’ indicates the tubes were heat treated and artificially aged. 

For those interested in bikes, 7003-T6 is a stronger, lighter alloy than the more commonly used 6061 or 7005 alloys.

As a result, this uncut size 54cm weighs 1.6kg, while regular seatpost options will get closer to the kilo mark. Not too shabby for a frame Formigli believes rivals many carbon offerings.

The Uriel is available in six stock colours, or custom paint at a negotiable extra cost.

A standard build comprises a BB86.5 bottom bracket, 1.125in to 1.5in tapered head tube and internal, external or electronic cable routing options. 

Verdict: Upgraded aluminium keeps the long-running custom Uriel frameset’s appeal fresh.

€1,500, formigli.com

If ten grand sounds a lot for a bike, consider the Henk Carbon Attache, which starts at €9,900, and is a briefcase.

True, unlike the Altum Disc it is largely custom – for €5,770 extra you can get the interior trimmed in calf skin, the exterior made bulletproof and a cigar humidor installed in its base – but beyond that it’s a carbon fibre clutch for storing pens.

Couched in those terms, the Altum seems a positive bargain. For one, it has wheels (although it must be said wheels are also available on the Henk Classic suitcase, a snip at just €26,000), and two, it’s made by Bob Parlee, a man who’s been building with carbon fibre for nearly 40 years.

Henk, by contrast, was started by Henk van de Meene, a Dutch property tycoon, aka an estate agent. I know which I’d rather buy. The question is, should you?

Damned if you do

If you’ve not come across the brand before, Bob Parlee is to carbon fibre bicycles what Morgan Freeman is to playing the role of God in films.

He didn’t invent polyacrylonitrile but his bikes have become the stuff of legend ever since Tyler Hamilton threw a leg over a rebadged Parlee in the 2002 Giro (the world quickly found out it was a Parlee when Hamilton crashed after a wheel failure, exposing the black fibres within). 

Those bikes were made to measure in Massachusetts, and in the Z-Series Parlee still does a sterling line in US-built custom carbon.

But in recent years it has also moved into the overseas mass production market, or as marketing manager Tom Rodi puts it, ‘small-batch building’.

‘If you’re a Trek or a BMC you might be making a run of 5,000 bikes. We’re typically making our stock bikes in batches of 50 or 60. It’s a very different way of doing things,’ says Rodi.

‘When we told people we were going to make bikes in Asia they were almost aghast, like how could we do this? Sacrilegious sellouts!

‘But people have recognised that these are our bikes, our designs, you’re not going to see any aspect of one on anyone else’s bike.’ 

Parlee wasn’t able to meet customer demand for its frames in a cost-effective way in the US, so while £4,000 for a ‘stock’ frame might seem a lot, it reflects the small-batch approach, and is significantly less than the £7,000 asking price for a custom US-made Z-Zero.

In silhouette alone the Altum backs up Rodi’s point – nothing looks quite like it. The top tube flares up to meet the head tube, while the down tube goes from a virtual round to flattened oval cross section at the bottom bracket.

Most striking of all, however, is the bike’s stance. The combination of a tall head tube and heavily sloping top tube makes the Altum appear as if it’s rearing up. This is more than just an aesthetic choice, though. 

If the bike fits…

Based on fit data gathered from Parlee’s custom frames over the last decade, Rodi reckons the average head tube height across the board has increased by around 10%. 

One hypothesis is that riders’ physiology has changed as the demographic has enlarged, but a more likely one is that fitters and customers have come around to the idea that a super-short, pro-style head tube is not the best solution for most ‘normal’ riders.

Speculation aside, for Parlee this posed a problem. Tall head tubes are potentially flexy and – let’s not deny our shallow selves – inelegant.

Accordingly, the Altum’s flared top tube performs a three-fold function. One, it braces the taller head tube for increased stiffness; two, it creates the illusion of a shorter head tube; and three, it offers a neater solution to headset spacers, which integrate into the flared design.

I’d say the success of number two is in the eye of the beholder, yet the frame’s form at least lends the Altum distinct character. The success of point three is more objective.

Parlee offers each of the six sizes with an 8mm, 15mm or 25mm integrated ‘Flex Fit’ spacer (this bike features the 15mm), which allows a more tuneable, versatile fit without using unsightly, flex-inducing spacers. 

It’s as neat an answer as I’ve seen to the ‘I want slammed but need tall’ conundrum, offering 17mm of tuneable stack height without spacers.

In this regard Parlee should be applauded, yet paradoxically it will be limiting for riders wanting a traditional racy fit. This size 56cm comes with a 173mm head tube, which even with the smallest Flex Fit spacer creates a nominal 181mm head tube length.

You can run the bike with no spacer at a push, but you risk fouling the frame with the stem, and the whole thing won’t look quite right.

Individual tastes

Personally I’d opt for a head tube in the region of 150mm, a figure that’s cropped up in two separate bike fits based on a bike with a 56cm top tube.

That said, the taller position on the Altum was actually jolly comfortable, and thanks to Parlee’s agreeably shaped carbon bars I was able to get comfortably low in the drops without feeling like I was having to reach down, as it were.

This came with the added benefit of a shifted centre of gravity – lower and more over the front wheel – that made for excellent stability when descending, and quick changes of direction.

I felt confident enough to take a local descent, comprising several tight turns, at full pelt without braking for the first time in months.

The discs certainly helped – bolstered by bolt thru-axles these top-end Shimano offerings were rock solid under heavy braking, with no squealing or sudden grabbing – and this gave me confidence to ride harder in the knowledge that safe emergency stops were quite possible.

Coming back up the hill, though, was a little different. For a disc bike the Altum is admirably light, and seated it climbed well. But out of the saddle I felt the bike had a tendency to wag its tail under hard efforts.

I ran this past Rodi, who explained that as far as their numbers showed the Altum was up there with both Parlee’s and other manufacturers’ stiffer framesets.

I’d agree that in most instances the Altum does feel stiff, even when sprinting. It’s just that when I stood up and put the power down at low speed I felt like the rear of the Altum took a while before it received the message from the front to get going.

Familiar

It’s familiar territory for me, and I’m sure it’s down to my weight (80kg) as much as anything else. Still, it’s there in some bikes and not in others.

However the upshot, I believe, is that a little front-back torsional flex is a very useful attribute at other times. It keeps a bike comfortable, and it helps it track the road better through corners. Too stiff and a bike skips and loses traction.

Overwhelmingly the Altum left me with two competing feelings: that it is a very well-behaved bike that handles impeccably, but that it lacks a certain edge.

I hasten to add that edge will be a personal thing, but having been spoilt by some decent time aboard a Z-Zero, I know what else Parlee is capable of, and it’s just that little bit more than the Altum has to offer.

Spec

It started with disc brakes. A few years ago, one or two mainstream brands unveiled road bikes fitted with discs instead of calliper brakes, and the whole industry drew a sharp intake of breath. 

For some, it was a form of sacrilege. The clean, traditional lines of the road bike had been sullied by something that was a common feature of – whisper it – the mountain bike. But it didn’t stop there.

Next we were told that 23mm tyres were too skinny, and we should be riding 25mm. No wait, make that 28mm. Now road bike manufacturers are proudly declaring their frames have clearance for tyres up to 32mm and beyond.

Thanks to the addition of disc brakes, some road bikes such as the Open UP are even able to take 650b wheels, the
size traditionally associated with – you guessed it – mountain bikes.

Suspension systems have crept in too. Trek broke new ground by placing a pivot in its Domane road frame to enable more vertical flex in the seat tube for enhanced comfort.

Shock tactics

Pinarello took things a step further by fitting an actual rear shock at the top of the seatstays on its Dogma K8-S, and the principal feature of Specialized’s new Roubaix is a coil sprung shock absorber beneath the stem. 

One-by (single chainring) groupsets are now entirely feasible on road bikes thanks to the availability of much wider cassette ratios.

Add in thru-axles, tubeless tyres, even dropper seatposts, and it seems the only thing separating some modern road bikes from their mountain bike cousins is a set of flat handlebars.

What’s going on? Is the industry engaged in a secret mission to turn road riders into mountain bikers? It’s time for a talk with those in the know.

It’s called progress

‘I don’t think anyone in the industry wants to turn roadies into mountain bikers, or road bikes into mountain bikes for that matter,’ says Gerard Vroomen, co-founder of Cervélo in 1995 and more recently co-founder of Open Bicycles.

‘I also don’t think the big fight is over who came up with the technology or what comes from where in the industry. At the moment it’s more important to think about how to grow the business, and I think that’s positive because companies are starting to think about how they can make cycling better.’ 

David Ward, product manager at Giant Bicycles, says, ‘I’m not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg. Brands coming out with ideas and needing the Srams and Shimanos of this world to make the parts to make it feasible, or whether it’s the component manufacturers making new technology available and manufacturers wanting to use it.’ 

This could suggest that these developments are a result of brands looking to drive sales by simply finding something new to offer customers. Cyclist put it to Ron Ritzler, vice-president of components at groupset manufacturer Sram.

‘My view is that for the past 20 years as an industry we’ve just given people very little choice,’ Ritzler says. ‘We’ve basically given people a replica of a WorldTour bike and for most consumers that doesn’t fit with how they ride, where they ride and how they want to ride. It’s the wrong tool.’ 

Vroomen agrees. ‘Peter Sagan rides a road bike and I ride a road bike, but the way we ride is very, very different. I’m going half the speed and I’m not half as tough as Peter Sagan. I want a bit more comfort, bigger tyres, smaller gears, etc, so I actually want a very different bike.

Wishful thinking

‘But there’s also where we ride. I would love it if they would close roads for me, but that’s never going to happen, so by opening up my options of where I can ride, such as on gravel, I can find freedom and experience cycling traffic-free.

‘You’ve got this middle ground where a road bike doesn’t really make sense because it can be pretty harsh and uncomfortable, the tyres are too skinny and your neck hurts, but on a mountain bike you’d be sat up pretty straight, catching a lot of wind and probably not really going that fast. There’s clearly a category in between where there’s got to be something more suitable to ride.’

Ritzler adds, ‘OK there have been some changes made to road bike design based around more relaxed geometries, slightly taller head tubes and more tyre clearance to appeal to a wider market, but the smart product person would have to say there’s got to be a better way to serve what people really want to do on a bike. And mainly that’s about having fun.’

He believes the attitude of the road cyclist has changed, and manufacturers need to reflect this. ‘Ten years ago a group ride would mostly involve beating each other’s brains out, sprinting for stop signs and so on.

‘But people’s attitudes have shifted. They still want to do group rides but they want to encounter new stuff, and that means going on different terrains and going on new adventures. It works both ways, it’s either “build it and they will come”, or it’s recognising the early signs of a trend and saying, “Hey, I need to make something for them.”’

Mongrel bikes

Ritzler suggests the trend towards a more fun, adventurous attitude to cycling requires the development of a new type of multi-terrain bike. Vroomen evidently concurs, saying, ‘Fun is the key. In the big picture racing has always been super, super small compared to the total number of people who ride bikes, right?

‘It’s like a single digit percentage of people riding that actually race. Yet it’s still hard to convince people to think that if that’s not what you’re doing maybe you don’t need a bike like that.

‘Performance is part of having fun on a bike, though, so we still need bikes that you can go fast on because speed is fun and it allows you to cover more ground, especially if it is possible on more types of terrain too. That’s the future.’

Certainly, a glance at the line-ups of the big brands shows that many of them are now producing bikes with a ‘do it all’ propostion – fast and sleek enough for the road, yet rugged and versatile enough to cope with gravel or other surfaces and conditions.

But, as Giant’s Ward attests, there may still be a way to go to convince the consumer. According to sales data, the pure road bike is not dead yet. 

‘We are getting to that SUV kind of bike. I think we will eventually reach a point where one bike will be really capable of doing a lot of different types of riding, but I also think that people will always want to buy specific products for exactly what they want to do.

‘If you take Giant’s range, for example, we’ve got TCX, Defy, Propel and TCR, and you could argue if you just had a Defy [endurance] you could do everything, or the TCX [cyclocross] will do just about everything too, but the reality is the Propel [aero-road] still outsells the whole lot. 

‘It just goes to show that although there’s a big volume of people that want the latest “do everything”, there are seemingly still more that feel they would rather have a super-light, stripped-out, out-and-out race bike.

‘Whether indeed that’s the right thing for them or not, it’s what a lot of people want to buy. A lot of people still just like to mimic what the pro riders are using.’

Ritzler is also quick to point out the dawn of the all-rounder does not necessarily spell the end of the road bike as we know it. ‘One bike can’t do it all,’ he says.

‘You still need a bike that’s super-fast if you want to be serious about going road racing, or you’ll need a cyclocross bike if you want to go and race cross, but if you’re asking me, is there a category of bike emerging somewhere between the two for “most people”? 

‘I would say now, yeah. I think there’s a growing number of choices for riders who want to experience a bit of everything.’ 

‘Sure, people still need convincing at this stage,’ adds Vroomen. ‘It’s very hard to break those old habits. People are often afraid to make a big leap. First the customer just doesn’t quite believe it yet and still wants Peter Sagan’s bike. They still won’t be able to pull a wheelie regardless.

‘But when you put 54mm knobbly tyres on a bike it no longer looks like Peter Sagan’s bike. Plus, it takes a while before the bean counters at the big companies want to make that leap as well. For the past 10 years selling pro-styled race bikes has been big business.’ 

Vroomen is adamant, however, that it’s easy to get people on board once they’ve tried it.

‘When people try the kind of bike that opens up these new possibilities of gravel and maybe even some singletrack and still being able to ride fast, with confidence and not thinking about cars at all, then generally that’s enough to get them interested.

‘Yes, you could say that’s a little bit like mountain biking, but really it’s about building the bike that’s right for the consumer. People are sick of being hit by cars and there’s a definite trend to move away from that and a different bike is a part of that.

‘They can ride like a kid again and not take themselves so seriously. That fits more with the times we live in’, he says.

Everyone’s a winner

But what about those riders who have no intention of straying from the tarmac? Is there really a need for their road bikes to be mountainbikified?

‘The disc brake is probably the best example,’ says Ward. ‘It’s certainly still a big discussion point but the thing is, if you’re getting more reliable braking, and it’s getting much neater and lighter, why wouldn’t you want it on your road bike?’ 

There are those who would argue that disc brakes simply don’t look right on a road bike, but Ward believes that those concerns have already been addressed.

‘The new generations of disc brake products, the Sram eTap Hydro and new Dura-Ace for 2017, have turned a corner from an aesthetics point of view. The days of it being a mountain bike calliper bolted on a road bike are gone.

‘Flat mount is a big part of that and I think that is great for road bikes. It’s just neat and gets rid of the ugly bolts, so aesthetics are becoming less and less of an issue.’

Acceptance of new technology has always been a slow process for the road riding fraternity. Much of it is down to the sport’s rich heritage – we want the benefits that come with improved performance, but we also want a road bike to look like the bikes we remember from the past.

Long-term benefits

Ultimately, however, Ritzler suggests that we will come to appreciate the changes that adapting technology from mountain bikes
will have for the road experience.

‘Cycling for many is about achievement, and when you open up new possibilities other than just racing, it’s enlightening for so many riders. If you go and do a 100-mile ride with your buddies and go home and upload it to Strava, then it feels like a hell of an accomplishment.

‘You can choose to race, but you can choose to just have fun too. It isn’t fun to get flat tyres or mechanicals or pull on the brakes and not feel like you’re stopping because stuff isn’t capable of doing what you want to do.

‘That’s why this new type of bike exists, to give something for everyone.’ 

‘This will be bigger than road cycling as we know it,’ Vroomen concludes. ‘I don’t see it as a niche. That’s completely missing the point It’s not a niche – it’s a niche buster. For me a niche is a bike tailored for one very specific purpose.

‘This is a bike that is almost everything from a road bike right through to a rigid mountain bike, so it’s covering a lot of bases. It’s certainly not a niche.

‘If we make riding fun, people will keep riding and they’ll convince their friends to go riding too. We don’t want to be the kind of industry
where the best part of our fitness apparatus ends up under the bed.

‘We want people to use our stuff and encourage others to use it. The whole trend is positive.’

Part of the process

How mountain bike parts found their way onto road bikes...

1 Discs and thru-axles

They’ve proved contentious in the pro peloton, and there is still no agreement on standardisation of disc rotor sizes or thru-axles, but virtually every major brand now has a disc-equipped road bike.

2 Suspension

The likes of the Pinarello K8s (above) and Specialized Roubaix have included shock absorbers on their bikes designed for the cobbled Spring Classics, but there are benefits for all. 

3 Tyres

No sooner had the market accepted 25mm (over 23mm), the goal posts shifted again to 28mm. Where will it stop? Already many manufacturers are creating bikes with room for 32mm and beyond. 

4 One-by (1x)

Sram launched this as an off-road concept, as removing the front derailleur simplified the groupset in an area prone to mud clogging, but with more wide-ratio cassettes available, it has proved equally suitable for hassle-free road riding.

If you’ve been around cycling for a while, or at least kept tabs on the successes of some of our athletes over the years, chances are the name Terry Dolan will ring a bell.

This is a marque with a rich heritage. Dolan learned his trade from renowned British custom builder Harry Quinn, before going it alone to form his own framebuilding company.

Notably, Chris Boardman had an association with Dolan’s machines from a young age, using them (at that time named Cougar), in his early years as a pro with Kodak and Gan. 

Stars on bikes

Fast forward a few more years and the likes of Sir Bradley Wiggins, Mark Cavendish, Yvonne McGregor, Rob Hayles, Chris Hoy, Geraint Thomas – the list could go on – have all ridden Dolan track frames in major championships, achieving career highlights along the way, including a haul of National Championship, World Championship and even Olympic medals.

Away from the cream of British Cycling, Dolan bikes were also in the media as the bikes used for the 2010 BBC Sport Relief Million Pound Bike Ride, for which a celebrity team consisting of the likes of Jimmy Carr, Davina McCall and David Walliams rode a non-stop relay from John O’Groats to Lands End, raising more than £1.3million for charity.

So, if the name seems familiar, it’s not really that surprising. In its 30-plus years, though, Dolan has remained a modest brand, still based close to its roots in Ormskirk, Lancashire, with value for the club-level riders at the heart of its ethos.

The DR1 Carbon Disc Road, to use its full title, is new to the Dolan stable, launching in the spring of this year to join the titanium ADX frameset at the top of its price spectrum (the frameset costs £999).

Up to date

It’s bang up to date too, with features such as flat-mount disc brake compatibility, thru-axles and a concealed seatpost clamp. Dolan refers to its livery as ‘battleship grey’, which seems appropriate given the rock-solid appearance of the frame, constructed from oversized D-section tubes, with a seriously purposeful set of boxy chainstays extending rearwards from a mass of carbon around the bottom bracket.

The seatstays are the only tubes not girder-like in their appearance, and interestingly they attach to the underside of the top tube, rather than the rear of the seat tube, something that’s a common feature of Canyon’s top-end road bikes. 

Based on its appearance I wasn’t expecting my legs to trouble the frame too much in terms of flex, a bit like if I gave Mike Tyson my best shot to the chin, I doubt he’d even flinch. The Dolan looked more than ready to do battle with me.

Ding, ding, round one

Sure enough, initial rides revealed the DR1 has a truly solid persona, backed up in this particular guise by a quality set of wheels – Mavic’s Cosmic SSC carbon tubulars, sturdily mounted via thru-axles front and rear.

As such the DR1 displayed an eagerness to accelerate, helped by a decent overall weight and by standing firm to every crank revolution. 

What’s more, it held on to its pace admirably too. It didn’t quite sneak under the 8kg mark (as quoted) but it did hit it on the nose – 8.00kg according to the Cyclist scales.

That’s very respectable for a disc brake bike at this price point, especially considering it’s also got the additional weight penalty (although worth every extra gram) of an electronic Di2 groupset. 

Throwing it into corners it responded predictably and maintained its composure to hold a line consistently.

Stiffness

Attacking a slope its poise was unfaltering, once more its stiffness coming to the fore, although there were times when the back end had a tendency to skip around if I found myself on an uneven surface, mid-surge, and out of the saddle. 

Staying with its stiffness, I found that the harshness of the ride varied depending on my mood or level of fatigue.

It definitely flies close to the mark of being overly stiff (for this 67kg rider) but, based on the fact its rigidity does bring a number of pleasing performance attributes, it deserves the benefit of the doubt. I’d say it’s just on the acceptable side of harsh. 

Compared to frames of similarly high levels of stiffness from the big guns, it lacks just a bit of the refinement they demonstrate in keeping the worst jolts from the road at bay.

But then, it also lacks a £7k+ pricetag, which would have seemed like an astronomical amount of cash to spend on a bicycle just a few years ago but now seems to be standard pricing for top-tier wares. 

I had to continually remind myself that this is a £3k bike. It could easily command a higher price, and I’ve ridden much more expensive bikes that were not as good.

I’d suggest a worthwhile consideration, as there is ample clearance available, would be to upsize the tyres.

The supplied 25mm Mavic Yksion Pro tubulars felt a little on the narrow side compared to most other tyres of the same declared width, but a 28mm tyre might just be all that’s needed to soften the ride feel a fraction.

Finding your fit

The Deda Superzero bar was not a shape that worked for me, but that’s easily resolved. The spec is entirely in your hands. Purchasing a Dolan entails dressing your chosen frame to your budget and/or requirements by picking your components from the online menus.

Of course the price adjusts accordingly but it does mean you’re likely to get exactly what you want from the outset. 

If this inspires you to consider the DR1 as your next purchase, a word of warning on sizing. Dolan uses slightly peculiar size denominations.

A size 54 (as tested) actually has a 57cm top tube (the most vital of all geometric considerations) and is classified as X-Large – a bit confusing and not comparable to the rest of the industry.

It’s not a problem, but simply something to be aware of. Just don’t buy a medium or you’ll end up with a tiny bike.

Spec

Canyon has launched new disc brake road bike models for 2017, offering two new build options. 

The newly released Endurace bikes are the first aluminium performance road bikes from Canyon to be specced with disc brakes. 

The launch of the new Endurace AL bikes follows the earlier news that Canyon will offer all of its road bikes with the option of disc brakes, when it unveiled the disc-equipped Aeroad and Ultimate models back in December. 

The lower spec of the two new models, the Canyon Endurace AL Disc 6.0 comes with a full Shimano 105 build. The Canyon Endurace AL Disc 7.0 is equipped with a Shimano Ultegra groupset and a higher price tag to match. 

The higher level build brings a negligible weight saving of 300g (8.5kg vs 8.8kg) across the whole bike, equating to 100g for every additional €100 it costs (€1,699 vs €1,399).

The assured shifting of the latest incarnation of Shimano 105 is so good that it comes close to rivalling its big brother Ultegra, which makes the Endurace AL Disc 6.0 appear to be the better value option. 

Canyon's top-spec disc brake road bikes look set to be rolled out in the WorldTour in the 2017 season when the UCI's disc brake launch restarts in the Spring. 

If you’ve recently cleaned your rear cassette and applied liberal amounts of lube then you may find that excess grease has found its way onto the rims of your rear wheel.

The first you’ll know of it is when you go out for a nice relaxing ride only to discover your rear brake making a right old racket.

When the rim is contaminated with grease, lube or a similar agent, it can coat the brake pads, too, reducing their traction and contributing to that horrible shrieking noise.

Cleaning them is a quick and easy procedure that will soon get you rolling in peace again.

TIME TAKEN: 20 minutes
MONEY SAVED: No squeaky brakes? Priceless!
YOU WILL NEED: 4mm and 3mm Allen keys, degreaser, cloth

Step 1 - Release the brakes

To get going, you’ll first need to undo your brakes’ quick-release mechanism by flipping the small cam lever upwards. This will open the brakes up, making it easy for you to pull the wheel out of the calliper.

Step 2 - Bring in the Allen key

Once that’s done, grab your 4mm Allen key and use it to loosen your brake pads from the brake calliper. Do this on both sides until you can remove them from the calliper completely.

Step 3 - Clean your brake pads

Applying some degreaser to your cloth, clean your brake pads of any grease and grime that may be coating them. Be thorough, because if you miss even a tiny amount you’ll have to do this job all over again – when you could be riding!

Step 4 - Now the wheel

As you did with the brake pads, apply degreaser to a clean cloth and run your finger around the wheel, being sure to scrub any grease off. Again, do it thoroughly as even the smallest amount may contaminate the brake pads.

Step 5 - Put your pads back on

After you’ve cleaned both pads and the wheel rim thoroughly, re-fit the brake pads using your 4mm Allen key. Make sure you fit them the right way round – they should be marked L and R and may have a directional arrow as well.

Step 6 - Finishing up

After tightening the brake’s quick-release lever, make sure the calliper’s brake arms are secure to the brake body by using your 3mm Allen key to tighten the two bolts on either side. Et voilà, no more squeaky brakes!

Just in time for the new racing season, Pinarello has unveiled the bike that Chris Froome and the rest of Team Sky will be riding in 2017: the Dogma F10. At first glance, it looks remarkably similar to the previous F8 (there is no F9 – the company simply decided that F10 sounded better), but Pinarello claims to have made improvements in stiffness, weight and aerodynamics, albeit fairly small ones.

Where the F8 was a radical redesign compared to its forerunner, the Dogma 65.1, the F10 is a subtle upgrade, with much left unchanged from the previous version. That’s probably a smart move, seeing as the F8 has proved itself over the past three years by winning 90 pro races for Team Sky, according to Pinarello, including two Tour de France titles. The F8 has also been Pinarello’s best-selling frame ever, so it’s understandable that it doesn’t want to make too many alterations to a winning formula.

Image 4 of 19

Image 4 of 19

Bigger down tube

The biggest change is at the down tube, which is now significantly chunkier. It has borrowed heavily from the down tube on the Bolide TT, Pinarello’s newest time-trial bike, and the idea is that the extra girth allows air to flow more smoothly around the water bottle, which is partially hidden in a concave recess.

The result of this change, according to Pinarello is an impressive 12.6% reduction in drag at the down tube (with a water bottle in place). When Cyclist asked Pinarello engineer Paolo Visentin how this affected the drag for the bike as a whole, he responded that overall drag reduction is in the region of 3-4%, which is small but not insignificant at a time when any additional gains are getting harder and harder to come by.

Without the bottle in place, the new down tube offers only a slight aerodynamic advantage over the F8, but as Massimo Poloniato, another Pinarello engineer, points out to us, ‘We designed the frame with the bottle because you always ride with a bottle.’ It’s a fair point.

Image 3 of 19

Image 3 of 19

Sleek and stiff

Another nod to improved aerodynamics comes with the flaps behind the fork dropouts, as seen on the Bolide TT and Bradley Wiggins’s Hour record-breaking track bike, the Bolide HR. These little nubbins smooth the air as it passes the dropouts, helping to offset the drag caused by the quick release skewers. It may seem like a minor adjustment, but Pinarello claims it has improved aerodynamics at the forks by 10% on the Bolide TT. The fork flaps on the F10 are smaller than on the time-trial bike, so offer fewer aero gains (Pinarello hasn’t given exact figures) but the company claims it is the best compromise of drag reduction and additional weight.

Also the forks have been widened slightly to make it easier to accommodate 25mm tyres, but other than that the tube shaping remains remarkably similar to the F8, and the overall geometry is identical.

On closer inspection, an almost imperceptible change is that the down tube has shifted across to the right by about 2mm at the point where it joins the bottom bracket shell. This is all part of Pinarello’s principle of asymmetry, whereby the bike needs to be stiffer on one side than the other to compensate for the fact that the drivetrain sits on one side, and so the forces on the frame are not equal on each side.

By shifting the down tube slightly compared to the F8, Pinarello claims that it contributes to a 7% increase in overall stiffness of the frame, which in turn has allowed the engineers to strip away some carbon fibre, leading to a reduction in frame weight of 6.3% (a size 53cm frame is a claimed 820g, down from 875g for the F8).

Image 6 of 19

Image 6 of 19

Are friends electric?

When Team Sky saddle up for the Tour Down Under in a few days’ time, their F10s will be specced with Shimano Dura-Ace R9150 Di2, and perhaps one of the significant reasons for the creation of the F10 is its compatibility with the new electronic groupset.

The bigger, flatter down tube of the F10 has provided space to integrate the E-Link junction box for the new Di2, making a neat unit for adjustments and recharging, and removing it from its previous position beneath the stem, where it was both unattractive and unaerodynamic.

As before, the battery is hidden away inside the frame, and the cables are internalised to keep everything as neat and aero as possible. For those who don’t want to go electric, the frame is compatible with all other groupsets, mechanical and electronic.

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Image 8 of 19

The big sell

So who is the F10 aimed at? Other than those with deep pockets, Pinarello has made sure that the new bike stays true to the concept of the ‘all-round race bike’. It’s not the lightest or the most aerodynamic bike in the pro peloton, but it aims to do everything well – climbing, descending, sprinting – while looking good at the same time.

The changes to the bike in terms of weight, stiffness and aerodynamics help to make the headlines, but perhaps the most important element is what Pinarello hasn’t changed. Exceptional handling is what Pinarello prides itself on most, and so it has been at pains to ensure that this characteristic of the F10 hasn’t been affected by any of the other updates.

First ride review

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Image 14 of 19

The Pinarello F10 has a lot to live up to. Its predecessor, the F8, has two Tour de France victories to its name, thanks to Chris Froome, as well as a host of other wins. Team Sky will be racing the F10 for the first time at the upcoming Tour Down Under (starting 15 th Jan), but Cyclist was fortunate to get to test ride the new bike at the launch in Sicily back in December.

There was a great deal of secrecy surrounding the launch, as Pinarello didn’t want details of the bike getting out before its official release date of 10 th January, so the small peloton of journalists was under strict instructions not to be photographed by members of the public as we rode around Sicily’s streets in the shadow of Mount Etna. Considering we were all in matching kit emblazoned with the F10 logo, and we had a couple of Italian Team Sky riders in attendance, we were hardly likely to go unnoticed by the other cyclists out on the roads. I was uncertain as to how we should prevent unwanted photography, but having resolved to tackle any camera-toting bystanders to the ground and forcibly delete their photos, we set off on our ride.

In the wheel tracks of champions

Joining us for our test ride were Team Sky’s Gianni Moscon and Elia Viviani, the latter of whom was still basking in his omnium victory at the Rio Olympics. To ride with a pro does strange things to you. I found myself paying more attention than normal to my posture on the bike, and I put in a lot of effort into trying to look effortless on the ascents. Fortunately, the F10 helped a lot in this regard.

I loved the F8 for its poise and balance, and the F10 has exactly the same feeling. As we slipped along Sicily’s rural lanes, I noticed how at ease I was with the bike, despite having only thrown a leg over it for the first time a few minutes earlier. It positively glided, with only minimal effort required to tease it through corners or accelerate it back to the group (usually after I’d become distracted by a sea view).

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Image 16 of 19

I found the F10 particularly adept at climbing, despite it not being a specific ‘climber’s bike’. Pinarello has shaved a few grams from the F10 compared to the F8, but I couldn’t notice any difference. What I could notice was the efficient way any force on the pedals translated into forward motion thanks to the incredible stiffness of the frame, which meant the bike cruised up slopes with no wasted effort.

As I drifted up one long climb, I became aware of a whooshing noise from behind me, and I barely had time to turn my head before Viviani came sprinting past, testing out the bike’s properties for himself. I put on a brief spurt of speed, but by the time I rounded the next corner he was already out of sight. The next time I saw him was at the top of the climb, perched on his top tube and taking in the view towards Mount Etna.

It seemed like a good opportunity to ask him about his own views on the F10 and whether he could discern any differences to the F8. ‘For sure,’ he replied in stuttering English. ‘I can feel the geometry is the same, but I feel the bike is simple to move in the corners. It’s a really stiff frame. You feel it when you push on the pedals – it’s ready to go. I think we’re going better and better with every frame we change.’

He’s right about the corners. If there was one thing I enjoyed more than climbing on the F10, it was descending. The bike tracked bends with precision, letting me weave through a series of switchbacks with the confidence to stay off the brakes, something I was extremely thankful for while attempting to stay on the wheel of WorldTour pro in full flight (while trying to look nonchalant).

Handling is something that Pinarello bikes have become renowned for, and the company was at pains to ensure that the new F10 ‘rides like a Pinarello’. As we dropped down the long descent to the coast, it quickly became apparent that it had succeeded. The F10 handles as assuredly as any bike I have ridden. Both Viviani and Moscon told me that they could feel it had a little extra nippiness compared to the F8 – a bit more racy in its handling – but I’d have to take their word for that. For me, it felt like a bike that flatters its rider, making every sharp turn or sudden movement feel easy to control.

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Image 18 of 19

On the flatter sections, the F10 should outperform the F8 thanks to slightly improved aerodynamics, but I struggled to notice any change. It certainly zipped along, again with the impression that not a watt of power was being lost to flex, but it wasn’t discernably different to the F8. That stiffness does mean that the bike could be quite harsh. Our ride only lasted for around 70km, and was on pretty smooth roads, so I’d need to give it a longer outing on the pothole-strewn roads of Britain before I could really comment on the compliance levels of the F10, but it’s plain that Pinarello didn’t put comfort high on the list when designing the F10. It’s a race bike, and its job is to put Chris Froome on the top step of the podium, not to ensure he has a pleasant outing.

The verdict

If Chris Froome can take yellow at this year’s Tour de France, it will elevate him to a very exclusive group of four-time winners, and ensure the Pinarello Dogma F10 gains legendary status.

For me, I struggled to notice significant differences to the F8, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The F8 was an exceptional bike, and the F10 is too, only now you can have the latest Dura-Ace Di2 all neatly imbedded in the frame. (For the record, the new Di2 functions exactly like the old Di2.)

As soon as Cyclist gets hold of an F10 for a more in-depth test, we can get a clearer picture of its abilities, but there’s no doubt that this bike contains all that was best about the F8 and perhaps has a little bit extra to offer.

If Froome fails to make it to number four, he won’t be able to blame the bike.

Rohan Dubash is described by many in the industry as the ‘mechanic’s mechanic’. His knowledge of bicycles is fathomless, and following his mechanical exploits on Facebook is fascinating.

If you have 10 minutes to spare, it’s worth a look to see how he resurrects bikes from the dead, stripping them to their constituent parts and then inspecting, washing, replacing, relacquering and polishing them to within an inch of their lives because, as Dubash says, ‘Rust never sleeps.’ 

Alongside his work, he’s also proud owner of a collection of immaculate bicycles, as well as a garage-load of parts from Campagnolo.

‘I’m not really sure why I’ve got all this stuff,’ Dubash says. ‘Maybe it’s just a memorial of 35 years’ worth of cycling. I think I’ve met too many people who sold bikes or just threw them away and regretted it.’ 

When it comes to bicycles and bike parts, some people’s collections have logical order. Perhaps they’re collecting derailleurs or every model of Colnago, but Dubash’s collection is more of a journey through time.

He’s like the protagonist from High Fidelity who knows precisely when he bought each record and what it meant to him at the time. 

Tools, glorious tools

Alongside the bikes are the tools, which double up as both the things needed for his day-to-day work but also as a collection in their own right.

‘It’s not that I actively started collecting, it’s just that every few weeks you come across a job that you need a new tool for, so I keep them and they sort of build up. Just random things, like Royce bottom bracket tools or something,’ Dubash says.

‘Or this Campagnolo left-handed C-Record crank remover for when you’ve taken the captive bolt out. C-Record cranks used to ship with a captive bolt extractor, but they used to back out.

Everyone used to take them out, so to remove the crank you then need a left-handed crank extractor. These go for £50 on Ebay now.

‘When I rode L’Eroica with my mate, his captive bolt fell out and it uses a 7mm allen key. It took us 30 miles to find a service van and I had to go through this box of hundreds of allen keys before I finally found one. That’s part of reason people hated them. 7mm, seriously?’

Destination grease

Some parts of Rohan’s tool collection are more precious than others, simply for their rarity. He produces a fading plastic tub.

‘This is original Campagnolo grease. It’s getting low now though. I’ve had it for years. It’s quite an iconic thing, the Campagnolo grease pot. I have this other grease, which has the period correct aesthetic but obviously isn’t the real Campag grease as I don’t want to waste it. I’ve still got this for very special jobs if I need it.’

Dubash’s favourite item is clearly his Campagnolo toolkit. ‘I bought this in 1989 with my life savings and I had it for 10 years and never used it.

‘It just sat under my bed, so I sold it to a guy because I wanted to finish my home cinema, and as I soon as I sold it I thought, “What have I done? I’m going to order another one,” but they didn’t make them any more.

For 15 years I rued the day I sold it. Then I got a Facebook message saying, “You probably don’t remember me but I bought your Campag toolkit years ago, do you want to buy it back?” Well, I bit his hand off. I use it regularly now.’

Labour of love

Spending time around bike collectors, it starts to become clear why it’s so appealing. It’s about the beauty of the parts, and the knowledge that the bike you are constructing is as close to the original as possible. Unfortunately not all parts of a bike stand the test of time.

‘I paid an eye-watering amount for some brake levers once, as I didn’t want scratched ones. The rubber hoods are a sod too – you can get copies now but life’s too short so I get the genuine ones.

‘It’s terrifying because if they’re perished they can tear when you put them on and, well, there’s no way back from that, is there? There’s no “emoji” for that – a torn lever hood and a sad face.’

Other items haven’t stood the test of time for different reasons, like the Modolo Kronos time-trial brakes that at the time must have seem flawed but now seem ludicrous. 

‘Yeah, they were terrible. They came with an instruction book to give to a framebuilder so you could make your frame fit them.

‘I set my fastest-ever TT time using these: it was pouring with rain and as I approached a roundabout I put the brakes on and nothing happened. I just shot straight over without losing any speed.’

Maybe someday...

And what is Dubash’s goal for all these bikes and parts? ‘My intention is to get them all working and have them ready to go. I’ve got 13 bikes in total I think, but I can’t ride any of them.

‘That’s the worst bit really. I could build them all back up but it’s just a case of finding the time to make it happen. Certainly not until the house is finished, anyway.’

--

Moser Pro Team SL

‘This is the bike I rode in L’Eroica this year and I’ve had it since 1986. Well, not quite. I sold it in 1986 but then I bought it back and… oh no! Look! Rust never sleeps. I missed a bit. Oh man, I’ve got to sort that out!’

And with that the bike is taken next door, placed in the workstand and hurriedly disassembled to attack the rust.

‘I was working at JE James in Chesterfield and these came through Caratti Sport, who were the first ever distributors of Specialized products back in 1983, I think.

Anyway, one of the owners rode for Moser and they had contacts in Italy. Well, they turned up in a van and said, “Do you want to have a look at what I’ve got?”

‘Back then there wasn’t a distributor like now so he had this, a Rossin, a Battaglin, a Pinarello and a Daccordi. And basically I bought them all and this was the first one I sold.

‘The guy had it for six months until he sold it to someone else, who then sold it to someone else who was a mate of mine. He wanted to sell it to buy one of those Look carbons.

‘Back then we had no money, so if you wanted a new bike you had to sell your old bike. I think I gave him £60, a headset press and a bottom bracket cutter.

‘When I got it home I was a bit sad as I noticed there was some cable rub, but the thing I was more sad about was the fact he’d be running Shimano on it.

‘He had a Dura-Ace headset, which was about 5mm lower than Campag so the headset didn’t fit. I put it away in 1987 and it sat in a box for years. 

‘Anyway, I heard about Cliff Shrubb [the late London-based framebuilder] and I thought maybe I’ll get the forks dechromed, take the old steerer out, put a new one in and get it rechromed.

‘So I took it to him and he said, “Why? Why don’t I just braze a new bit on top?” and I looked at him like he was mad. I asked him how he’d match the thread and he said, “Don’t you worry about that,” so I went back a week later and it was perfect. You can’t even see the join.

‘Anyway he charged me £10, then gave me a KitKat and a cup of tea.

‘The brakes have a special story. Many, many moons ago, when C-Record first launched in 1984, the Campag wholesaler rang me up and said, “I’ve got something you might be interested in.

‘They’re the Campagnolo cabinets from the Milan show – do you want them? The only caveat is that you have to buy the groupsets in the cases.”

‘There was Triomphe, Victory and C-Record with Cobaltos, as the Delta brakes had been sidelined at this point. I had to sell off the groupsets but the guy who bought it wanted Deltas, so I kept these Cobaltos [right, complete with a blue ‘gem’ on the mounting nut].

‘I suppose they’re the most Campag thing I own.’

--

Colnago Mexico

‘This is my Holy Grail bike really – it took me a long time to get this. I had one in 1982 and sold it to buy a Colnago Master.

‘After I sold it, I just regretted it constantly. I’d kept a lot of bits with the thought that I’d get another but finding a Mexico in
a 59cm that hasn’t been resprayed is almost impossible.

‘One came up on Ebay but I didn’t have the money to buy it there and then. I’d got this old DeKerf mountain bike that had been under a sheet for six years that a mate was interested in.

‘We thrashed out a deal, and I put exactly what he gave me on Ebay with 15 seconds to go and won the Mexico. I drove up to Leicester to get it and, well, they’re never as nice in person are they?

‘It was all rusty and it had some bird shit on the saddle. But anyway, I got it home and just slowly brought it back to life.

‘It’s a bit of a bastard child, the frame. It came with Columbus Air forks, which are very rare and it’s supposed to have a crimp in the top tube and the down tube, but it hasn’t got a crimped down tube.

‘I was a bit gutted when I saw that but I couldn’t just walk away from it because I’d never find one again.

‘I’d kept some of the groupset. Rings, cranks, gear levers – the brakes came with the bike. The bars are from Germany. They’re SuperLeggera, which I didn’t have at the time.

‘They’re super-rare now, especially in larger sizes. You can get them, but they cost hundreds. Some of the prices of these things have escalated beyond all comprehension.

‘New old-stock Super Record headsets are about £300 now. But if you’ve got a project and you want to finish it, you’ve not got a choice.

‘It’s not just any chainset. That’s my original chainring from 1982. A friend of mine was a dental technician and he took off all the anodising by hand, then went around all the engraving and tidied the whole thing up.

‘It’s original paint on the frame too – there’s a little chip there, and one there.

‘The only thing that’s sad is that this has become the definitive retro bike. If you do a retro ride there are always going to be loads of red Colnagos of varying standards.’

--

Raleigh Team Castorama 753

‘This hasn’t been out of the box for a long, long time. It’s a homage to Laurent Fignon. You couldn’t buy these, so it’s not actually a Raleigh.

‘It’s a bit convoluted but basically in 1988 I’d switched on to Fignon as being my favourite rider and I really wanted to build a replica of his Gitane because I used to have a thing about building replica team bikes.

‘I went to this little bike shop in France and tried to order a Gitane team frame in 753 [Reynolds steel]. He rang up the company that made them and it worked out around £700, when a Master at the time was about £500.

‘A few weeks later they announced Raleigh would be the sponsor for 1989 and I thought, “Phew, that was a close escape, wasn’t it?”

‘So I said to the Raleigh rep, can you get me a team frame? He said they weren’t selling them as they’d got rid of all their builders. I could buy a replica bike, but that was 653 not 753.

‘I bought the replica and built it up as close as I could but in my heart I knew it wasn’t right. Anyway, I had this cunning plan.

‘I got hold of a set of transfers and then I did some digging. A rep told me he’d been to a place in Worksop that had a load of Castorama [Fignon’s team] frames hanging up – turns out they were doing the contract work for the team.

‘So I drew up the frame and ordered it from Columbia in Worksop but I didn’t get them to paint it. I took it to Roberts and got them to spray it pearl white and then I stickered it up.

‘Fignon used Simplex, which breached his contract with Campag so he put these little rubbers on the gear levers [above right]. They’re not easy to find. Green ones, yes. Black ones, yes. But blue ones? Took me about a year to find them.

‘The big joke is I couldn’t get a head badge, so this is ripped off an old Raleigh Mustang mountain bike and I’ve just taped it on.’

Italian stalwart De Rosa has announced the launch of the latest version of its flagship race bike, the Protos. 

'The new Protos is the evolutionary result of years of research, innovation, design and collaboration layered onto the knowledge and instinct absorbed and accumulated over 60+ years of bicycle development and projecting that into the future in order to remain true to our family’s vision of producing the perfect bike for each customer', said Cristiano De Rosa upon the bike's launch.

In terms of specific performance gains though, De Rosa is claiming that the new Protos has managed to shed 20% of its weight compared with the old model, largely thanks to a new carbon layering system that its employed. CM63, to give it a name, is made up of four types of modulus and high modulus carbon, which De Rosa say has enabled them to maintain a decent stiffness-to-weight ratio.

Image 3 of 7

Image 3 of 7

'I have always believed that the best possible bicycle is the one we haven’t conceived of or created – yet,' says founder Ugo De Rosa. 'I have instilled that concept into the minds and hearts of all the members of my family as well as our entire staff; our goal must continue to be to uncover the most innovative solution to the question: "How can we create the perfect bicycle for our customers?“ Our duty is, and must always be, to offer what our customers have not yet dared to desire – meeting their needs, exceeding their expectations and igniting their aspirations.'

The new Protos will be present in the pro peloton this year with the Italian pro continental outfit Nippo-Fantini, led by former Giro winner Damiano Cunego. This special edition Protos will be equipped with Campagnolo Super Record EPS V3, Campagnolo wheels, FSA Attack handlebars and a saddle by Selle Italia.

£TBC, i-ride.co.uk

According to Victor Major, a carbon expert and CEO of Taiwanese-Belgian bike brand Velocite, the recently-launched Pinarello Dogma F10 uses a design that he owns a patent for.

The issue concerns the concave downtube design, around the bottle cage, visible on the new Pinarello Dogma F10 as well as the latest Bolide time trial bike, released in May 2016.

Major has concern for the way it reflects the design on Velocite's Syn bike.

Velocite Syn downtube

"If we had not patented the concave down tube design I would have personally been very flattered that a noted bicycle brand like yours chose to use our design," said Major, who claims to hold three patents on the concave design, registered in both China and Taiwan. 

"I initially alerted you to this issue in May 2016,"he said in an open letter published on the Velocite website.

"I observed our design and associated aerodynamic performance claim on the Bolide TT bike, only to be met with complete silence until July when three members of your engineering team checked out my LinkedIn profile for some reason.

"They did not talk to me, or anyone in our company."

Dogma F10 downtube

Major's legal team got in contact with those of Pinarello, and were told in August that they would recieve further correspondance in September 2016.

"Well it is now January 10th 2017 and there is still no response to our concerns," reads the letter. "Instead today you released your second model that uses our intellectual property, the new Pinarello Dogma F10."

"I could understand that perhaps you used our intellectual property by accident when you made the new Bolide TT," Major concludes.

"However, with the new Dogma F10 your use of our intellectual property is deliberate. You know it belongs to us. You were notified. You chose not to engage with us. What do you expect should happen next?"

Pinarello have made no public comment about the claims.