Cyclist: While many companies claim to have invented the carbon fibre bicycle, there is general consensus that you made the first fully carbon fibre frame to be raced at the Tour de France. How did that come about?

Craig Calfee: The potted history is I got my start with carbon fibre working for a company making composite shells for racing rowing boats.

I built my first all-carbon fibre bike in 1987 as a result of crashing my steel Schwinn, and two years later I’d hired a machinist and we’d started trading under the name Carbonframes [Calfee now sells under his own name].

We were watching the 1989 Tour de France and Greg LeMond was riding his rebranded TVT and we were really ragging on it, saying how we could make a better bike because this is just glued carbon tubes in aluminium lugs, but we figured he had a sponsorship deal.

But then this guy who brought in Time pedals to the US, sponsoring Greg at the time, saw our bikes and said we should send one to Greg’s dad because they were looking for custom carbon bikes for the whole team.

So we did, he loved the look of it and we went from there. The team ended up riding my bikes in the 1991 Tour.

Cyc: At the time, very few other riders would even go near carbon. What was different about LeMond?

CC: Greg was an open-minded guy, but the thing that convinced him was descending on my bike.

He’d just finished an uphill TT at Paris-Nice, the first time he’d ridden it. I saw him at the top and he said, ‘Well it climbs great, but the real test is how it descends so I’m going to take it down the backside of the mountain and meet you at the hotel.’

I ended up hanging out at the bottom with his mechanic, Julien DeVries – he’s Eddy Merckx’s old mechanic, kind of conservative – and he’s like, ‘Are you sure this is safe? We can’t afford to lose Greg.’

He was pretty stern and quiet while we waited. The image of Greg flying down a mountain on a bike made by some long-haired guy from San Francisco didn’t appeal to him, but then Greg rolls in, this big smile on his face.

Julien turns to me and says, ‘You’ve got it made now, Craig.’

Cyc: The name Carbonframes or Calfee has never appeared on any WorldTour down tubes. Why is that?

CC:  Well, Greg bought the 18 frames for the team out of his own pocket. He had his own bike company and was the team’s bike sponsor, so my frames had his name.

We did agree to have a little sticker of ours on the left chainstay, though.

Years later Patrick Lefevere asked us about sponsoring Team Domo. We were closing in on a deal for three years – 100 bikes.

Or that’s what I thought. Lefevere says, ‘So that’s 100 bikes per year,’ and I’m like no, my frames will easily last three years. You can just repaint them.

He says, ‘No, we need 100 per year. We need something to sell to pay the salaries over winter.’

I got it, but for us it wasn’t financially viable, so it never happened. Now you’ve got to add in $2million on top of a deal like that.

I’d rather put money into my bike designs.

Cyc: What designs have you been working on recently?

CC: I got pretty excited about a small-wheeled bamboo e-bike we made, which we’ve geared for about 40mph.

Imagine having quick, long-range transport that isn’t oily and dirty and can fit in the hallway of your public building or next to your desk.

Also bamboo is a great material. I’ve been in Eritrea with Team Rwanda, teaching them how to repair carbon frames, but you think how useful bamboo could be for building bikes in such places, where getting other materials is a logistical nightmare.

We’ve also been looking more and more at suspension in road bikes.

We have rear damping in our Manta RS bike already, and we’re working on something for the front. I think full suspension is where the future’s at.

Cyc: Really? What makes you say that?

CC: It’s pretty simple. When you’re on the bleeding edge or your bike handling skills and the road surface are questionable, suspension will make you crash less often and you’ll win the Tour de France more often.

Look at riders in winning positions who’ve crashed out of big races and it’s pretty much always down to lack of traction.

Suspension gives you more traction, which makes you faster and safer. It’s why motorbikes and cars have it.

It also decreases rolling resistance so is more comfortable, meaning less rider fatigue and more energy saved. It makes total sense.

Cyc: Suspension has been orbiting cycling for a long time but as yet hasn’t found its own traction. Why is that?

CC: A good analogy is motorbike racing. Telescopic forks on racing motorbikes is a pretty bad design for suspension and there have been tonnes of better solutions.

But they never catch on because that rider has been riding that type of fork since he was 12.

He might agree an alternative is faster, but when they’re hanging it all out there they know that crappy old fork’s limits and that makes them faster.

They don’t have time to relearn that muscle memory. It’s tough to make that mental shift, and that’s one of the big hurdles in cycling.

But people told me my carbon fibre bikes would never catch on, so believe me when I say traction enhancement will be on every bike in the Tour de France one day. 

Cyc: Do you see anything on the horizon with new material technology?

CC: The big one is graphene, which people are trying to use in the matrix material to make carbon fibre more damage-tolerant.

That’s the one place carbon fibre could use some improvement. As far as I know, no one in bikes has managed to utilise graphene very well yet – it’s not quite ready for prime time.

So I don’t see any big breakthroughs coming any time soon, but certainly there will be improvements in carbon laminates.

Cyc: We’ve heard graphene can filter seawater for drinking…

CC: Now there’s a story – a bike that makes water! But in all seriousness I think the bicycle has consumed more human hours of concentration and engineering than any other technology on the planet.

Millions of inventors, tinkerers, home mechanics all staring at bikes for over 100 years, trying to think of better ways of doing something.

But a lot of things have trickled down from bikes into other areas, so it’s all good.

One of the oldest names in mainstream cycling, just about every old cycling fanatic can tell you a story about a Cinelli product they owned and adored.

Converting that past adulation into ongoing business is never an easy task, yet it’s just what Cinelli has managed with panache.

Still making a fabulous range of components, the company has expanded frame options over the years and lately, with steel once again rising in popularity, it has added new models to its stable, including the Nemo Tig.

Constructed from tubing provided by sister company Columbus, it makes for a thoroughly Italian affair.

Chicken Cycles offers the Nemo in two formats, either as a frameset or a complete bike. The former option allows you to tailor the build to your budget and requirements, but plumping for the latter shows what is possible if you’re prepared to spend a bit.

Cinelli has taken a less traditional route for steel and designed it for the needs of a racer, giving a much more contemporary look with larger diameter tubes and a pressfit 86.5mm bottom bracket.

With its triple-butted, oversized tubeset, Cinelli has done a great job as it’s a firm ride but not overly so, despite the increase in tube diameter.

Those who try the Nemo and compare it to carbon will be pleasantly surprised as it delivers much of the focus but without the punishing ride.

Intriguingly, though, the front end doesn’t always feel the most direct, which we put down to a couple of things: the tyres, while good, aren’t true race options; and the positivity of the rear end that makes the front feel slightly lacking.

The Nemo is available in both frameset and complete build, so you can choose just where to invest your cash or use Cinelli’s experience.

In this case, we went with the factory option that builds the Italian theme – Campagnolo Chorus groupset, Miche SWR RC 36 wheels plus Cinelli carbon components.

Without doubt it’s the wheels that stand out the most with carbon construction and a feel to them which led all our testers to comment on the ride quality.

Ratings

Frame 8/10; Components 9/10; Wheels 9/10; The ride 8/10

Verdict: Cinelli has come up with a focused bike that certainly wasn't created by committee. The result is a highly capable machine which, while working well, has curiously lost some of the soul that can make steel so appealing. Nevertheless, it's very agreeable machine if you're after a bike with a racing edge.

Spec

Award-winning framebuliding duo Caren Hartley and Matt McDonough have teamed up to form new bike brand Isen Workshop launching their first frameset, the handmade Isen All Season Road.

The rather stunning steel bike, brainchild of the London-based duo, has already seen its first batch of 30 frames sold within a week, and it is no surprise when you see the bike and its price.

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Image 3 of 8

Isen has sourced its steel tubing from the world-renowned Reynolds, Columbus and Dedacciai, colouring the traditional-looking frame in a rainbow of colours reminiscent of spilt oil on a rainy day.

The bike has also remained en vogue with the industry's current love of endurance and audax bikes with clearance for 35c tyres, as well as coming with mudguard mounts and flat mount discs.

Being built to be ridden in all scenarios using top-quality steel tubing that is is handbuilt in London, you would expect the price for the frame to be steep.

However, Hartley and McDonough have managed to retail the frame at £1,500, which goes a long way in telling you why these frames are selling so well.

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Image 6 of 8

Hartley and McDonough have made their names as some of the biggest framebuliders in the UK thanks to their work with their own respective brands.

Matt McDonough has been carrying the torch at Crystal Palace based Talbot frames since 2013 while Caren Hartley has been producing award-winning frames under the self-titled Hartley Cycles for the past decade.

The frameset will be officially launched at Herne Hill this week. 

London-based Bowman Cycles is a small but growing manufacturer, and that size gives some distinct advantages as latest trends and new technology can quickly be adapted to and rolled into its offerings.

It’s therefore interesting that the fourth machine off the design table should be one that hits an old niche, that of the mudguard-compatible, lightweight, winter machine that can be used all year.

It shouldn’t come as any sort of surprise though that Bowman has gone back to basics and created a thoroughly modern take on the do-it-all bike.

In fact, it's gone one step further, stating that it ‘combines the year-round dependability with enough zip to keep racers happy – a unicorn.’ That’s quite a mission statement!

Built using stainless steel, it’s a triple butted 17-4PH tubeset that works into a £1,600 frameset with a full carbon fork, so it’s not exactly a budget option, yet our version has been built with a choice set of components to make sure the end price is kept sensible.

As such it features the budget-conscious 11-speed Campagnolo Athena groupset and excellent Zonda C17 wheels. Keeping the Italian theme are Deda bar, stem and seatpost.

Primarily, Bowman sells framesets, so it’s easy to create a spec that best suits your preferences and needs. Despite the low-end groupset, the total weight is still only 8.5kg for the complete machine.

Bowman has spent money where it matters in the wheels and tyres and held back on the groupset, which can more easily be upgraded in stages as time goes by.

Out on the road, the frame’s qualities really show through. It’s a wonderfully nimble and lithe frame carrying the characteristics of quality steel: mild-mannered, big bump-damping, and comfy, with the positives you’d want from a race machine.

So it’s quick to respond, the weight is acceptable and it handles beautifully. While it wouldn’t be our inclination to agree with a manufacturer, it would seem that Bowman has created that mythical beast of a zippy all-rounder.

Ratings

Frame 9/10; Components 7/10; Wheels 8/10; The ride 9/10

Verdict: Seriously impressive work from Bowman, the stainless-steel frame offers durability and an inspired ride that wowed our testers, who loved its combination of road feel and comfort along with a purposeful edge that encourages you to push yourself; plus you can spec it any way you desire.

Spec

Don Walker points to the Russian writing on the driveside seatstay of his bike and smiles: ‘The Cyrillic says, “Handmade in Louisville, Kentucky, by American Capitalist Pig”.’

Even by the esoteric standards of handbuilt bicycles, this bright red machine is a masterpiece. It has been built by Walker, a 27-year veteran of the handmade bicycle scene, and is part serious collector’s item, part detailed homage to a bygone era of track racing and part comment on world politics.

‘The inspiration was the Masi track bike ridden in the Seoul 1988 Olympics team pursuit by Viatcheslav Ekimov,’ says Walker.

‘Ekimov was Russian, and it was the Reagan-Gorbachev era – the tail end of the Cold War. The world was a very heated place and there were lots of countries threatening to boycott Seoul.

‘In fact, it ended up being the last time the Soviet Union competed in an Olympics. The USSR dissolved in 1991.’

The Soviet Union wasn’t the only thing that was dissolved in the 90s. At one time bikes such as Walker’s creation were commonplace on the boards.

Known affectionately as ‘lo-pros’, they were built around a 650c front wheel paired to a 700c rear wheel. That meant the frames had outrageously sloping top tubes, as the long rear stays had to join up to the stumpy front fork.

The idea was twofold. Not only was the lead rider much lower down than with a 700c front wheel, but the smaller front wheels meant those following were able to tuck even tighter behind for a more aerodynamic pursuit train.

It clearly worked for Ekimov and his team, who took gold in 1988, but by 1997 the design had been outlawed after the UCI introduced a rule stating that both wheels must be the same size.

Happily, in the world of handbuilt bikes UCI rules don’t apply, so when long-time friend and amateur track rider Matt Haldeman came to Walker looking for a new bike, the Kentucky builder was only too happy to help. 

The low-down

‘I haven’t built a lo-pro bike since the 1990s, and I certainly haven’t done this type of fork and stem before,’ says Walker.

‘It’s also the first time I’ve done bi-lam construction. So with all that learning, trial and error and metal manipulation, I’d guess this was a 60-hour project.’

Most people will recognise a bi-lam construction (an abbreviation of bi-laminate) from seeing a mixed material frame, where a metal head tube is joined to a short section of metal down tube and top tube, which are then sculpted to look like traditional cast lugs before having carbon tubes slotted in.

The main difference here is this bike is all steel, and the bi-lam joints have been fillet brazed for a uniform look, where most mixed material bikes are TIG-welded.

More curious to the eye is the front assembly. It’s almost lost in the bike’s aggressive stance, but look closely and the stem and fork crown are one homogenous part.

The fork steerer is lopped off at the top of the head tube and secured with a stem cap, leaving the centre of the bullhorn bars barely a hair’s breadth from the top of the tyre.

‘The tubing is vintage Columbus KL, and the fork is period-correct Columbus Air. But I had to fabricate the crown stem from scratch.

‘It was trial and error with a 1.75-inch by 0.75-inch chromoly steel tube – fit and file, fit and file – then machine the other end to accept the stem clamp. It was all designed off the old photos of Ekimov’s Masi.’

As a labour of love, that would be enough for most builders, but Walker still wasn’t satisfied. He needed to get hold of the right components, and create the right paint scheme.

Riding through walls

Sourcing the components was almost as lengthy a process as building the frameset. The period-correct 3T Moscow bars, Selle San Marco Rolls saddle and flute-less Campagnolo cranks were one thing, but he nearly hit a roadblock with the seatpost and wheels.

‘They’re both 1980s Campagnolo, and truth be told the seatpost is wrong because we didn’t take into consideration the length of the aero portion.

‘This is as low as it can go, which is too high for Matt! And we just couldn’t find the right wheels, so we had to borrow these from a bike ridden by ex-pro track rider Steve Hegg. They still have his original tubs on.’

However, of all the details it’s the graphics that have Walker most excited. On the down tube is Cyrillic for ‘Walker’, there’s ‘Matislav Haldimanikov’ on the seat tube; the occasional hammer and sickle, and then there’s the man himself…

‘There was no way around it, the headbadge had to be a hammer and sickle, while pictured on the seat tube is Mikhail Gorbachev with another Cyrillic inscription.

‘Reagan said to Gorbachev in a famous speech, “Tear down this wall!” so the translation reads, “We don’t destroy walls, we destroy world records”.’

Perhaps no American Capitalist Pig has ever uttered more noble words.

The Specialized Tarmac isn’t just a model of bike – it’s a dynasty. The line began in 2003, and since then the various iterations of the Tarmac have claimed victories at every Grand Tour, multiple World Championships and Olympic Road Races, and even a handful of the cobbled Classics.

While on the surface the new Tarmac may look similar to its predecessor, with a near identical geometry for a 56cm frame, every single tube has changed in shape.

Perhaps most notably, the seatstays have dropped in height and are now reminiscent of the back end of the Venge ViAS.

The seat tube also uses a more aerodynamic D-shaped cross-section along with a cut-out for the rear wheel, which Specialized claims has contributed to a considerable reduction in drag.

The result is that Specialized’s ‘Win Tunnel’ (see what they’ve done there?) data shows this new Tarmac to be equal with the previous generation of Specialized Venge in aerodynamic terms.

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Image 3 of 22

‘Our tests show the new Tarmac saves 45 seconds over 40km compared to the current generation of Trek Émonda or Cannondale SuperSix,’ says Chris Yu, Specialized’s director of integrated technologies. Of course, we’ve only got his word for that.

One-stop solution

The gains in aerodynamics reflect a wider desire to make the bike more versatile for Grand Tour pros – a one-stop solution to racing.

‘The dynamics of pro racing have changed over the years,’ explains Yu. ‘Every 10km the decision on which of our previous bikes was most suitable would switch.

‘So that’s why we have taken the decision to make a bike that is appropriate across all different types of stages and terrain.’

With a weight of 733g in a size 56, the Tarmac could claim to be one of the lightest-ever aerodynamically orientated frames (30g lighter than Pinarello’s F10 X-Light in a size 53).

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Image 4 of 22

The revised model is about more than just the frame, though. Every component is a Specialized product, save for the drivetrain and brakes.

In that sense it’s important to consider the way in which the Tarmac has been adapted to its componentry – and specifically the tyres.

The S-Works Tarmac comes specced with a 26mm Turbo Cotton tyre that measures 29mm in profile when coupled with the Roval CLX 50 wheels (the bike is capable of fitting up to 31mm tyres).

This is a shift not only in design but in the identity of the bike, opening up more varied types of terrain, be it cobbled Classics, gravel tracks or smooth roads.

I used the S-Works Tarmac on all these surfaces, and it never failed to impress. 

On the Tarmac

I rode the previous generation of the Tarmac, the SL5, a great deal, and came to consider it a benchmark by which to judge other endurance racers – specifically when it came to handling.

As such, seeing it so drastically changed, and hearing that the handling had been altered, left me a little apprehensive.

At first the new Tarmac felt very different. The wider tyres, more rigid design and more aerodynamic curves made it faster, racier and a little less compliant than I expected.

Over time, though, it became clear that the SL6 was an improvement over its predecessor.

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Image 5 of 22

Aerodynamics are tough to quantify without a wind-tunnel, but the Tarmac definitely held speed well at around 40kmh, and felt more akin to a fully aero road bike in pure speed terms.

However it was the rigidity of the new frame that struck me the most on my initial ride.

I just wanted to repeatedly stamp on the pedals and sprint all-out (just look at Sagan’s finish line sprint at the Worlds to see how well it copes under thousands of watts).

Pulling away from traffic lights I occasionally found the front wheel lifting off the ground, so eager was I to eke out every watt I could.

Well tuned

That stiffness seemed well tuned from front to rear, and I was a little shocked by how rigid the bottom bracket was. Under pressure it seemed not to flex at all, but to transfer power directly to the road.

That stiffness coupled nicely with finely tuned geometry to create supremely precise cornering and ample stability on descents.

Indeed, handling was a big target for Specialized with the new Tarmac, and the manufacturer worked closely with its WorldTour teams to target sharper handling and better feedback from the road.

The consequence was a revised approach to scaling geometry to sizing, and doubling the number of plies in the carbon to tune the behaviour of the material itself.

Specialized, unsurprisingly, claims team members have all reported an improvement in handling. For my part, I was startled by how palpable that change was.

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Image 7 of 22

To put it in the clearest way I can, the Tarmac made me feel as though I could make any corner at any speed.

That stability and confidence equally lent itself to riding on gravel or chalk roads, and I found myself confidently sprinting off-road on terrain I wouldn’t usually dare to take a road bike onto.

Much of the credit has to go to the wide Turbo Cotton tyres. They feel and perform fantastically, but the caveat is that they’re best preserved for dry summer days, a point brought home to me by five punctures on wet roads.

Specialized pricing

If there is one complaint, it’s with the pricetag. At £3,250 for the frame, to reach the RRP of £9,000 leaves £5,750 to cover the Roval wheelset, Shimano groupset and own-brand finishing kit.

By my calculations, buying the fully built bike doesn’t offer much discount from getting the components separately at full retail price.

In that financial sense, Specialized’s 2018 Tarmac Pro is a much more appealing bike. With Roval’s slightly-lower spec CL 50, Ultegra Di2 and a slightly lower grade of carbon, it comes in at £5,400.

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Image 8 of 22

I’m sure there’s a slight performance cost, but it will likely be hard to discern.

That’s where my criticism of the S-Works Tarmac ends. There are no elements of the design or spec I could imagine wanting to tweak. Like a budding juvenile infatuation, I wanted to spend absolutely all my time with the Tarmac.

My rides were longer, faster and my riding companions inexplicably slower when I was aboard the Tarmac.

Spec

Specialized S-Works Tarmac SL6: Launch and first ride review

30 June 2017

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Image 19 of 22

By a measure of total individual wins, the Specialized Tarmac is the most successful of all the bikes atop the world sporting stage. With the brand new SL6, Specialized claim the triple crown of slicing weight, increasing stiffness and dramatically reducing aerodynamic drag.

Through its various iterations the Tarmac has won numerous World Championships, the Olympic Road Race and all three Grand Tours.

Its previous SL5 edition alone took over 200 victories at World Tour level since its release in 2014, being the choice of dozens of Specialized’s top sponsored riders. This redesign, then, grabbles with heavy expectation.

Aerodynamics

While on the surface the Tarmac may look similar, with a near identical geometry for a 56cm frame. It has avoided the highly integrated componentry of Specialized’s Venge VIAS or the comfort focussed FutureShock technology of the Roubaix. Getting up close to the bike, some serious changes were evident.

Aerodynamics is probably the most drastic switch. Having not been targeted before in the Tarmac class, Specialized's Win Tunnel data shows this new Tarmac to be equal with the previous generation of Specialized Venge in terms of aero gains.

‘Our tests show that the new Tarmac saves 45 seconds over 40km compared to the current generation of Trek Emonda or Cannondale SuperSix,’ says Chris Yu, Specialized’s Director of Integrated Technologies.

Tube shapes

Most of those gains have come from a redesign of the fork, the seattube and the seaststays. The most visible change is the dropping of the seatstays, which coupled with a direct mount braking setup has neatened up the rear end.

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Image 12 of 22

The revisions of the tube profiles are where the biggest gains have been made.

Where the Tarmac has historically used a standard 27.2mm seatpost, Specialized has now equipped the SL6 with an aerodynamically designed seatpost and seattube with a D-shaped cross section. Specialized claims the new rear end tube shapes increase the overall compliance of the rear end.

A surprising modification is that overall all the tubes are now smaller in diameter than with the previous frame. Specialized claim the tubes to be stiffer and more efficient, arguing that the ‘days of “oversized is stiff” are gone’. The benefit, then, is threefold – reducing weight while increasing stiffness and compliance.

Part of this all around improvement is owing to an increase in the number of overall carbon plies being used – going from 350 pieces in the SL5 edition to 500 pieces in this edition.

Other small touches shouldn’t go unnoticed, such as an increase in the stiffness of the derailleur hanger. While often overlooked the performance of the hanger will significantly influence the performance of the shifting by aligning the mech in the right position.

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Image 6 of 22

Versatility and handling

Specialized have stressed that versatility is the most prominent demand of the new Tarmac SL6 targeting the varied demands of the modern Grand Tour stages. 

‘The dynamics of racing have changed over the years, so a professional racer's needs have changed,’ explains Yu. ‘Every 10 km the decision on which of our previous bikes was most suitable would switch. So that’s why we have taken the decision to make a bike that is appropriate across all different types of stages.’

Handling is of course a prominent element of this, and Specialized claim a considerable gain over what was already considered a benchmark with the SL5. Sponsored rider Peter Sagan described the difference as palpable, ‘It felt like a different bicycle, because it is much stiffer, much better handling… the reaction of bicycle is much better.’ 

Specialized argues that the smoothness of the ride afforded by these new tube shapes and layup contribute to this improved handling, as well as the newly designed fork.

Sizing specific

The fork has also been adapted to suit separate sizing, with three options of fork length: V1 for sizes 44cm, 49cm and 52cm, V2 for 54cm and 56cm and V3 for sizes 58 and 61cm. The forks become wider and deeper as they match larger frames to compliment the different handling of those larger geometry frames.

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Image 14 of 22

With the acquisition of the Retul fitting program, Specialized has undertaken what it calls a 'Rider First Engineered' approach. Capitalising on fit data to hone geometry across the sizing. As is common in the last few years, stack and reach ratios graduates in proportion as the sizing scales up from the smallest to largest frames.

The Tarmac has been designed with as a unisex platform, with women’s geometry and broader specification needs considered as much as men’s. Consequently the Amira has been scrapped in this year’s range. Impressively, the Women’s Tarmac begins at a size 44cm, though.

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Image 3 of 22

Of course one of the most significant updates is compatibility with wider tyres. Surprisingly the S-Works Tarmac will be specced with a 26mm Turbo Cotton tyre – measuring 29mm in profile when coupled with the equipped Roval wheels. The bike is capable of fitting up to 31mm tyres – opening up mild off-road terrains.

Typically, the S-Works edition has been coupled with Roval CLX 50 wheels along and Specialized saddle, stem and bars. The stem, interestingly, is an alloy composition. Specialized argue this presents a lighter and stiffer option than carbon. 

That overall package comes in impressively light, with the S-Works Ultralight UL limited edition frame coming in at 5.9kgs using lighter eecycleworks brakes and a shallower section Roval wheelset.

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Image 4 of 22

Price starts off at £3,500 with the Specialized Tarmac Expert. Below that the previoys generation SL5 will still be available throughout 2017 in a more affordable spec.

The previous generation SL5 frame offered diverse paint schemes and Specialized has unveiled a variety of special edition paint schemes.

The S-Works UL edition Tarmac is priced at £9,500 and the standard S-Works Tarmac at £9,000, with availability expected for July. See our next page for a full first ride review of the S-Works Tarmac.

First Ride Review: S-Works Tarmac SL6

The S-Works Tarmac has all the DNA of its predecessor but with a little extra punch and a little more smoothness

The previous S-Works Tarmac impressed several of the Cyclist team, being distinct in its all-round appeal and specifically its handling ability. On first impressions, this new edition has retained that appeal but honed a little of the top end performance, albeit with some concessions.

We rode the S-Works Tarmac in the hills of New Jersey, taking in middling climbs and some varied gravel-like terrain. I was impressed first and foremost by the specifiction of wider tyres, which carried none of the sluggishness or weight that can be a penalty of going wider.

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Image 2 of 22

The 26mm Turbo Cotton tyres rolled well but capably absorbed the imperfections of the road. So too did it offer ample stability and control on a gravel track that I would not normally take on with an endurance racer of this calibre. This would be a tempting option for a classic cobbled sportive.

The Turbo Cotton tyres also add something substantial to aesthetic, sitting right on trend with the peloton’s proclivity for cotton wall tyres. Broadly, though, I found the dropped seat stays a little less fetching than the Tarmac SL5’s lines, but was open to becoming accustomed to them.

Spending three rides with the bike, it was the overall speed that was most discernible from the previous iteration.

Holding Speed

While aerodynamic gains are extremely difficult to accurately measure on the bike, there is undoubtedly a palpable increase in speed with the SL6 over the SL5 generation Tarmac.

Specifically, it holds speed in a way that I was well accustomed to with the original Specialized Venge. Up above 40kmh on a flat road, the Tarmac just sits comfortably without too much input of power to maintain that speed. 

The SL5, by contrast, was spritely when changing speed but didn’t quite rumble along with the same sense of purpose on the flat.

Handling

In truth, despite Specialized’s claims I would be hard pressed to say the Tarmac SL6 handles better than the SL5. That’s largely owing to the quality of the SL5 when it came to sharp descending. It was a benchmark that I measured other frames by.

However, there’s no doubt that the S-Works Tarmac handles every bit as well as its predecessor, and I topped 80kmh on one of my initial test rides on a relatively technical descent. If I were pushing corners at the level of Sagan, I may have seen a gain with this frame over the previous Tarmac, but I suspect it exceeds my ability.

Comfort

Increased comfort is a big selling point with the new Tarmac, and there’s no doubting this is a comfortable endurance racer that will be well equipped for a long day in the saddle.

Some of that, however, has to be credited to the wider tyre spec. As any rubber enthusiast will know, 2mm on the tyres potentially changes more than the best carbon engineering. 

The rear end with its new aero seatpost is certainly more robust than the Tarmac’s front end, and it’s easier to perceive pangs from the road on the saddle than on the bars. That’s a big bonus for handling, where the front end is rarely unsettled.

All-rounder

The Tarmac will most likely suit even the highest of demands of a specialist rider in any road discipline – whether it’s flat-section Strava junkies, sprinters or climbing aficionados. With its 733g frame weight, this is an airy ascender.

The rigidity of the frame is the other ingredient to capable climbing, and also pays dividends when it comes to high-end power transfer. I leapt on the pedals at 1,000 watts and felt no discernible flex.

With an endurance specialist like the Tarmac, there’s no doubt that a long time may be necessary to decide whether it’s an ideal long-term partner. Look out for an in-depth review in the coming months.

Tom Ritchey is one of those cycle industry people who is easy to like – he’s been designing and making bikes for more than 40 years, they’re not heavily marketed, and they’re beautifully functional with excellent design and detail.

This is the UK exclusive first test of the updated Road Logic, the V2, but the changes from V1 are characteristically low-key. 

Ritchey has noted the trend for wider tyres so tweaked the frame to fit tyres up to 30mm wide.

Adapting the carbon fork wasn’t quite so simple, so that’s a completely reworked design.

A modern take on the classic steel frame, Ritchey has designed the internal and external shapes of the tubes, along with a triple-butting process that takes away material where it’s not needed to reduce weight, but kept it where required for weld strength.

As the main part of the Ritchey business is producing components, it’s no surprise that the Ritchey name appears on all parts bar the 105 groupset and inner tubes.

With a frame price of £1,119 and this complete bike at just under a grand more, it’s easy to see that the cost has been kept low and that’s reflected somewhat in the 9.2kg weight.

Without doubt, the weight is noticeable on the road as soon as it goes uphill or when sprinting, but at all other times you’d struggle to notice.

In fact, you’re more likely to pick up on the benefits as the Logic is extremely stable at speed, comfortable on choppy surfaces and eager to change direction when asked.

We swapped out the stem to a longer WCS C220 for fit reasons but otherwise ran the stock build. Having ridden and loved the previous version, the V2 didn’t quite match expectations, and we lay the responsibility at the door of the tyres and wheels.

The wheels are respectable and strong but weigh 3.2kg as fitted (including tyres and cassette) and that mass makes a big difference.

Sadly, the Tom Slick 27c tyres weren’t really up to scratch on a bike of this quality and didn’t encourage the lively performance we know the frame wants to offer, but swapping them for a lighter set would help get the most out of a fantastic frame.

Ratings

Frame 8/10; Components 7/10; Wheels 6/10; The ride 8/10

Verdict: The updated Road Logic keeps the same character, but wider tyres mean you can enjoy the beautifully crafted combination of comfort and poise across more surfaces. A fab all-rounder that can handle fast riding or simple cruising, but begs for a more expensive build to get the most out of it.

Spec

Salbutamol, The asthma medication that has been found to exceed the permitted limit within Chris Froome’s urine, is not one that we normally associate with undue performance gains.

Salbutamol is most often marketed as Ventolin, and most usually contained within a blue inhaler called a reliever inhaler. It is the most innocuous of asthma treatments and does not require a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) form as it has found to have little or no performance-enhancing effects in athletes unless they are asthmatic.

There is, however, a maximum dosage set out by WADA of 800 micrograms per 12 hours, or 1600 micrograms per 24 hours.

This is the limit which Froome is believed to have exceeded – which we will return to later.

Reliever, not enhancer

Salbutamol is part of a group of bronchodilators, which sit below a family of stronger corticosteroid drugs - these include budesonide and usually come in a brown inhaler called a preventer inhaler.

The function of a bronchodilator is purely to alleviate asthmatic symptoms, constriction of the airways, by relaxing the muscles in the lungs and widening the airways. It achieves this as a 'Beta-2 agonist', which creates signals which bring about dilation (widening) of the bronchial passages.

Salbutamol is usually prescribed without the requirement of any specific tests, but rather any form of breathing trouble or bronchial inflammation will warrant a doctor’s prescription.

Corticosteroids, by contrast, usually require a more serious condition and for use in sport require an ‘asthma provocation test’.

For this the athlete will see a specialist pulmonologist, who does something called flow volume loop testing – a test done at rest and then during exercise to see if there is any demonstrable narrowing of the airways.

Dosage

Pictured here is my own salbutamol inhaler. Assuming Froome has the same inhaler, it delivers 100 micrograms per actuation. The quantity found in his urine was 2000 nanograms per ml.

That would be only 2 micrograms within each ml of urine, but would suggest a dosage of around 16 puffs during a 12 hour period.

Clinically it’s not recommended to take more than 8 puffs in one day, which would be 800 micrograms, and the recommended dosage is 2 puffs - 200 micrograms.

This is partly due to possible side-effects such as increase in heart rate, but also as over-reliance on a preventer inhaler suggests poor control of the condition.

Symptoms requiring such heavy use of an inhaler would suggest the need for elevated treatment – long acting agonists or more potent steroids, for example.

This is most likely the reason why WADA set an upper limit for the drug, to discourage dangerous dosage and poor control of the condition rather than performance enhancements. 

Exceeding the limit

Conceivably, an athlete such as Froome may exceed the maximum dosage to alleviate symptoms of an asthma attack more quickly.

When people are admitted to hospital with acute exacerbations of asthma, for example, doctors may give 2500-microgram doses of salbutamol through a nebuliser, 1-2 hourly for the first 24 hours of admittance – a vastly greater quantity than the WADA maximum limit.

That greater dosage does increase the risks of possible side-effects such as tremors and elevated heartrate. There is also a much more concerning condition called paradoxical bronchospasm.

This is where the use of salbutamol constricts airflow even more during treatment. These side effects are the reason some athletes side for terbutaline, which is also a bronchodilator but requires a TUE.

As the dosage is released through the actuation of the inhaler, rather than in a pill or liquid form, it’s conceivable for the dosage to be metered incorrectly.

Another unknown in Froome's case is that the microgram dosage he inhaled doesn't necessarily equate to the nanograms of salbutamol in his urine. Some studies have shown that disproportionate spikes in salbutamol levels can occur in the body after inhalation.

This is what was argued by Diego Ulissi during an investigation for an adverse finding of salbutamol in his urine in 2014, and a reason he did not receive a full sanction.

Previous cases

There have been three significant cases of salbutamol levels triggering a positive test in cyclists, of which Froome is by far the highest profile.

• Diego Ulissi of Team Lampre-Farnese Vini during the 2014 Giro d'Italia. He had recorded levels of 1900ng/ml. He was initially issued a two year ban but this was reduced to 9 months on appeal.
• Alessandro Petacchi of Team Milram in 2007. He recorded levels of 1352ng/ml. He was initally cleared by the Italian Cycling Federation, citing human error. WADA appealed this and he was banned for one year.
• Alexandre Pliuschin, a Moldovan rider for Team Synergy Baku in 2014. Details are not available for the level of salbutamol he recorded, but he was suspended for six months.

First launched in 2003, the Specialized Roubaix paved the way for a new genre of race-ready road bikes that offered greater comfort and stability with a more relaxed fit.

Since then, it has been victorious over the hallowed cobblestones of its namesake event an impressive five times, and now Specialized has given the Roubaix its most significant update in over a decade.

Immediately noticeable is the absence of the signature Zertz elastomer inserts – the rubbery bits on the fork legs and seatstays aimed at reducing vibrations.

What Specialized has replaced them with is far more radical, as the new bike comes with a suspension system between the head tube and the stem, which Specialized calls Future Shock.

It’s basically a spring, and it delivers up to 20mm of vertical travel at the handlebars.

Future Shock

To explain the introduction of Future Shock, Chris Yu, head of applied technologies at Specialized, says there isn’t just one kind of compliance, there are two: splay and axial.

Splay refers to something bending (a seatpost flexing, for example), while axial compliance refers to something moving directly up and down along its axis (such as a mountain bike suspension fork).

‘Flex [splay compliance] can be effective in terms of the rider’s sensation of comfort, but at the front end of the bike, where stiffness is so critical to handling and performance, it’s not the most efficient solution,’ Yu says.

That thinking led Specialized to the idea for an axial suspension unit, but critically it had to be placed above the head tube, rather than below it.

That’s because in this location it’s not supporting your entire bodyweight but rather just a percentage of your upper body mass, thereby enabling the benefits of axial compliance without undesirable compression.

In other words, it’s designed to dampen bumps at the hands, while preventing the bike’s front end from bouncing up and down like a pogo stick. That’s the theory, but does it work?

The first thing anyone does when meeting the new Roubaix is to press on the handlebar to see how much it moves up and down.

The answer is quite a lot, which made me wonder just how stable it could be when riding aggressively out of the saddle or under hard braking. 

Pudding proven

I shouldn’t have worried. The movement of the Future Shock is barely perceptible most of the time – in a good way.

During my early tests I often found myself pedalling along and looking down at the little rubber cover to see if I could actually see it move. And I always could. It moves almost continuously, even over the smallest imperfections in the road surface.

What that means in terms of comfort is the Future Shock does a great job of smoothing out the bumps, big or small, yet what was most surprising was that even concerted sprint efforts didn’t create an unsettled or disconnected feeling at the bars.

When I went from a seated to a standing position on a steep climb, I would momentarily be more aware of its presence, but it never felt like the bike was robbing me of any power transfer.

In terms of stability and precision through turns, this Roubaix feels far more agile than the previous model.

The geometry is a noticeable step away from its predecessor, moving slightly closer to its racy sibling, the Tarmac.

Specialized has lopped 30mm off the stack height and given it 10mm extra reach, while the shortened chainstays and slightly steeper head angle have also reduced its wheelbase.

The bottom bracket is lower too, all of which brings this bike much closer to what I’d expect from a race-level machine.

Specialized also claims to have made this new platform considerably stiffer, while keeping the weight about the same as before.

That, and the fact that the whole system has spent time in the wind-tunnel to ensure it’s now slipperier than ever, does bear fruit out on the road.

There’s no doubt this latest Roubaix is a very different beast to the older model. The chance for a more aggressive riding position will widen its appeal, and it feels snappier and more responsive.

It’s reassuringly solid when tipped into corners at speed, and if there is a downside to how smooth the front end feels it’s perhaps a slight loss of the sense of connectivity with the road surface, but it’s really only fractional.

Bum deal

With all the focus on the front on the bike, it would have been easy to ignore the rear, but Specialized hasn’t.

The appearance of its slightly odd CG-R seatpost may be divisive but the amount of flex it delivers is appreciable, aided by its lower clamping point, which elongates the amount of seatpost that’s able to bend.

All this damping, alongside clearance for up to 32mm tyres, lends the impression that this is a do-it-all gravel bike, yet Specialized is adamant that this is not the case (the Diverge is in its stable for that).

The Roubaix is about going fast comfortably. And to that end I can attest that it does its job impeccably.

Granted, this is the S-Works variant of the Roubaix, a moniker that Specialized only bestows upon its highest-level products. However I also spent some time aboard the Expert-level Roubaix too, and the functionality was equally impressive.

The S-Works boasts a top-drawer spec, allowing it to achieve a weight of 7.30kg, which for a bike with a front shock and disc brakes is mightily impressive.

While I’m on the subject of spec, it feels odd to be concluding a bike review without mentioning the groupset and wheels – so I won’t.

I’ve previously reviewed both Sram’s eTap wireless shifting and Roval’s CLX 32 Disc wheelset, both of which delivered exemplary performance then, and now, and are fitting for a bike that will set you back a tidy £9k.

When the new Roubaix launched, I admit I was uncertain about the Future Shock suspension, but now I say to all cynics, ride it before you jump to conclusions. It’s no gimmick.

Spec

It all began on Saturday 30th January 2016. That was the day U23 rider Femke Van den Driessche’s spare bike at the Cyclocross World Championships was inspected and a motor was found inside. It was unprecedented, and has changed the way we think about cheating in cycling.

The system she used was a Vivax-Assist motor. The motor, situated in the seattube, works by turning a bevel gear fastened to the crank axle and gives a power boost of around 100 watts.

It is a technology that has been in development for years – largely aimed at a market of older riders keen to maintain their normal riding pattern while losing fitness.

Since the curious incident of Van den Driessche, we’ve seen two further incidents of a Vivax system used in competition for unfair advantage, both by amateurs.

But how much of an advantage does such a concealed Vivax motor really offer?

We put the Goat Race with the Vivax-Assist within it up - ridden by me - against a Bianchi Oltre XR4 - ridden by my colleague James Spender - on a steep hill-climb, both with and without the motor activated to see what difference the motor offers

Goat Race Ultegra (with motor), £4,999

We didn't use power meters, or timing on the climb, but instead looked at how the system feels, and looks to the competition, when used against a conventional bike.

Head-to-head

As we established when first testing the system, it requires more practice and skill than a more complex pedal-assist system. It also requires an aluminium frame or an internal aluminium sleeve to secure the motor in place.

While the motor is not in use, it engages a freewheel, but the bevel itself must still be turned by the force of the axle. It’s a tiny level of resistance, but one that might be palpable over 100km of riding.

There is also a heavy battery unit that must be attached to the motor. In this case it’s concealed within the water bottle.

Consequently there are a few sacrifices to a concealed motor.

The bike we’ve tested is the Goat Race, UK-based Goat Bikes has designed and assembled the bike with the Austrian-made Vivax-Assist system integrated within it.

Goat has made a fine aluminium bike, very well adapted to the motor, but with the added weight and lower quality material this certainly isn’t a World Class bike when the motor is off.

It weighs 10.2kg but has a concealed motor which can give over 100 watts of assistance.

The Bianchi, by contrast, comes in at 6.8kgs with aerodynamic tube shaping and stiff deep section Campagnolo Bora wheels.

Bianchi Oltre XR4 Super Record, £9,500

The motor has 200 watts capacity, but owing to the cadence-based boost and presumably some transitional losses, we’ve generally perceived the boost to be closer to 100-120 watts.

It’s nowhere near as powerful as the enormous Bosch motors we see in e-mountain bikes and in the emerging class of e-road bikes.

On a good day, James is a little more explosive than me, and so I’d expected him to edge ahead of me without the help of the motor, especially on the lighter and stiffer Bianchi.

With the motor on, though, we expected it would be enough to bridge the gap between both our bikes and our physiologies. The interesting measure was to find out by how much...

On a short steep climb like this, though, the motor is pushed to its limits in terms of torque, and the extra weight of the Goat does have all the more influence.

Turbo charged

While there’s no question that the motor makes the Goat faster, the important question is how dramatic such a boost is. Could WorldTour mountain attacks or sprints up the Koppenberg really be explained with a concealed motor?

While there are watts on offer, the power difference required to sprint away from World Class riders is substantial, and does the Vivax offer that sort of boost?

Equally, could it let an amateur rider compete with professionals?

As our video suggests, there is certainly an advantage to be had, with a two bike length deficit turning to a one length lead. But three bike lengths over a few hundred metres isn’t enough to split a WorldTour field, or allow an amateur rider to compete with elites.

Of course the motor requires a certain skill, and by resetting the cadence that the system works toward (more on that here) I could maybe match the lower cadence demands of a climb like this.

With the specific output of the motor requiring a smooth rotation of the cranks my climbing style looks a little unusual compared to my first run and could give away a cheat on close inspection.

The noise, however, was not a giveaway, as the Vivax-Assist is far quieter than its predecessor, the Gruber-Assist.

On the whole, though, it remains difficult to imagine top pro cyclists relying on a concealed motor system such as this – given the relatively conservative gains in power versus the numerous disadvantages and the visible difference in pedalling technique that might give the motor away.

But, of course, stranger things have, and do, happen.

Cervélo is no stranger to innovation. From the days when founders Gerard Vroomen and Phil White created the otherworldly Baracchi TT bike as their college graduation project, the brand has been at the cutting edge of design and performance, and the R5 has traditionally set a benchmark for what’s possible in terms of weight.

But these days its competitors are matching it for lightness, so Cervélo has had to rethink its approach to its flagship.

‘Ongoing feedback means that when it’s time to update a product, we have a list of concerns we want to address,’ says Philip Spearman, product manager at Cervélo.

‘For this version of the R5, we knew that we wanted to prioritise stiffness, handling, fit and usability.’

That’s an interesting list. Usually when we receive a new bike, its maker boasts of improved weight, comfort and aerodynamics, but Cervélo has gone for raciness.

‘To address the variability in fitting demands, we deviated from the traditional “Elite” fit and lowered the stack by 8mm to offer an option to those riders who need a lower hand position in what we call “Pro” fit,’ says Spearman.

‘But to avoid alienating those riders who liked our previous fit, we lowered the stack along the steering axis as well as the BB drop. So installing 8mm of spacers moves the R5 Pro fit back to our traditional Elite fit.’

Put simply, Cervélo has lowered the front end, offering the potential for a more aggressive riding position.

But this has been met by a lowering of the bottom bracket, meaning the rider’s centre of mass is lower too, which should result in the R5 being more stable.

In a move to further improve stability, Spearman claims the manufacturer has placed a lot of importance in ‘matching front trail and rear trail’.

The latter is a new concept to us – what with the rear wheel not having a steering axis – but Spearman assures us that it really does exist.

While the science of rear trail and its effects on a bike’s performance are mind-bendingly complex, a reduction in trail at the front thanks to an increased fork rake, with a corresponding increase in chainstay length at the rear are more straightforward.

The old wisdom once suggested that longer chainstays meant for a flexier rear end, but Cervélo claims the new R5 has an increase of 20% ‘torsional’ stiffness and 15% bottom bracket stiffness, all for the same weight.

So, in summary, the R5 is longer, lower and stiffer than its predecessor. Does that make it better?

Working stiff

From the first pedal stroke the Cervélo R5 had the responsiveness of a WorldTour frame. I immediately found it offered feedback from the road, coupled with an extremely efficient transfer from power to speed.

In terms of fit, the shorter head tube wasn’t as noticeable as I thought it might be. While it’s 13mm shorter than before (151mm for this 56cm), it’s tempered by the lowering of the BB from a 68mm drop to a 72mm drop.

I didn’t feel like the front end was too low – for me, it seemed to sit in an endurance racer sweet spot.

From the second I slung my leg over the frame, the position seemed to just work, while the geometry complemented that low-slung position with a sharp but stable handling quality.

I found myself flying down descents at alarming speed, and had to check my enthusiasm at times. That caution was also a consequence of the liveliness of the rear end, though.

From the outset, I found the rear of the bike bounced aggressively and unpredictably beneath me on rougher road surfaces.

It’s a consequence of all that added stiffness, and the price you pay for improved speed and acceleration.

To soften the back end, I had to reduce tyre pressure slightly, but thankfully the new R5 can accept 28mm tyres, which takes care of some of the comfort issues.

Happily, considering the fact that the increase in stiffness hasn’t increased its weight, the bike feels as light as its predecessor, with the same responsiveness on the road.

At the same time it’s a very different bike to the old R5, which tended to soften the road slightly more, and even have a certain dead feeling to it.

While aerodynamics weren’t near the top of Spearman’s lengthy list of priorities, the redesigned ‘Squoval’ tube shapes and D-shaped seat tube have certainly played some part in reducing its drag compared to the previous generation.

The bike comes together as a thoroughly fast package. It’s never quicker than when descending, where the tuning of the frame around stability and handling has paid off in bounds.

It feels thoroughly well seated but every bit nimble enough to take corners at speed.

Yet despite all of its various merits, the Cervélo R5 doesn’t leap ahead of the competition as it once did. It’s a very well rounded endurance racer, but it’s got some very stiff competition.

I found it hard to isolate what exactly makes the Cervélo stand out from the likes of the top-level Trek Émonda or the Specialized S-Works Tarmac.

It’s not specifically lighter, faster or better handling than its rivals, and it’s a little on the harsh side.

That said, despite being shod with incredibly pricey Enve 3.4 wheels, the R5 is considerably cheaper than the competition – £2,000 less than the top Émonda or Tarmac, and in a similar bracket to Canyon’s top-spec direct-to-market bikes.

Cervélo’s new R5 is certainly a step on from its previous R5, which itself set a pretty high benchmark.

Is it the best bike on the market? No – but it’s not far off. And despite its hefty pricetag, it actually represents excellent value for a thoroughly world-class bike.

Spec

The Crossrip has a relaxed approach to road riding, and is claimed to be ‘sure-footed when roads get rough, quick in traffic and comfortable over the long haul.’

A bike that has a built-in ability to venture on to dirt and gravel sounds great in theory. So what’s it like in reality?  

Frameset

The frame is made from Trek’s 200 Series aluminium, which is produced in such a way as to keep weight to a minimum while maximising its strength in key areas.

The front frame triangle is noticeably more all-road than pure road, but the sloping, tapered top tube necessitates a longer length of exposed seatpost which helps to deal with road vibration admirably.

Mounts for mudguards and a rear rack add much needed adaptability for anything from commuting to club runs, to social rides to weekends away.

The cabling is internally routed, which we’d say is a prerequisite for any bike designed to be ridden through the worst of the British weather.

The Trek’s measured head angle of 70.3° is positively laid back, and when allied to a seat angle of 73.8°, the overall impression is of long-distance comfort more than exhilarating steering input.

The Crossrip’s welds are particularly fine, too – often an area that can look unsightly on mass-produced alloy frames.

There’s plenty of scope for adjusting the riding position, as well, with 30mm of spacers to play with on the steerer.

Tyre clearance amply accommodates the fitment of our test bike’s 32mm rubber, but with mudguards in place, we dare say this might reduce slightly – you’d still be fine with 28c tyres, though.

Groupset

The Crossrip approaches winter with a no-nonsense, 10-speed Shimano Tiagra groupset. This entry-level range supplies the 50/34 compact chainset, a cassette with an 11-34 spread of ratios, both the front and rear derailleurs, plus the shifters/brake levers.

There are also cyclocross-style, bar top-mounted Tektro levers for when you’re riding on the tops and need to scrub off a little speed.

The Crossrip takes the mechanical route for its braking system, with a Spyre TRP system in charge of hauling up its 10.52kg bulk.

Finishing kit

The alloy Bontrager finishing kit has a trick up its sleeve. The handlebars have the firm’s IsoZone padding at their tops and drops – adhesive pads fitted to the bars before the tape is applied, to provide extra vibration damping.

Those 400mm diameter bars are clamped to the steerer by a very short 80mm alloy stem – we’d probably size-up to provide a slightly more stretched-out riding position.

The stem is compatible with Bontrager’s Blendr system, meaning you can clip a light or computer mount to it.

A 27.2mm alloy seatpost also allows for enough flex to dial out any particularly harsh vibes that might otherwise make it to your chamois region, and is topped by a very sumptuously padded Bontrager Evoke 1 saddle.

Wheels

Bontrager’s tubeless-ready, disc-specific 32-spoke rims might not make for the most rapid wheels we’ve ridden this year, but they are laced to the firm’s own hubs which feature sealed bearings, so should prove maintenance-free all through winter.

Bontrager’s 32mm H5 Hard-Case Ultimate tyres are actually designed for Trek’s hybrid bikes, which speaks volumes about their durability.

Don’t expect to corner at silly lean angles on them, but do expect not to have to change them for a few years.

There’s built-in puncture protection, and they’re equally at home on bike paths and light, hard-packed gravel as they are on tarmac. 

On the road

Noticeably the most laid-back of our bikes in terms of its steering geometry, the Trek instantly cossets with a slack head angle and easy riding position, giving the impression that a soggy commute might be something approaching a joy behind its handlebars.

It’s biddable, and the tread of its all-road tyres just shallow enough to promote confidence in cornering.   

Given that the Crossrip is designed to ply its trade on a variety of surfaces, it could very easily have turned out to be a Jack of all trades, yet master of none.

In fact, it’s master of at least a handful. The easy-going riding position is firmly in the adventure bike bracket, which is what the Crossrip most closely resembles on first glance.

Its low standover height makes it user-friendly in traffic, and makes it easy to get a decent fit, too.

The two standout features for us in general road use are its comfort and its versatility.

The saddle is moderately firm, yet deeply padded, isolating your rump from any harshness. Taking a whiff of air out of the bike’s voluminous 32c tyres also gives you the upper hand in controlling ripples and high-frequency vibes.

Although it might seem like a small thing, the extra padding beneath the handlebar tape makes the Crossrip much easier to ride fatigue-free.

Although more often seen on CX bikes, the Tektro shorty levers on the bar tops really come into their own when you’re stuck in traffic. This bike really is well suited to daily urban use.

Being able to easily reach the brakes from three hand positions (drops, hoods or tops) makes for a stress-free journey.

OK, the mechanical disc set-up doesn’t quite match the bite of Shimano’s hydraulics, but there’s ample stopping power.

Handling

Once we’d reduced the tyre pressure to 70psi, the Crossrip’s handling improved greatly – not so much in its ability to steer quickly into turns and corner on a sixpence, but more in the way that its tyres perform with a little extra predictability and confidence.

The hybrid-spec rubber wrapped round the Bontrager rims is perhaps better suited to bike paths and parks, but it’s certainly going to prove long-lasting, even on tarmac.

With a wheelbase well over the metre mark, the Trek’s handling was never likely to set the world on fire, but what it lacks in sharpness it more than makes up for in stability.

In fact, venturing on to a few fire roads and paths reveals its real handling prowess to lie in the fact that it performs well no matter what surface you’re riding on.

Its long bottom bracket drop also contributes to a feeling of firm-footedness, compounded by the sensation of a low centre of gravity.

A bike weighing almost 10 and a half kilos has rarely been more commendable to the road rider – and if tackling the odd ride on light off-road terrain with a few mates at the weekends is on the cards this winter, you’d be well advised to look at the Trek as a do-most-things alternative to a full-on adventure bike.

While it perhaps won’t destroy the massed ranks of the club run, it’ll smash the commute, and make you feel like you’re riding a two-wheeled tank while you’re at it. 

Ratings

Frame: Easy-going geometry and beautifully smooth welds. 8/10
Components: Solid, reliable Shimano Tiagra groupset. 7/10 
Wheels: Tubeless-ready and sturdy enough for winter roads. 8/10 
The Ride: Stable and comfortable rather than thrilling. 8/10

Verdict

The standout features are comfort and versatility, and while performance is far from thrilling, it's the epitome of a reliable, go-anywhere winter machine

Geometry

Spec

With carbon dominating the road bike market, and aluminium the preferred choice for budget-minded racers, it’s easy to overlook the virtues of steel as a frame material.

Strong and cheap but also heavy, it tends to be associated with cheap ‘bike-shaped objects’.

But much like vinyl records and paperback books, steel bike frames have a certain kind of retro appeal – especially for the more romantically inclined cyclist who likes to reminisce about the sport’s golden age.

In fact, partly thanks to events like L’Eroica that celebrate vintage bikes and kit, steel is now more popular than it has been for years, and custom frame-builders are turning out beautifully crafted frames that are as much works of art as high-performance machines.

At the more affordable end of the market, it’s possible to buy quality off-the-shelf steel bikes that blend retro chic with modern technology to provide some of that old-school charm with the benefits of low weight and top performance.

To find out if they ride as well as they look, we took three such bikes – one British, one Belgian, one American – for a day out on the London to Brighton route, one of the oldest challenges in cycling, featuring city streets, rolling country lanes and a few hills along the way…

Keeping it real

When looking at steel bikes, it’s worth considering exactly what we mean by ‘steel’.

At the cheapest end of the market (supermarket special bikes under £100), it could be ‘mild steel’, better suited to use in gas pipes or scaffolding, but at the top end, frame builders use highly refined alloys which are then put through complex heat-treatment processes to increase their tensile strength. Hence the huge price difference.

One of the famed qualities of steel is its comfort, but this is not an inherent property of the metal, more a benefit of its great strength.

This allows builders to use narrow tubes in thin-gauge metal that can flex under load without fatiguing – the very highest quality steel can be drawn into tubes just 0.4mm thick while remaining strong enough to support the rider’s weight and forces of riding.

Aluminium, on the other hand, will soon fail if allowed to flex too much, so has to be built into fatter, thicker, stiffer tubes.

As with aluminium, modern technology also allows frame builders to form steel tubes into non-round profiles, with shapes that provide extra stiffness where needed (such as the bottom bracket area) without needing extra material, further helping to keep weight down.

The bikes

Ritchey Road Logic | £2,100

Tom Ritchey is one of those cycle industry people who is easy to like – he’s been designing and making bikes for more than 40 years, they’re not heavily marketed, and they’re beautifully functional with excellent design and detail.

This is the UK exclusive first test of the updated Road Logic, the V2, but the changes from V1 are characteristically low-key. 

Read the full Ritchey Road Logic review

Bowman Layhams | £2,800

London-based Bowman Cycles is a small but growing manufacturer, and that size gives some distinct advantages as latest trends and new technology can quickly be adapted to and rolled into its offerings.

It’s therefore interesting that the fourth machine off the design table should be one that hits an old niche, that of the mudguard-compatible, lightweight, winter machine that can be used all year.

Read the full Bowman Layhams review

Cinelli Nemo Tig | £3,999.99

One of the oldest names in mainstream cycling, just about every old cycling fanatic can tell you a story about a Cinelli product they owned and adored.

Converting that past adulation into ongoing business is never an easy task, yet it’s just what Cinelli has managed with panache.

Read the full Cinelli Nemo Tig review

The winner: Bowman Layhams

Once the mainstay of bike manufacture, steel has taken a back seat for the past couple of decades as aluminium and carbon have taken over.

So it’s interesting to note that all three of our bikes use the age-old material in new and different ways; these are much more than just rehashes of old bikes with a fancy new finish.

They also tackle different niches in different ways, so what ties them together is the material.

Our retro-themed ride proved not only a great day out but an excellent way to test the bikes, from the stop and start of town riding to the pounding along of the weekend warrior with a few steep inclines and frantic races to boot, each bike tackled it in their own way.

For those looking at a subtle machine, that they can upgrade and grow into, then the Ritchey Logic hits the spot.

It’s mild mannered and with just enough zip to allow you to keep pace and have some fun.

Interestingly, the Cinelli Nemo is at the other end of the same spectrum with its more race-focussed aspirations and construction.

Sitting somewhere in the middle is the Bowman Layhams that can be dressed up as an all-day cruiser, as a winter-hack-come-fancy-commuter or as a sportive racer.

It’s such a versatile and accommodating frame that it’ll do the lot quite brilliantly.

The RDX is Dolan’s all-new do-everything aluminium frameset, around which you can specify the groupset, finishing kit, wheels – and even flat bars, should you wish – to suit your requirements, and more importantly, your budget.

The RDX’s frameset is constructed from aluminium. We’ve plumped for the 50cm variant, on the basis of its effective top tube measurement being closer to that which we would normally ride.

It’s worth comparing your current bike to Dolan’s sizing chart on their website to make doubly sure before you hit the ‘order’ button.

Cabling is entirely internally routed, out of harm’s way. Both the top tube and down tube feature teardrop-shaped profiles, while deep section chainstays flare from the bottom bracket.

Where are the welds?

The most stunning thing to be noted about the Dolan’s frame is that the welds are virtually invisible, apart from at the bottom bracket.

It’s a truly wonderful construction, and coated in a deep, lustrous paint finish.

On a practical note, the RDX also comes ready-fitted with Flinger full-length mudguards, replete with rear reflector, so it’s ready to ride into the murk from the moment it’s unpacked from the box.

Its steering geometry also hits the mark, with a measured head angle of 71.9° offering a lightness of steering lacking in the Trek, while the very steep 44.9° seat angle cants you forward over the bars to give immediate control.

You could run wider tyres if you were to remove the mudguards, but it’s wearing 25c Mavic rubber, which is probably the minimum diameter tyre most of us would be running through winter.

Groupset

Where Dolan’s online business model really comes into its own is here – the RDX has a full R8000 Ultegra groupset – on a bike whose cost is very much in the ‘budget’ category!

There are Ultegra logos to be found on the 50/34 chainset, the 11-30 cassette, on the front and rear mechs.

The shifters are RS505 items – equivalent to Shimano’s 105 groupset kit. They operate Shimano’s excellent RS505 hydraulic callipers, which bite on 140mm Aztec discs front and rear.

Finishing kit

The alloy finishing kit on the RDX comes from a number of manufacturers, but as with most elements of the bike, you can change its specification when you order.

Our test bike wears 420mm diameter Deda handlebars (which we might have changed for 400mm items to better suit the size 50 bike’s dimensions), and a 100mm Deda stem, which sets us out in a near-perfect riding position, vindicating the decision to go down a size on the frame.

An Alpina stem wears a Selle Italia X1 Flow saddle, whose flexibility contributes a sizeable amount of comfort to the ride.

Wheels

Mavic’s 30mm deep-section Cosmic Elite UST Disc wheelset – at £419 – might seem a bit like taking a gun to a knife fight… but if you’ve the budget to spare, why not?

Yes, the white graphics are going to take some cleaning, but the wheels spin up quickly enough to offer some fun on your ride home, or a Sunday social spin.

Their 17mm internal width will take anything from the 25c Mavic Yksion Pro rubber fitted to our test bike, all the way up to a 32c fitment.

The Yksions will take pressure up to a maximum of 100psi, but for optimum control on damp roads, we’d opt for closer to 80-85. 

On the road

The Dolan is instantly at home on the road. Some vibrations are noticeable early on, and inherent in the alloy construction, but for now it seems that the carbon fork is doing its best to take the sting out of them…   

The triple-butted frame, while undeniably super-compact in our size 50 test bike, is as zingy as some of the best performance-bred alloy we’ve ridden.

As soon as we up the pace, most of its inherent vibration fades away, to be replaced by what we’d tentatively term ‘proper bike handling and speed’.

Key to the way in which the RDX delivers more than a modicum of pleasure is the kit it’s been festooned with.

Shimano’s latest Ultegra package features near-instant delivery of power from the cranks to the rear wheel, its 505 hydraulic brake set-up hauls you up in no time when it’s urgent, or moderates speed perfectly when you’ve over-cooked it or just want to slow for traffic lights that are about to change.

Plus, the way in which the whole groupset package gels to provide faultless gear shifts is a huge positive. The smallest ratio on the big ring of 50-30 means we weren’t often forced to select the 34-tooth chainring, even when climbing.

And on the few occasions when our aspirations outstripped our ability, even frantic downshifts under load didn’t faze the drivetrain.

The biggest surprise of all is that we’ve every confidence that this bike could quite easily be the only bike you’d need not just for winter, but all year round.

It’s not unfavourably heavy, and you’ll struggle to find a better equipped road bike for the money.

Just remove the mudguards and stash them in the garage come March next year, and you’d be ready to take on some drier roads and really push its limits.

Handling

Hands up here, we’ve never been the biggest fans of Mavic’s Yksion Pro rubber. While it does have longevity and decent puncture protection on its side, it’s always felt a bit lacking in outright grip.

That said, in this package, and for the conditions we’re suggesting this bike is good for, the 25c rubber is a pretty safe choice.

Take a little wind out of them, to around 85psi, and they provide a good-sized contact patch for confident cornering, although not what you’d call banzai bend-swinging.

With a steering angle just the right side of ‘endurance bike-spec’, the response to rider input isn’t instant, but it’s far from ponderous.

A narrower set of bars would aid this further, but we’d keep the 100mm stem for the comfortable reach it gave us to the drops.

We left all the spacers under the steerer, for long-distance comfort, but there’s 30mm to play with if you’re looking for a more aggressive set-up.

Worthy of mention when you really do get the hammer down, or attack a big-ring uphill stretch of road, is that the Flinger 'guards fitted to this bike provide adequate clearance to prevent rubbing from the tyres.

The rattle – and associated fear of disintegration – that is the calling card of many a mudguard is thankfully absent, giving us full confidence to carve some downhill turns with exceptional accuracy.

Put your faith in the RDX and it repays you with a willingness to please that we really weren’t expecting when we wheeled it out of the garage.

Ratings

Frame: Virtually invisible welds show attention to detail. 9/10
Components: Full Ultegra is astonishing to find at this price. 9/10 
Wheels: Mavic Cosmic Elites are another top-value inclusion for your money. 9/10 
The Ride: Endurance-focused but far from ponderous. 9/10

Verdict

This is a great bike not only for the winter but for year-round riding. You'd struggle to find a better equipped road bike for the money

Geometry

Spec

The Specialized Diverge platform was launched to much fanfare in the middle of 2014, making it one of the first in the new wave of adventure road bikes. Now, nearly four years on, this breed of cross-over bike is an established part of the market.

The videos advertising the new product line summed up the style of riding, with Lycra-clad riders seen zipping along tarmac roads, gravel, and over fences to explore singletrack and take in actual mountain summits, not just their tarmac passes.

We’re as suspicious of marketing hype as anyone but this looked like a world of fun – does the Diverge live up to that promise?

The frame

Specialized has a long and distinguished history working with aluminium and the E5 alloy used here is the same material found on the firm’s £7,500 S-Works Allez.

The geometry is slightly different, though, as the Diverge has a deeper bottom-bracket drop, which lowers your centre of gravity and makes the bike more stable at speed.

It’s also 22mm longer than an equivalent Specialized road bike thanks to its elongated wheelbase. Some of this extra length is due to the clearance needed for the bigger tyres and disc brakes, and some has been specifically dialled in to help improve the bike’s handling on unpredictable surfaces.

For years, Specialized has relied on its Zertz bumpers to help dissipate road buzz, and the Diverge features these handy shock absorbers on its seatstays and fork.

We’re not convinced they can provide much benefit attached to an aluminium tube – at least not in the same way as they can when built into a carbon frame.

Still, the carbon fork works well, soaking up road vibrations like a sponge. Specialized claims sufficient clearance for 35mm tyres, but even bigger ones are possible.

We were pleasantly surprised at how aggressive the riding position turned out to be; this bike can be as easily set up for going at speed as it can for riding in comfort.

Components

All the Shimano parts on the frame work faultlessly, but it’s what we’ve come to expect of both the 105 components and BR-785 hydraulic disc brakes.

The Praxis Works oversized BB allows a chainset with an oversized spindle to run in a threaded bottom-bracket shell (which is good if you hate creaks but like stiff cranks), and the gear range is perfect.

However, it’s the Specialized components here that really shine through, from the bar tape to the seatpost. First up, there’s an offset spacer that slots on the steerer under the stem – rotate it and the angle of the stem changes.

This means you have four potential stem angles available if you’re willing to flip it. Secondly, the CG-R carbon seatpost, with its Z-shaped head and rubber insert, provides exceptional comfort, flexing visibly to provide a level of compliance no frame on its own ever could.

Lastly, the bar tape is great, and we happily rode without gloves even when we ventured off road, risking nettle stings.

Wheels

The hubs on this bike aren’t remarkable but they work perfectly laced to a pair of excellent, wide rims. This is the way we’d prioritise things – standard hubs, good rims.

The tyres are Specialized’s own Roubaix Pro, a popular tyre among commuters in its 23 and 25mm widths, but it’s a fatter 32mm here.

There’s no tread pattern to speak of, but the huge volume and good width provide significant levels of traction, even when we found ourselves on really muddy bridleways. What’s more, with that roadie-but-fatter profile comes superb straight-line speed and on-road manners.

You could ride a chain gang on these tyres and still keep up.

The ride

The Diverge is the closest to a traditional road bike of any of the adventure bikes on tested around the same time.

The tyres are slick, the position is instantly familiar and the gearing is a bog-standard 2x11 set-up, with proper big gears at the top end for all-out speed, and plenty at the low end to get you up the steeper climbs.

Specialized has the Crux range for cyclocross, and the AWOL line for adventures and touring, so the Diverge range could seem a little superfluous in theory.

Hop on and get riding though, and it’s a revelation. On the road, it picks up speed like any regular slick-tyred road bike, but heading into suburbia, we found a strange thing happening – we started to see speed bumps as launch pads and began gleefully getting both tyres off the ground.

Onto the gravel canal towpath that heads from London’s Olympic Park up to Hertfordshire, we were again amazed at the speed.

With a clear view ahead, we were touching 40kmh without really trying. As the terrain deteriorated, we expected to find the limits of the slick tyres pretty quickly, but even at 75psi they didn’t let us down, and although they bounced the bike around a bit, the CG-R seatpost and Zertz-equipped fork proved an effective combo at keeping us comfortable.

Within a few hours of riding, we began wondering that if you owned a Diverge if you’d need a road bike too. The Diverge can go almost as fast on the road, and if you spot an enticing shortcut, it’s yours for the taking.

Geometry

Specification

After executing a worldwide mass recall of its 2018 Allez, Allez Elite and Allez Sport model bikes with immediate effect, Specialized has announced that from today it will be able provide replacement forks.

This comes two months after the brand recalled its most popular model after finding a fault in the bikes fork.

In a notice published by director of engineering Mark Shroeder, the brand announced that 'after careful examination' it would be recalling the bikes due to 'a manufacturing defect in the fork crown which potentially affects safety'. 

The statement then continued to ask all riders to immediately stop using the bike and for dealers to cease sales of the product. 

In a notice today, Specialized said that it 'will begin delivery of forks to retailers, who will install the new fork on in the bike at no cost' to the owner. Owners will be contacted by their local retailer via email when the part is available.

It then goes on to warn that there will be a limited availability at first due to sheer scale of the operation but it hopes to have resolved the issue fully by the end of March.

Despite the brand stating that no rider has experienced injury due to the fault and no regulatory agencies underlining the issue, Specialized have been forced into replacing the forks of all bikes within the range.

The brand then go on to apologise for the inconvenience caused by this recall, stating, 'we fully understand and are working hard at finding solutions to minimise rider inconvenience'. Priority will be made for existing owners of the bikes.

Owners of the bikes are still asked to consistently check the Specialized website for any updates or call the Specialized rider care hotline.

The Specialized Allez range is amongst the most popular bike models worldwide meaning that this recall and replacement will be one of the biggest the bike industry has seen.

Venerable Milanese brand Cinelli is known for creating race-ready bicycles.

Its Tipo Pista comes with a fixed gear and the sort of short cranks and relatively steep angles that suit track racing.

Still, it comes packaged with a set of optional brakes that you can fit to make it road-legal, so there’s no reason why it can’t also serve as a nimble road-going whip.

We’re expecting thrills from this tight-looking package, but will they come at the price of everyday rideability?

The frame

The Cinelli’s tubing comes from another Milan-based manufacturer, Columbus, who supply the Tipo with its custom aluminium tubes and carbon bladed fork.

They’re both pretty light, especially the fork which has a claimed weight of 560g.

In common with all track-racing bikes, the rear-facing dropouts are narrow at 120mm. This means, unlike the Bombtrack, it’s impossible to retrofit multiple gears as that requires a much wider hub.

Fitted with stainless steel plates, the dropouts allow the rear wheel to be locked in tight without the serrated axle nuts chewing up the frame.

Otherwise, the Tipo is stripped back, as you’d expect from a track frame. That means no mounts for cables or racks, and definitely no space for mudguards.

We ended up zip tying the rear brake cable in place. The tube profiles are consistently round and the geometry traditional.

The whole lot is also very stiff. Taking its track-racing pedigree seriously, there are no bottle cage bosses, either.

Despite the bike’s otherwise racy credentials, it’s not actually that low at the front, meaning most riders should be able to get the handlebar into a suitable position for their level of flexibility.

Groupset

With the brakes not being the Tipo’s biggest selling point, it’s unsurprising to find they’re not much cop.

The callipers and levers are just about passable, but the pads are plasticky and hard to adjust.

We’d swap them straight away rather than waiting for them to wear down. The square taper crank is unremarkable, but gets on with its job without fuss.

The cranks are short enough that you won’t need to worry about striking a pedal while cutting across the track or getting low through the turns.

The chainring, cogs and in chain seem to be durable despite not sporting any recognisable branding.

Finishing kit

The cushy saddle is comfy, either in proper cycling shorts, or riding around in jeans.

The post supporting it is a single-bolt model, yet seems tough enough. Up front, the stem’s faceplate is embossed with the famous Cinelli winged C logo.

Despite the bike’s track credentials, the bar it holds is a fairly conventional model.

With flat tops and only a moderate drop, it’s both practical and easy to move around on.

The Cinelli logo print bar tape looks cool, although the satin finish might not be to everyone’s taste.

Wheels

The Tipo’s all-black rims look cool. However, the brakes quickly eat into their surface, leaving them slightly less good looking.

At the back, a flip-flop rear hub means it’s possible to fit a freewheel on the opposite side to the supplied fixed sprocket, allowing you to flip the wheel over between fixed gear and coastable styles, increasing the bike’s versatility.

Both hubs roll on sealed cartridge bearings. The deep section rims are fairly stiff, however, and along with the relatively basic tyres they’re not overly eager to accelerate, being slightly sandbagged by their weight.

With 32 spokes each, they should at least be tough.

On the road

With a longish top tube, short head tube, and lengthy stem, the Tipo suggests it’ll be happy to make speedy progress.

However, as the only one of our bikes on test to be supplied with a fixed sprocket rather than a freewheel, it might take some getting used to.

If you’ve not ridden fixed before, your first impressions will be dominated by the sensation that it’s attempting to kill you as the unrelentingly spinning pedals try to buck you off the bike.

Push on through this, though, and the fact that the pedals rotate in sync with the spinning of the wheels quickly becomes second nature, and as any fixie bore will tell you, the sensation of being connected to the bike is heightened.

If it’s going fast, so are your legs. But if you really can’t get on with it, it’s easy and cheap to replace the sprocket with a screw-on freewheel.

The Cinelli’s fork is a quality and very light Columbus model. Its steep angle and lack of rake keeps the bike’s handling sharp.

It also means there’s a degree of toe overlap, which is noticeable when weaving about at slow speeds.

Turning over the Tipo’s stock gearing of 48x17 wouldn’t trouble Chris Hoy, but is perfect for road-going riding.

Spinning along happily at about 20mph it’s not too much of a struggle to get up most hills. Still, it takes a fair bit of practice to resist the forward march of the bike with just your legs and without resorting to the brakes.

This is exacerbated by the narrow handlebar and lack of conventional brake hoods, which make it harder to brace your upper body to push back against the pedals.

Once you’ve got the hang of it, though, the Tipo is great fun for hacking around on.

Permissible to use in the velodrome without the brakes (the callipers and top bar-mounted levers are quick to remove), it’d be churlish to not give that a try, too.

What’s in a number? Quite a lot, it turns out, once applied to the bike.

In fact, the dimensions and angles first scribbled down by a designer will have a larger effect on how the finished bike rides than material or component choices.

The Tipo is based around some fairly aggressive numbers, as befits a bike capable of racing on the track.

The combination of shallow fork offset and steep head angle give the bike rapier-like handling, something furthered by the short wheelbase.

Still a way off being quite as nippy as a true track racer, it’s easily enough to keep you engaged when transferred to the road.

Not that we’re complaining. For playing at city-centre criterium racing, or living out your alley cat fantasies it’s perfect, snapping between lanes in a heartbeat.

The downside is that it can be a little unforgiving on longer rides, as the straight front end has little opportunity to flex and provide comfort.

It’s also slightly intimidating when pointed downhill. Obviously, neither is a problem on the smooth wooden boards of a velodrome.  

Ratings

Frame: Lightweight tubing and track-focused geometry. 7/10
Components: The track focus is obvious in the so-so brakes. 7/10 
Wheels: Quality hubs and rims, though the tyres are basic. 7/10 
The Ride: Fun but a bit of a handful due to geometry and fixed gear. 7/10

Verdict

The standout features are comfort and versatility, and while performance is far from thrilling, it's the epitome of a reliable, go-anywhere winter machine

Geometry

Spec

‘I  think the world has to change,’ says Roman Arnold, founder and CEO of Canyon. ‘I have been a retailer and I have been a dealer. I know this sport and the industry very well, and I want to make cycling better for the consumer.’

Arnold is speaking about criticism that his company’s online-only model has hurt smaller retailers by cutting them out of the loop. Canyon, which has built a reputation for making WorldTour-standard bikes at competitive prices, may seem like any other bike brand, but there’s a crucial difference. It sells directly from the manufacturer to the consumer, bypassing the usual supply chain from manufacturer to distributor to retailer to customer.

For consumers in the age of e-commerce, the difference between the two models could almost go unnoticed, but here at Canyon’s vast headquarters in Koblenz it’s clear just how complicated and challenging the task has been.

‘On average, we ship 400 to 500 bikes per day, but we can ship 1,200 bikes at full capacity,’ says Martin Wald, Canyon’s chief production officer. ‘During the Tour de France we hit that number.’

Wald has a history in automotive production, where he spent years at General Motors overseeing production lines across 30 manufacturing assembly plants. Perhaps that’s one reason why Canyon feels less like a bike factory and more like a laser-focused facility of mass production.

The company is spread over a handful of monolithic warehouses, with the creative staff housed in stylish design suites that sit above the showroom at Canyon’s enormous whitewashed main building. ‘We have a team of 50 product managers, engineers and designers,’ Arnold explains. The real showpiece of the Koblenz headquarters, however, is the industrial production line at Canyon’s nearby assembly plant, a 10-minute drive away. 

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Image 1 of 10

Checks and measures

Many European brands not only have their frames fabricated in the Far East, but their bike assembly is done there as well. Canyon, by contrast, assembles all its bikes here in this vast facility, and while it may be less efficient than simply shipping complete bikes from the Far East, the process is designed to ensure there are no nasty surprises when the customer opens the box.

In 2016, Canyon came to international attention when it suffered a major breakdown to its computer systems while migrating to a new IT platform, and consequently the company was unable to link orders to consumers despite having a warehouse full of bikes. It caused chaos and ended with a lot of unhappy customers, so today each bike goes through a series of rigorous checks, even to the point of recording the torque of every bolt.

‘We measure certain critical torques that we must achieve,’ says Wald, pointing to an enormous digital torque wrench being used by the assembly team. ‘This is an error-proofing device. This wrench has a Bluetooth connection, and it records the vehicle ID number of this individual bike. So if a customer buys the bike and there’s a problem on a critical torque we can verify what torque we set here.’

This tracking and traceability is part of what Wald describes as ‘automotive-level error-proofing’. Every component has a QR code, and every bike can be linked to each component and each worker involved with it. Even cardboard bike boxes are tuned to the specific requirements of each bike, to ensure no problems on arrival.

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Image 2 of 10

‘We have five boxes, in different sizes,’ Wald says. ‘Each bike is set in this specific gear so the rear derailleur doesn’t get damaged from impacts to the box,’ he tells me, pointing to the positioning of the rear mech, which sits comfortably 1cm off the box’s wall.

Everything within the factory is clinical and precise. Today, signs around the building warn the workers of Cyclist’s visit and tell them not to let our presence affect their work cycle.

In the warehousing section Wald points to a QR code on one of the bike boxes: ‘This is where we won the German award for logistic innovation. Here we scan the box and load it onto the trailer so we can move it into storage.

‘As soon as the technician scans it he can connect it with the build and know what shipment it came with.

‘We know the weight and dimensions of the box and the computer finds the best location in the warehouse by size and also when we need it next. If we don’t need it for a long time it goes further and higher in the stacks, so what we need tomorrow is more accessible. That’s all built into the system.’

Could Canyon go one step further and roboticise the entire process? ‘That will be the next step, maybe,’ says Wald. ‘But there has to be a good reason to do it because it takes away a lot of flexibility.

‘That’s a discussion we keep having – how much automation do we need?’

As he talks, a forklift travels along a magnetic guidance strip and then disappears among a tower of boxes that looks like something from the final scene from Raiders Of The Lost Ark.  

Quality control

Canyon’s determination to double-check every aspect of the bike’s build and delivery extends out beyond its German facility to the Asian factories where its frames are made.

‘We can’t influence what carbon fibre suppliers like Mitsubishi are doing,’ says Gordon Koenen, Canyon’s head of quality. ‘We can just take the best fibres we need, then it’s up to us to work with our production partners to make a good design and then produce it as quickly as possible.’

Once the frames and components are built, Canyon examines each one using an x-ray scanner to check for flaws.

‘In terms of what we do with our test labs and CT scanner, no other manufacturer works like we do. When we see quality levels have stabilised we drop down our own testing to 10% of each component, but in Asia they keep going for 100%.’

Not only does this process check the quality of components, but it also checks the quality of the checks themselves. ‘Each fork has a serial number, which we scan when we inspect the fork.

‘That means the partner in Asia that’s done the same inspection can upload the same angle picture and share it with us. So we do our inspection here and inspect their picture to see if the checks are being done correctly.’

The whole process is slick, meticulous and advanced – a far cry from the company’s beginnings in the back of a big blue trailer.

Gamble on success

‘You never have a clear picture of the future, but I had a plan 20 years ago that someday I wanted to have a global company,’ says Arnold as he thinks back to his early days.

‘As a youth he was a keen racer, but the world of pro cycling was a little out of his grasp, especially considering his towering 6ft 5in stature. Instead he joined his father selling bike components from a blue trailer, which now sits by the door of the Canyon showroom, a physical relic from Canyon’s early days.

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Image 4 of 10

‘Of course I wanted to see my bikes someday at the Tour de France, and now we have achieved that,’ Arnold says with a smile. It wasn’t the easiest journey, though.

‘First we sponsored Team Unibet, which was a contract that lasted only half a year,’ Arnold says. Unibet was a betting company but after the team raced at the Tour of Flanders the ASO refused to invite them to races on French soil because of French laws on advertising gambling.

‘It wasn’t fair as the team had been licensed, but then it disappeared and two years later we started with Omega-Pharma Lotto.’

That first taste of WorldTour pressure taught Canyon about the demands at the top of the sport. ‘The team complained about our time-trial bike,’ Arnold recalls.

‘We were new to the business and the team DS said, “I want you to change the bike. Just copy the Trek bike!” But of course we didn’t want to copy something, we wanted to understand the aerodynamics behind it.’

The consequence was the development of the Speedmax TT bike, now considered one of the fastest on the market.

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Image 5 of 10

It reveals one of the unique benefits of Canyon’s business model. The company doesn’t need to consider the retail viability of each product across thousands of stores, so it can produce items that might only be sold in small quantities.

It gives flexibility and the opportunity to develop innovative products.

If there’s a threat to Canyon’s model, it could be the possibility of being beaten at its own game by other e-commerce giants such as Wiggle-CRC, many of whom are investing in their own bike and component brands.

No sour grapes

‘You know, I was born in a small wine-making village,’ Arnold muses, in a roundabout response to that suggestion.

‘I would say Wiggle, Bike-24, Chain Reaction are like the biggest retailers for wine. But we have our own vineyard,’ he chuckles.

‘We are manufacturers and I would say none of these guys are really into manufacturing. When you go to our factory, everything you see there is in place because we made the decision that we want to be a bike manufacturer.’

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Image 6 of 10

In which case, perhaps that’s where Canyon’s biggest challenge will come from. Rather than e-commerce companies building bikes, the threat will be big-brand manufacturers beginning to juggle direct-to-consumer savings with the conventional retail chain.

Bringing us back to our first conversation of the day, it potentially leaves the small retailers with a troubling future.

‘There are still some bookstores here in Koblenz,’ Arnold says, once again addressing the issue from a tangent. ‘But 20 years ago there were 20 or 30 bookstores here. Now there are two. Now they’re doing things differently.

‘They bring the authors in, they do what they can to foster the book society here in Koblenz, and they are good for the culture here. In the same way, I think in the end we will bring business to the small retailers and in the end we will foster a passion for cycling.’

It’s plain that Arnold’s passion for cycling, and for selling bikes, is undimished even after 17 years of painstakingly building the Canyon brand.

It has come a long way from its blue trailer, and is showing no signs of slowing down any time soon.

Bike hospital

Canyon’s own CT scanner offers a medical diagnosis of carbon fibre components

Tucked away at the back of Canyon’s vast assembly plant in Koblenz is a tiny carbon fibre hospital, where the company has its own CT scanner to improve quality control.

‘If you have a handmade process you need to show the process is stable otherwise you need to inspect 100% of the time,’ says Gordon Koenen, Canyon’s head of quality.

‘The CT scanner uses high-resolution x-ray imaging to display the inside of carbon fibre components. ‘It’s much stronger than a hospital x-ray,’ Koenen says.

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Image 9 of 10

These scans help to prove the effectiveness of Canyon’s production partners in the Far East with in-depth analysis of each carbon fibre component. ‘The main things we focus on here are wall thickness, delamination and wrinkles.’

Customers can also use the scanner. ‘If you crash your bike we’ll scan it to look for fractures. Then either you get a clear report from us or we tell you to stop riding,’ Koenen says. ‘Last year we did 65 scans.’

Surprisingly, the service isn’t exclusive to Canyon customers. There is a price, of course: ‘For now, we charge €300 to scan a frameset,’ Koenen says, although there is a silver lining.

‘But if we find something and you buy a new bike from us then this service is free.’

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Image 10 of 10

Roman's Empire

‘When we talk about consumer-direct, my company has been consumer-direct for more than 30 years. We started consumer-direct sales with a trailer, and this idea remains with us,’ says Roman Arnold.

The trailer was his father’s, which he took to races to sell components to racers directly.

Later the family opened a bike shop, Radsport, and started their first bike brand, Radical. The first Canyon bike appeared in 1996, and in 2001 Arnold had the company incorporated as Canyon Bicycles GmbH. The rest is history.

Bianchi has a long and illustrious history in cycling and with the Specialissima the company’s aimed to combine all its expertise and experience with the very best technology to create a lightweight, high-end superbike.

With a claimed frame weight of 780g, it’s one of the lightest frames available and when built up with such a desirable component selection as our test bike, the result is impressively light.

A closer look shows just how much detail has gone into not just the overall frame design, but also the smaller components.

The cable routing, for example, is extremely clean, with the rear brake cable entering into the head tube to give a smoother line.

The Fulcrum Racing Zeros are superb, with excellent stiffness and braking performance that will outperform carbon rims in wet or damp conditions.

When paired with the Vittoria Corsa G+ tyres, handling is superb with feel and accuracy through the corners and the ability to change direction with ease.

The Specialissima uses Countervail (CV) technology to reduce vibrations from the road and increase control and comfort.

It feels smooth and the CV technology appears to work well, especially through the fork and also on larger bumps in the road. Of the three bikes, it provided the most comfortable front end and felt the most balanced front and rear.

Front-end comfort may be helped slightly by the FSA K-Force handlebars, with a slightly oval top section, although heavier riders or sprinters might notice a little flex.

Despite being a mechanical groupset, Dura-Ace 9100 is fantastic, with easy, quick and accurate shifting every time.

The choice of gearing is a little surprising, with a compact 50/34 chainset, given this is intended as a top-end race bike, but for many this may be the best option and is at least simple to change.

The Specialissima proved to be a very fast bike, even if it didn’t always feel like it – the stats don’t lie and we set one of our fastest ever times on a regular test lap with varied terrain.

It never felt harsh or nervous, taking the roads in its stride but doing so quickly.

Ratings

Frame 10/10; Components 9/10; Wheels 10/10; The ride 10/10

Verdict: The Specialissima feels like a gentleman's racer. It is beautifully smooth and never felt frantic or scary to ride, but set times and hit speeds that tell another story. This is one light, fast and really enjoyable bike to ride. The level of detail is fantastic and its components are all superb.

Spec

Bianchi Specialissima review (2016)

James Spender

There’s something rather charming about a company that’s been around so long it’s forgotten what colour its bicycles are.

Could these steeds be painted the same azure hue as a Queen consort’s eyes? Or coloured like a Milanese sky in mid-summer?

However Celeste came about (a word that means ‘heavenly’ in Italian, so make of that what you will), one thing’s for sure, it’s a colour that has defined Bianchi bicycles for over a century – 131 years to be exact.

‘The official Pantone for Celeste is number 333,’ says Bianchi’s UK brand manager, Andrew Griffin. ‘However, the material it’s being used on will determine the actual Pantone. A water bottle will require something different from a titanium bolt, for example.’

It’s a problem that still plagues Bianchi painters, who still also check things by eye – a process no doubt responsible for Celeste’s slow morph over the years from sky blue towards a more minty-green.

But it hasn’t stopped Bianchi’s latest bike, the Specialissima, from embracing its native colourway, albeit with a modern twist. This is a striking beast indeed, and the ride is as charismatically wild.

Any colour, so long as it’s…

Like an increasing number of manufacturers, Bianchi has opted for a semi-custom approach for the flagship Specialissima.

That is, while stock colours and builds are available, the Specialissima also comes as a frameset, to be painted and specced how you choose. 

This Dura-Ace-equipped Specialissima is stock, snubbing the notion that Italian bikes need Italian groupsets. It’s also dressed up in the latest incarnation of Celeste, ‘CK16’, which is a semi-fluorofied, matt-finish paint that I for one adore, but I know other riding mates detest.

If you might be a person of such disgust (but I implore you to wait until you’ve viewed it in the flesh), never fear: the Specialissima is also available in black, or, for an extra £350, any colour of your choosing courtesy of Bianchi’s Tavolozza custom paint programme, one of those worryingly addictive websites that lets you colour in your very own Specialissima.

I say ‘any colour’, but in an amusing twist Bianchi’s small print adds that it ‘reserves the right to approve your selected paint scheme’.

I raise this with Bianchi product designer, Angelo Lecchi: ‘There are some colour combinations in the programme between the frame and the graphics that we do not recommend,’ he says.

‘There are 1,422 different combinations, of which we do not recommend 178. One customer asked anyway, but we did not recommend.’ Polite but firm. 

I think if I were buying a Specialissima I’d have it in CK16, or at the very least, regular Celeste. Anything else is akin to owning a Ferrari in a colour other than red. 

Weights and wheels

Colour aside, the Specialissima cuts a fine profile. Its tube shapes appear modern yet with an occasional nod to bicycles of yesteryear with an almost horizontal top tube.

The aero-sculpted head tube seems to have taken cues from Bianchi’s Aquila time-trial machine. The stays and fork legs are elegantly slender – the chainstays are a joy to behold, thinning from bulbous beginnings like they’ve been extruded from molten carbon.

None of this should be a surprise, though, as Lecchi explains that Bianchi doesn’t just slap the Specialissima moniker onto any old frame.

It’s a name with provenance, dating back to the early 1950s and enduring until the 1980s, as ridden by Italy’s most famous cycling son, Fausto Coppi. As such you’d expect the Specialissima to be light, and it is.

A claimed 780g for the frame and 340g for the fork helps this 55cm build dust the Cyclist scales at just 6.52kg – and I really felt it at every turn.

My first few pedal strokes were met with sensational zing. This was probably over-exaggerated given I’d just come off the back of testing the BMC GF01, a disc brake bike nearly 2kg heavier, but it remained a palpable sensation throughout the rest of my testing.

In fact, I’d hazard to say the only bike I’ve ridden that accelerated faster was the Sarto Asola, a sub-700g frame that resulted in a sub-6kg build. 

However, it’s not enough to be lightweight alone: quick acceleration revolves as much around stiffness as it does weight, and its here where the Specialissima impressed me most.

For such a lightweight frame it didn’t half resist my efforts to bend it, although the Fulcrum Racing Zero wheels should be commended too.

With my £7k bike snob hat on I’d almost want to deride the inclusion of alloy wheels on a bike such as the Specialissima (how terribly entry level. I mean, have they not heard of carbon, darling?), but I was nevertheless impressed by these wheels on a number of occasions. 

Short and fast

Climbing was as expected – a genuine delight. The Specialissima easily finds a rhythm and ascends with consummate ease, finely balanced from low-speed seated grinds through to high-speed out-of-the-saddle assaults. But it’s not just the stiffness and weight that aids it.

Back in the late 1970s, Rigi made a bike called the Bici-Corta, or ‘short bike’. Designer Giorgio Rinaldi’s idea was that a shorter wheelbase (with a back end so tight that the rear wheel poked through a twin-tubed seat tube) would create a better climbing machine, being stiffer at the rear and shifting the rider’s centre of gravity over the rear wheel when climbing for better traction and power transfer. The Bici-Corta had a wheelbase of just 925mm for a 56cm frame, with stays just 375mm.

While the Specialissima doesn’t push Rinaldi’s limits, it nevertheless has a short 985mm wheelbase and the back end is certainly on the tighter side with 407mm chainstays, which influences its immense climbing prowess. It also makes the bike handle with expert precision, only with one caveat.

At low speeds I found the Specialissima’s handling somewhat unsettled – nervy almost. I put this to Lecchi and he said he’d not heard such feedback, but I did share the Specialissima around the Cyclist test crew (without any prior priming from me) and the verdict was unanimous: twitchy, with a front wheel that felt like it wanted to tuck under during low speed manoeuvres.

It never did of course, and likely never would, but it took a few rides to get used to. To keep some perspective though, unless you’re constantly switching between bikes you’ll simply adapt, as I did, to the way the Specialissima handles and it will soon feel normal.

Plus, all is forgiven when you show the Specialissima a fast descent or a set of tight corners. Suddenly everything irons out and comes together, the bike taking on a new level of stability and its handling becomes exactly what you’d want and expect from a race-level bike: sharp and precise.

To that end the Specialissima warrants its title – it truly is a special bike.

The new Specialized S-Works Diverge is an interesting, albeit somewhat confusing, sign of the times. It sits in a space between road bikes and... just about everything else.

With wide 38mm tyres, a suspension unit in the steerer tube and even a dropper seatpost, the S-Works Diverge is an abomination to the road bike purist. Sometimes, though, the rules have to be broken.

When the original Diverge was released in 2014, Specialized saw it as a niche product, to the extent that the US company was reluctant even to export it to the UK and Europe.

However, its popularity in this country surprised everyone, to the point where road category product manager, John Cordoba, now believes, ‘The Diverge will be biggest category in two to three years.’

While the previous iteration of the Diverge fitted squarely into the category of ‘gravel bike’ – wider tyre clearance, disc brakes and slacker geometry – this new version doesn’t.

Instead, it sits closer to what many have termed ‘GravelPlus’. The aim is to go beyond simple gravel tracks or bridleways and be capable of taking on mountain bike trails, which is why the new Diverge is compatible with smaller-diameter 650b wheels.

‘There’s a sweet spot in terms of tyre width where the 650b wheel and the 700c will give a similar ride quality,’ says Cordoba. ‘For 700c that is 38mm, while on the 650b it is 45mm, but with the new trend for wide rims the tyre changes shape a lot. On some 650b rims the bike will accept 47mm tyres.’

The new S-Works Diverge even has a dropper post, allowing  the rider to drop the saddle by up to 35mm at the press of a lever to improve control and lower the centre of gravity on steep technical terrain.

Up front, the Future Shock offers a degree of suspension at the handlebars. It has been field tested on Specialized’s Roubaix line and the system has been stiffened for the Diverge, but we’ll return to that later.

It’s a far cry from Specialized’s high end road bikes of just five years ago, when bikes were built for 23mm tyres. The reward is increased versatility, but has the Diverge sacrificed the speed and handling that marks out a great road bike? Time to find out… 

One for the road

When I first saw the new Diverge, I can’t pretend I found it attractive. Its curiously slack geometry, tall front end, strange integrated ‘SWAT’ box at the bottom bracket (not pictured) and enormous cassette and tyres felt like the antithesis of the clean lines of a classic road bike.

It had a job on its hands to impress me, and I was also certain that on my first ride I would be dropped and ridiculed by my ride partners. But no such thing happened.

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Image 3 of 28

Probably the most revelatory aspect of this test was that the Diverge is, underneath it all, a fast road bike. Even with 38mm tyres, I kept pace on a Sunday ride with keen racers.

In fact, the only part of the ride where I was outdone was in the sprints, where I simply couldn’t find an effective cadence on the 42-11 biggest gear on the 1x groupset.

I’d planned to slim down to a 28mm tyre for road rides, but it wasn’t necessary. Despite its off-road spec, the bike is still fairly light (8.5kg) for a disc road bike and was admirably stiff under acceleration and while climbing.

Of course, the Venge ViAS or S-Works Tarmac are much quicker bikes than the Diverge on the road but, viewing the bike in terms of versatility, the Diverge handles the road just fine.

Comfort is predictably in a different realm to a normal road bike. It consumed the cracked and scarred roads of Surrey without difficulty.

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Image 4 of 28

In that sense I preferred it even to the Roubaix. While the Roubaix’s Future Shock unit uses a linear spring system, the Diverge uses a progressive spring – creating more resistance as it compresses.

It makes it very hard to bottom out the handlebars and in general it feels more robust than the Roubaix.

Despite its road-worthiness, however, the Diverge’s real playground is on the mud and ruts of unpaved tracks – the ‘upside down’ of road cycling.

I used to view off-road riding as an esoteric pursuit best left to people who wear baggy shorts and say things like ‘gnarly’.

Increasingly in my reviews for Cyclist, bikes such as the Open Up and GT Grade have dragged me off the road and onto gravel tracks. Each time, it endears me more to the idea of bikes that venture beyond the road.

The Diverge takes that to the next level. At the bike’s international launch in New Jersey, USA, I took it on mountain bike trails that I’ve never dreamt to venture onto riding anything resembling a road bike, and the Diverge handled it all with ease. 

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Image 5 of 28

Playing dirty

Back in the UK, I was inspired to try out the tracks around my usual riding territories, and I found myself jumping onto the saddle far more often than I usually would during the grim winter months.

The Diverge’s knobbly 38mm tyres coped with all surfaces happily, and I never considered switching to wider tyres on a 650b wheel.

The Future Shock front suspension did a good job of absorbing big hits, although adjusting the headset pre-tension with a combination of 2.5mm and 2mm allen keys was frustratingly fiddly. 

The dropper post was fun, and undoubtedly useful whilst out in New Jersey. For the kind of riding I do day to day, though, I’d probably look to swap this out to save weight (and ideally cost too).

The Diverge has stirred in me confusing existential issues. I’m a road rider at heart, but this bike has opened up the trails, gravel roads and tracks that I previously didn’t know existed around my local area.

I may not want to hang this bike on my wall as a work of art, but I don’t believe there’s a cyclist out there, even the most traditional and cynical, who wouldn’t have fun riding the S-Works Diverge.

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Image 7 of 28

Spec

Specialized S-Works Diverge 2018: Launch, first ride review and gallery

Peter Stuart, 19 June 2017

Specialized’s all-road endurance platform, the Diverge, was a surprise smash when it came out in 2014 and sold out in numerous countries.

That success has given Specialized carte blanche to push boundaries with this year’s redesign.

First glimpsed in a promo video with Peter Sagan driving doughnuts in a muscle car, the Diverge has been revealed in full at Specialized’s Summer Road Camp in New Jersey, United States.

In a significant vote of confidence, Specialized has for the first time created an top tier S-Works Diverge, with gravel racing in mind as much as touring and bikepacking.

It comes with a number of new technical developments that make it virtually unrecognisable from a normal road bike five years ago.

It has arguably gone beyond the 'gravel' category, and entered into the ‘GravelPlus’ category, a term coined by bike manufacturer Open to describe drop handlebar bikes that are capable of more demanding off-road riding, or what many call 'adventure riding'. It’s a category that includes the Cannondale Slate, the Open U.P and 3T Exploro.

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Image 3 of 28

The new Diverge's major features include a dropper seatpost, a Future Shock front suspension unit similar to that on the Specialized Roubaix, and extremely wide tyre clearance that has been further opened up by compatibility with smaller diameter 650b wheels. Despite all the extra bits, the full build as shown comes in at a surprisingly light 8.5kg.

The S-Works frame itself comes in at only 880g, and Specialized has built a unit with a few minor adjustments (including removing the dropper post) which hits exactly 8kg.

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Image 2 of 28

‘Gravel is the fastest emerging category in our entire line,’ explains John Cordoba, product manager for Specialized’s road category.

Specialized speculates that it will continuing to grow at a fast rate. ‘We believe that Diverge will be biggest category in two to three years.’

That’s a huge claim for a brand selling in the quantity that Specialized does.

Future Shock

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Image 17 of 28

The tech on show for the Diverge is a lot to take in. First and foremost is the carry-over of Specialized’s Future Shock front suspension system from the Roubaix platform – a spring that sits between the stem and head tube to provide damping at the handlebars.

The unit has been tweaked for the demands of serious off-road riding.

The new Future Shock uses a progressive spring, meaning the spring generates more resistance the more it is compressed, unlike the Roubaix Future Shock spring.

‘The Spring on the Roubaix is a linear spring, so throughout the whole travel it has the same amount of force,’ explains Cordoba. ‘The Diverge Future Shock unit is the same but the spring inside responds in a different way – it’s not exerting the same pressure.’

The aim is to make the Diverge more robust than the Roubaix but also reduce the chance of bottoming out when going off a significant drop.

‘As you get through the travel of the Diverge you get more and more stiff so you don’t bottom out so hard and also you can control the handlebars a lot better,’ Cordoba explains.

‘The progressive spring goes from 150lb [pounds per inch] to 230lb whereas the Roubaix is 100lb all the way through the travel,’ he adds.

BB drop

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Image 20 of 28

The control that the Future Shock offers has been matched by a rethink in the Diverge’s geometry, the most significant change being the bottom bracket drop, increased to 86mm from 74mm with the previous generation of the bike.

‘The BB drop has been increased, which is all about stability and confidence,’ Cordoba explains.

‘The Crux [Specialized’s cross bike] has a shallow 42mm BB drop, which works for cross racing. On loose gravel, though, the 86mm BB drop just plants you down on the gravel.

'While it increases the chance of a pedal strike in a corner, especially when switching to 650b wheels, the benefits in stability are significant for those doing more recreational off-road riding or gravel-specific endurance races.’

On the point of the lightweight frame’s resilience to damage when on rough terrain, Specialized is  confident that the Diverge will survive the chips and pings typical to rough gravel riding.

‘We’ve been testing it for a while – we test the whole variation of carbon frames – and we’re confident on safety,’ says Mark Cote, head of marketing and innovation at Specialized.

Re-inventing the wheel

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Image 14 of 28

The inclusion of 650b compatibility is a huge surprise from Specialized, who have never flirted with the smaller diameter wheel size on this scale.

This was an innovation first made prominent by Gerard Vroomen’s Open U.P, which comes as standard with 650b wheels on an otherwise normal road setup.

The brand has released a new Roval 650b CLX 32 disc wheel to coincide with the release of the Specialized Diverge, which will enable 47mm tyres to be run on the bike.

‘There’s a sweet spot in terms of tyre width for the 650b wheel, and the 700c which will give a similar ride quality,’ Cordoba says.

‘The sweet spot for 700c is 38mm, while on the 650b it is 45mm, but with all the new trend for wide rims it changes the shape of the tyre a lot. On some 650b rims the bike will accept 47mm tyres.’

The bike comes as standard with 700c wheels, and the CLX 650b will be available at the same price as the CLX 32 (currently £1,870).

The other startling development is the speccing of a dropper seatpost, which at the press of a button will drop down 35mm, and at another press rise back up.

The benefit is a lower seat height, which enables a lower centre of gravity and consequent stability over rough terrain.

The Specialized Diverge uses the Command Post XCP developed for the Specialized Epic mountain bike, and it is the first example of a dropper post specced as standard on a road bike from any major brand.

The dropper post weighs only 400g, but can be switched out for any regular 27.2mm seatpost for a minor weight saving.

Just as the Roubaix, the Diverge comes specced with Specialized’s SWAT box, which is an integrated storage unit above the BB containing spares and tools.

Specialized has stressed that the Diverge has been redeveloped as much for women as men.

‘There’s a gender equality to gravel,’ says Cordoba, pointing out that more of Specialized’s female staff than men race in gravel events.

There are women-specific models in the line, but there will be no separate platform for women.

Below the S-Works level sits the Diverge Comp, Diverge Sport, then the alloy Diverge E5 Comp, Diverge E5 Sport and basic Diverge E5.

The Diverge E5 Sport and Diverge E5 also come in women-specific sizing, going as small as a 44cm top tube.

UK prices are yet to be confirmed.

Head through to page two for our first ride review of the Specialized S-Works Diverge

Specialized S-Works Diverge 2018: First ride review

Verdict: The innovative Specialized Diverge makes a leap forward to encompass virtually all the terrain you could imagine while remaining a  road bike at heart.

I had the opportunity on my first ride of the Specialized Diverge to ride on fast roads, on technical gravel and even mountain bike trails in the hills of New Jersey.

It certainly has some unusual quirks when first sitting astride it, but even on a first ride I managed to ride with more confidence on more testing terrain than ever before.

That said, there is more to the Diverge than its all-road angle.

Making contact

Contact points were initially a little unsettling on the Diverge. The strange movement of the front end on account of the suspension coupled with a minute twisting movement in the saddle, as a consequence of the dropper post, made the bike feel strangely loose.

It felt like the head tube needed to be tightened along with the saddle rails. It was a passing sensation, and quickly the bike came into its own.

The Diverge feels immediately like a nicely finished and highly tuned bike. The sizing is much in line with the Roubaix, with the Future Shock creating a high front end, while the wide tyres and lay-up choices all contribute to a very smooth ride.

The surprising impression with the Diverge is the responsiveness of the bike even with wide tyres at low psi. It is a strikingly light bike for its class, while the stiffness of the rear end sees it leap up to speed with impulses of power.

This was a huge benefit off road when navigating through deep turrets of gravel or rock, or trying to start moving on a steep incline.

The numbing effect of the Future Shock at the front of the bike did create a slight imbalance, where at first the back of the bike felt a little robust as there was more feedback from the road.

I came to realise that in isolation the rear was actually fairly compliant and comfortable, but again it’s a slight quirk on account of the tech on offer.

For my part, the Future Shock makes a great deal more sense here than on the Roubaix. Coming off a rocky drop or entering into a patch of serious rock and stone at speed, the Future Shock offers different levels of stability and control to anything I’ve experienced before anywhere within the confines of a road category.

The traction and confidence offered by the Future Shock touches on the feeling of a fully fledged front suspension fork, but obviously falls a long way short of the same travel and strength.

It does transform scary jagged rocky routes into a much less intimidating prospect on a road bike. That opens up altogether new terrain and ride settings.

I’m no off-road rider, but I was happily shooting along rough and loose gravel tracks. I took the Diverge on low-difficulty mountain bike tracks and felt totally comfortable, even eager to push harder through technical corners and over obstacles.

The bike is not light by high-end lightweight road standards, but feels very low in weight compared to other bikes of this versatility, and is a significant weight saving on a full-blown MTB.

The drop

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Image 2 of 28

The dropper post helped a great deal with more technical rocky descents, and was a very neat feature I’ve never had the opportunity to use before.

Simply pressing the thumb lever drops the post when weighted, and it will spring up if the lever is pressed again when unweighted.

For very sharp and technical tracks, the lower centre of gravity and control made a huge difference to my confidence on the Diverge.

Riding in New Jersey we took on by far the most challenging terrain I’ve come across on a road bike, but I never felt out of my comfort zone.

In truth, I think I would look to switch this out quite quickly for a conventional 27.2 post for the majority of my riding – preferring the tamer side of gravel tracks.

It is an expensive addition to the spec, but it makes an important statement about where this bike is pitched.

The more conventional endurance all-road features all work well together. Shimano XTR rear derailleur has a clutch to avoid dropping the chain from chain slap when running a 1x front chainring setup.

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Image 19 of 28

I found the 1x setup to be extremely well suited to the demanding terrain this bike is destined for. The range of gearing is plentiful for even the harshest gravel inclines.

For more road riding, I would possibly prefer a conventional double chainring setup, and I think it’s a good move from Specialized to spec the lower end carbon Diverge frames with hydraulic Shimano 105 groupsets.

Back on the road

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Image 6 of 28

Moving over to the road, the Specailized S-Works Diverge is capable on the tarmac, even with the wide tyres at a low pressure. It cruises happily without any real sense of drag or sluggishness.

Much like the Open U.P, the Diverge offers a huge amount of fine tuning with regards to wheel and tyre choice. Trimming the tyres down to 32mm would make a big difference to the overall speed.

I would be eager to put the Diverge to the test on a narrower tyre width at higher pressure to see how it fares against serious endurance bikes.

Given the weight and the all around stiffness, I’m confident that it would be able to sit happily in amongst a decent paced group ride.

On the whole, Specialized's intelligent approach to handling for which the Tarmac is famed is put to use well here, and the bike is confident on descents on the road as much as the gravel.

Of course, Shimano’s hydraulic disc braking system offers another world to braking than conventional rim brakes.

There’s a lot of testing to be done with the Diverge to really determine its strengths across its different uses.

For many it will be tourer kitted out with mudguards and panniers, for others a high-end racer to fuse gravel, cross and tarmac rides.

The very fact that it spans so many categories is its main strength though.

I’m  encouraged by the Specailized S-Works Diverge, not only as a bike in itself but a direction of bikes in the future. Too often the opportunities afforded by disc brakes in terms of wheel and tyre compatibility aren’t exploited in new bikes.

Specialized has taken the possibilities to the extreme and introduced new features to the road-platform altogether.

At the same time, those features will offer benefits at the lower end of the range for normal commuters in terms of comfort and versatility.

Above all else, the Specailized S-Works Diverge offers an incredibly fun ride, unlocking adventurous new roads, paths and trails without sacrificing the fundamental pleasure of road riding.