What began as a university project kick-started the aero road bike market, and Cervélo is still trying to make riders quicker 25 years on

Words: Sam Challis Photography: Tapestry

Anyone with an interest in bikes knows that Cervélo was founded in 1995 by Phil White and Gérard Vroomen. However, the duo had been working together behind the scenes for many years before that.

‘Actually, “studying” is probably a more accurate way to describe what they were doing,’ says Sean McDermott, Cervélo’s director of projects. ‘Gérard was making a carbon frame as an engineering project at McGill University in Canada.

He crossed paths with Phil, a fellow student engineer who shared his interest in bikes, so he jumped into the project. They were both interested in TT bikes, but thought like engineers using data to inform design, rather than constraining themselves to what bikes were generally supposed to look like at the time.’

Evidence of this analytical approach is displayed in the brand’s name. Cervélo is a portmanteau of cervello, the Italian word for brain, and vélo, the French for bike. Looking at the industry at the time, the pair recognised they had an opportunity to disrupt a market that was still wedded to the status quo of round-tubed steel bikes.

‘This led to their first design, the Baracchi,’ says McDermott. The bike is well worth a Google. The acid-green paint scheme of the bike serves only to highlight its radical design, which had 1x gearing and eschewed a traditional bike frame’s double-triangle construction completely. It still looks futuristic today, bearing an unsurprising resemblance to Cervélo’s radical P5X time-trial bike. Back in 1995, the design was beyond comprehension.

‘It disrupted the industry too much,’ says Scott Roy, Cervélo’s engineering manager. ‘The pair took the idea to all of the traditional framebuilders in Italy, proposing it to them as the future of bike design. With the benefit of hindsight we now know they were totally right, but back then the Italians just carried on sipping their espressos and told Gérard and Phil to bugger off.’

Denied both acceptance and support, the pair decided to build the bike themselves, and Cervélo was born. 

Forging ahead

Before Vroomen and White’s rationale could be validated by results, the UCI introduced strict rules regarding frame design, making the Baracchi probably one of the most famous race bikes never to be ridden professionally.

‘It did cement in Phil and Gérard’s minds the approach Cervélo should take, though,’ says McDermott. ‘So they started making aluminium frames with airfoil shapes.’

Before long they produced the Eyre road bike, then the P2 TT bike followed, a UCI-legal spiritual successor to the Baracchi. It would go on to win many races, justifying the efficacy of the ideas that went into Cervélo’s bold first bike.

Wind-tunnel testing and computational fluid dynamics – design tools that are now standard in any contemporary road bike design – were still in their infancy at this point, viewed as obscure and unnecessary by most brands. Yet, says McDermott, White and Vroomen’s obsession with them set the tone for the future direction of all Cervélo’s bikes, right up to the present day.

Those weren’t the only working practices that set Cervélo apart. ‘I was around back then,’ says McDermott. ‘We were in these offices with high walls but no ceilings, like tall cubicles. Phil and Gérard were at opposite ends, so they’d just yell at each other about what was going on.

‘Phil would lead the design groups, identifying where the bikes could be better, and he was adamant we wouldn’t release a design until the original goals had been reached. Our top bikes, like the RCa, had no end date. It was very different to the regimented developmental cycle of other brands.’

It may have been different, but it was successful. In 2002 Cervélo released the Soloist Team, a road bike with a frame more reminiscent of a then-TT bike. That design essentially created the aero road genre.

‘The year after we became the supplier to the pro team CSC, who were ranked 14th in the world at the time,’ says McDermott. ‘Cervélo was easily the smallest and youngest bike company to ever supply a team at that level.’

Regardless, Team CSC rose up the rankings, becoming the top team in the world for three of the six years they were aboard Cervélos. Fabian Cancellara reigned supreme in the spring Classics, and in 2008 Carlos Sastre won the Tour de France aboard Cervélo’s SLC-SL and R3-SL bikes.

‘The trajectory of the brand accelerated steeply from then, so Phil and Gérard set up our own team, Cervélo TestTeam, in 2009 to continue the development,’ says McDermott. ‘It took things to another level. When Carlos won the Tour we’d all gone to the local pub to watch the final TT. It was awesome, but having a team the following year honestly felt like we were part of everything. Riders would come to visit and we’d tell them about the bikes and other cool stuff we were doing. It was very good for morale and product development. A massive challenge for the business overall but anyone who was here at that time would look back on it as a happy time I’m sure.’

While McDermott dismisses the suggestion that those good times came to an end, they certainly changed form considerably in the early 2010s. Global expansion put strain on every facet of the brand. In the space of a couple of years, Cervélo TestTeam morphed into Garmin-Cervélo, Vroomen left, and White sold to Pon Holdings, a Dutch company involved with several other bike brands such as Raleigh, Focus and Santa Cruz. White was Pon’s chief innovation officer until 2017, and then he too moved on.

McDermott says the departure of both founding members was felt keenly, but also allowed Cervélo to modernise. ‘Gérard’s was a very slow transition out – he remained as a consultant and visited frequently. Then when Phil left he tasked us with upholding Cervélo’s original tenets. We have a core of long-serving engineers, which is a huge source of pride for us, so those principles were hardwired into them anyway, but we had to develop a structure to work together more as a team. We became more professional and ended up in a stronger position.’

Constructive criticism

Being such a data-driven brand, Cervélo has always used rider feedback as part of its engineering process. However, some pro riders are more forthcoming than others.

‘Mark Cavendish was an arsehole,’ says Roy. The British sprinter rode Cervélo bikes at Team Dimension Data from 2016 to 2019. ‘It’s true, and he says he is too. But that was brilliant. He was never wowed by a shiny new bike, nor impressed by us being nice to him. He’d objectively analyse everything he used. The input he gave us is how we ended up with the stiffness-to-weight ratio of our current S5. He got on the previous generation, a really successful bike, and in no uncertain terms told us it was the worst bike he’d ridden for stiffness.’

Cavendish could drill down into exactly what was happening and when, Roy adds. ‘He’d say, “When I came out of this corner and did that, I felt it understeer because of this…”, in much the same way he can describe the final few kilometres of every sprint he’s ever been in. He was an engineer’s dream.’

Another rider who helped shape the design of Cervélo bikes was American time-triallist Dave Zabriskie. ‘He really subscribed to what we were trying to achieve. He has DNA in literally every bike we make because we scanned his body in 2007 and made a life-sized model of it, which we’ve put on top of every bike we’ve wind-tunnel tested since. So basically every bike we’ve made for the last 13 years has been completely optimised for Dave Zabriskie.’

These days, however, feedback from racers only goes so far. Maria Benson, Cervélo’s director of product management, says, ‘The maturity of road cycling means it’s getting harder from an engineering side to make the gains we were able to 10 years ago in aero, stiffness and weight reduction. Plus many other brands have caught up to our level in the areas we pioneered, because everyone has access to the same technology.’

The answer, according to Benson, has been to widen the remit of the bikes: ‘In our S5 we’ve taken a more holistic approach to what an aero bike is, making it more well-rounded as well as fast. We’re really trying to understand how a frame reacts to a rider. Are they comfortable? Do they fit properly? That’s where we now get the performance benefit. Fostering a sense of confidence and enjoyment in a race bike through design is more powerful than just pumping out “faster” frames. We haven’t lost Phil’s “engineering-first” approach, but we’re broadening our understanding of what needs to be engineered.’

The same scenario is being played out in other sectors. ‘From a silhouette standpoint, lightweight race bikes all look similar, and gains between brands are marginal,’ she adds. ‘It’s just the right way to make that type of bike.’

That isn’t purely down to the engineers. ‘Consumers have allowed the change of lightweight road bikes to happen,’ says Benson. ‘They’ve become better educated and bought into the shift because they understand that faster tube shapes and disc brakes are an overall gain in a bike traditionally designed to be lightweight.’

Down the road

Cervélo states that every bike it has ever made is fit to be raced at pro level, so the release of its new Áspero, the brand’s first bike that isn’t tarmac-oriented, should be examined with interest.

‘The gravel category is so broad,’ says Benson. ‘We noticed most designs lean towards the adventure side, with an upright position and mounts for bags, and that customer doesn’t really fit with the ethos of the bike we design. We also noticed there aren’t really many bikes out there meant for a competitive style of gravel riding, even though a lot of these events are highly competitive. There’s huge potential in this area. Naturally we jumped into the market there.’

Even away from the tarmac, Cervélo is focussed on speed. Could the company have a similarly disruptive effect in the gravel market as it has done in road bikes for all these years? Don’t bet against it.

Complete speed

Aero isn’t the whole story with the S5

‘We had a big head start in this space,’ says Maria Benson, Cervelo’s director of product management. ‘But today all major brands have figured out a way to make something fast. So we approached the S5 differently, making sure handling, ride quality and usability were just as polished as aerodynamics.’

The S5’s V-stem and external steerer are key features in that regard. They add stiffness to the front end and make cable routing simpler. They also improve aerodynamics of course – this S5 is a claimed 5.5 watts faster than the old one. 

Modern classic

The R5’s roots go back almost 20 years

Cervélo’s R-series has been winning pro races since 2003. This latest R5 Disc is the raciest version yet, with a longer and lower geometry than previous models.

The brand says frame stiffness is higher too, thanks to Cervélo’s famous ‘Squoval Max’ tube shaping. Benson says the tubes blend a mostly square profile with oval corners and curved sides, which generates a good balance between stiffness and aerodynamics at a light weight. Unusually, the disc frame weight is even lighter than its rim brake counterpart – a claimed 831g versus 850g. 

All-road racing

The Áspero is fast over any surface

The Áspero is Cervélo’s first move into the gravel sector and is one of the first gravel bikes built for racing rather than adventuring. What that means is an expansive tyre clearance – up to 42mm – but a lightweight frameset with no mounts for luggage or mudguards.

The Áspero uses a ‘Trail-mixer’ dropout, too. It changes the bike’s fork offset by 5mm depending on its orientation to keep handling consistent whatever tyre/wheel size combination is used.

You can win Rigoberto Urán's actual 2020 Tour de France bike for free in a sweepstake opening today. The Education First rider rode the Cannondale SystemSix to eighth overall at Le Tour this year and it could now be yours.

To celebrate a historic Tour, Cannondale has launched a free sweepstake to win the Colombian's bike running from today until 31st December.

The bike is built to Urán's specifications with a 51cm frame and his race number – signed – still attached.

Component-wise, it has a Shimano Dura Ace Di2 drivetrain with disc brakes, Vision Metron 55 wheels and a Hollowgram crankset with Power2max power meter also included.

It is also decked out in team colours with a sleek dark navy frame with some of the pink detailing we've come to know and love including black and pink bottle cages.

On the way to finishing eighth overall, just over eight minutes behind UAE Team Emirates's Tadej Pogačar, 33-year-old Urán also rode the bike to three top 10 finishes – he also finished 10th in the final time-trial, but not on this bike.

The competition is available to those in the UK as well as Austria, Canada (apart from Quebec), France, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland and the US.

For full details and to enter visit: cannondale-tour-de-france-bike-giveaway

Photography Stu Bowers

Vitus emerged as a pioneer back in 1970, producing bonded, lugged aluminium frames from its factory in Saint-Étienne, France.

Its slender, tubular constructions were considered cutting edge due to their low weight, plus they wouldn’t rust like steel. But it was its 979, released in 1979, that really put the brand on the map.

Champions from around the globe – Phil Anderson, Allan Peiper, Stephen Roche and Luis Herrera, to name a few – tasted success on a 979, helping to make it an iconic frame that’s now highly sought-after by collectors. But it was the supremacy of Classics legend Sean Kelly in the 1980s that cemented the 979’s status.

The Irishman formed a good rapport with Vitus early on in his career, and that relationship exists to the present day as Kelly continues to be an ambassador, and his wealth of experience is often called upon to inform on bike designs, this latest Vitesse Evo being one of them.

Go with the pro

Vitus is still involved in pro racing, first through its involvement with the An Post Chain Reaction ProContinental team up to 2017, and since then through its own Vitus Pro Cycling-Brother UK team, for which this new Vitesse Evo will be the weapon of choice once racing resumes.

In this spec, it’s the lightest bike in the Vitus range, and my size large swung from the scales at 7.69kg. Given it is dripping with top-drawer components from Sram and Zipp, that weight marks it as good but not outstanding for a modern disc brake bike.

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There are a few other areas where it seems to lag behind the competition too. There are no dropped seatstays, no internal seat clamp, only minimal internal cable routing, no integrated bar/stem combo and little in the way of aero tube profiling.

Even before I had struck out on the first of my training rides (all within the Government’s exercise guidelines) I couldn’t help feeling like I was testing a race bike from three years ago.

I put this to Vitus road product manager Jodie Shann, who said, ‘I can’t deny this frame is in the third year of its existence now, as it is essentially based on the rim brake version of the Evo, which we designed for An Post. The riders really liked that bike and wanted to be able to move to disc brakes and for it not to feel too different.

‘Obviously we had to re-work elements of the frame, like increasing chainstay length for disc brakes and altering the layup to withstand the additional disc brake forces, so a number of tube shapes have changed subtly, but the core geometry has not.

‘Timing-wise, I guess it was developed right on the cusp of the end of the more “classically shaped” road bike era, so yeah, its classic silhouette remains. At least for now.’

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Image 3 of 8

No complaints

My test bike came with its Zipp Service Course SL stem completely slammed and the steerer tube already cut, leaving me no option on front end height. Thankfully Vitus has been generous enough with the head tube length so as not to leave me with a large chiropractic bill.

As I expected, the Zipp finishing kit and Sram Red eTap AXS groupset performed flawlessly, but less well known to me were the wheels from Prime, which like Vitus is a direct-to-consumer brand exclusive to Wiggle and Chain Reaction Cycles. I was pleasantly surprised, as they proved to be stiff, with a lively feel and modern aero rim shapes.

They are designed around a 25mm tyre with a 19mm internal width, wide 27.5mm external profile and 38mm depth, and have a claimed weight of 1,563g a pair. With an RRP of just £899, they put some bigger-name brands to shame.

As for the frame, that too did everything sufficiently well, but not in a way that set my world on fire. I found myself using words such as ‘solid’, ‘dependable’ and ‘consistent’ when jotting down my thoughts after a ride.

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Image 4 of 8

When I laid down some power, I couldn’t detect any undesirable flex, but neither did I get the sense of excitement that comes with the best race bikes.

Its handling was composed, balanced and stable. The semi-compact geometry allowed a reasonable amount of the 27.2mm seatpost to be exposed and thus helped deliver decent shock absorption, but stopped a good way short of class-leading comfort.

For all the sparkle of the Vitesse Evo’s glittery paint, I felt it lacked the charisma to match the best of its rivals. But there is one area where it outguns a good number of its competitors: price.

A penny short of £5k is outstanding value for this spec. You would have to add at least £3k to that price if you wanted an equivalent-spec Cannondale, and more like £4k if you went with Trek or Specialized’s top-flight bikes. That’s the kind of money to make me re-think whether I could accept B+ ‘good effort all-round’ over A-star ‘best in class’.

Pick of the kit

7 Mesh Skyline Jersey, £200, 7mesh.com

7 Mesh has been steadily refining its road race offering and the new 2020 Skyline jersey has really stepped things up. It’s super-light, with a fit as snug as they come for maximum aero gains.

Coldblack fabric enhances the jersey’s heat management, and five rear pockets (twao zipped) are supported to resist vertical stretch. It’s the perfect choice for a tough sportive in the mountains.

Alternatively…

Go with the wind

If you want something more aero, look no further than the Vitus ZX-1 CRX (£5,199.99). Named after the brand’s first carbon monocoque race bike in 1991, the ZX-1 is every bit the modern aero race rig.

Save with an Ultegra shift

Much as we love the Sram Red eTap AXS groupset, we can’t ignore that the same bike fitted with a Shimano Ultegra Di2 groupset saves a hefty £1,500 over the top-end model (£3,499.99).

Spec

All reviews are fully independent and no payments have been made by companies featured in reviews

What started as one man selling components out of a trailer has become a behemoth of the bike industry. Here's how

Words: Sam Challis Photography: Danny Bird

Like many successful brands, Specialized’s story is one of entrepreneurship and capitalism, but this one comes with a leftfield twist.

As a young man fresh out of university in 1973, Mike Sinyard sold his Volkswagen Camper van to raise enough money to fly to Europe and ride around on his bike. After spending some time in Italy he met Cino Cinelli, founder of the eponymous Italian bike company.

Spotting an opportunity, Sinyard bought as much of Cinelli’s product as he could afford, so that he could sell it back in the US. He would later convince the Italian to make him the sole US importer of the brand.

‘Mike sold those first few components from a trailer attached to his bicycle, riding up and down the San Francisco Bay area,’ says Mark Cote, global head of marketing and innovation at Specialized.

‘That was where our name came from – “specialistas” is an Italian term for manufacturers who would build or connect specifically tailored products with the consumer.’

Sinyard officially founded Specialized in 1974, and two years later the brand released its first product, the Specialized Touring Tyre. Since then, the company has developed beyond all recognition, growing to the point where it not only follows trends in the cycling market but often dictates them.

Its catalogue boasts a huge and diverse range of products, sponsors world-class athletes in every cycling discipline and has even launched a charity that now runs independently of the bike brand. Yet Cote says its core tenets remain the same as when it began.

‘We’re still just catering for what riders want,’ says Cote. ‘It’s just now we get to do that globally instead of just up and down that bit of San Francisco Bay. Our depth and connection to the market is the secret sauce that has led the company to be as successful as it has been.’

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Image 2 of 11

Thick and thin

Not that it has been plain sailing for Specialized throughout the 45 years it has been in business. On occasions, costly investments would prove to be non-starters, and according to Sinyard himself the brand came within a few hundred dollars of bankruptcy in the mid-1990s.

‘Rodney Hines, one of our graphic designers and a Specialized veteran of more than 30 years, started slapping these “Innovate or Die” stickers around our HQ in the 1990s because he thought we were getting a bit soft,’ says Cote. ‘We really took that to heart and still use that slogan to this day because it resonated – if we aren’t differentiating and driving innovation, why are we around?’

That’s especially true in an industry as competitive as cycling, where it isn’t hard for the consumer to find good products from any number of brands.

‘So we changed our approach,’ says Cote. ‘Thinking more holistically, not just about product but about the facilities and processes that support the product, too.’

As an example of this shift in mentality, Cote points to the expansion of Specialized’s ‘Body Geometry’ concept. These ‘contact point’ products have been designed with doctors, engineers and riders to improve comfort and reduce the chance of injury.

‘Body Geometry started in the late 1990s with a saddle. After that we started to realise the potential this concept had so we worked on some shoes too, but came to the conclusion that the features we designed into any Body Geometry product would only really matter if you fit on your bike properly.’

That lead to the creation of the Specialized Bicycle Components University – which now incorporates the bike-fit technology from Retül – with the aim of training individuals to conduct bike fits so Specialized’s Body Geometry products could be used correctly.

‘Consequently we now have thousands of trained fitters worldwide,’ says Cote. ‘Now riders with Specialized shoes don’t have to worry about hot feet like they used to, and women get products properly designed for their anatomy.

‘We won’t compromise on a project – we’re happy to go down a rabbit hole, investing time and resources if it means we can develop the product we need.’

Cote says Specialized demonstrates the same way of thinking when it comes to its bikes: ‘We decided to go after “speed” in 2014. So we didn’t just build the Venge ViAS, our approach let us build a system that would save you five minutes over 40km, which incorporated wheels, tyres, shoes, skinsuit and helmet.

‘Our teams work next to each other and everyone is within shouting distance – and shouting does happen sometimes – so we’re all aware of what’s going on. It means we’re naturally well aligned when it comes to developing new products.’

Thanks to the aforementioned willingness to invest, new product development now happens at a speed that belies Specialized’s monolithic size. Within the company’s Morgan Hill headquarters in California there is a new R&D facility capable of building 10,000 frames a year entirely on site, yet Specialized uses the resource entirely for development prototyping.

The initial frame moulds are now machined on site too, which means Specialized doesn’t have to involve its Asian factory (and the logistical issues of managing a long-distance partnership) until the point at which a new design is basically ready for full production.

‘We can go through so many levels of simulation in-house now that in most cases the first rideable prototypes of a new design are already better than the previous generation,’ says Cote.

‘Ten years ago the way we’d develop a Tarmac would be to set given performance and safety parameters, build that up in one design, make a prototype, send it to the factory.

‘We’d then get a pre-production sample back. We’d test it, get feedback and make a change. It would take three to four weeks for the next iteration to come back. We’d repeat that anywhere from nine to 20 times in a two-year development cycle, then put the frame into production. That was probably true up until the Tarmac SL3.’

Today, Cote explains, the process is far more complex, but also far quicker: ‘Most importantly we’ll set parameters for handling, as every bike has to handle the Specialized way, but also for ride quality, stiffness and aerodynamics. Then we codify them for every different frame size, so for the Tarmac that’s nine variations.’

Each size is a separate engineering project – the carbon layup is totally different, the aerodynamics are totally different – but Cote says that thanks to the resources Specialized has on hand now, something can be made in the morning, lab tested and ridden, and then another iteration can be fabricated immediately that can be ridden again in the afternoon.

‘What used to take a month now takes about five hours because we’ve made sure everything that dictates the riding experience is in-house within 500 metres of each other,’ says Cote.

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Changing gear

The past couple of years have seen some seismic shifts in the road market but it only takes a brief bit of research to see that Specialized is handily placed within each niche.

A case in point is the Tarmac – it has a reasonable claim to have pioneered the blueprint for a modern road race bike and many competitors have since released machines with similar features.

‘We’d been treading the same path with the Tarmac for several iterations so with the SL6 we took a step back to see what other avenues we could go down,’ says Cam Piper, Specialized’s road product manager for the Tarmac and Venge.

‘That coincided with the widespread uptake of disc brakes so we ended up creating something markedly different. Using the R&D lab and our “Win Tunnel” we could understand how features like the Tarmac’s dropped seatstays improved aerodynamics as well as comfort before other brands.’

As other brands have introduced similar concepts there has been a convergence in frame design. Piper says that means that now it is the details that matter.

‘The ingredients to do what we do exist everywhere. Most brands have access to the materials and technology we do and are bound by the same UCI limits.

‘It’s no longer at the point of “can we build it?”, it’s “what shall we build?” – little, astute selections and refinements that make the difference. With our development process we’re best placed to discover and exploit those areas, which is why the SL6 has been such a success for us.’

Chief among the updates to the design of the SL6 was aerodynamic efficiency, which is an attribute taken to a more extreme extent in Specialized’s aero road platform, the Venge. 2018 saw a slew of aero road designs released from the big brands and Piper is able to summarise the crux of the latest generation.

‘As the road market has matured, riders have become more discerning and they expect complete performance now. It’s no good for the Venge to just be the most aero bike – it needs to be lightweight, handle well and be comfortable too,’ he says.

‘The Venge has been almost 10 years in the making so I’d like to think we’ve educated riders in that time. When our Win Tunnel was built we’d test in there and people acted like it was a photoshoot or PR stunt. Now people understand the benefit of aero.’

Piper says he first saw evidence of that on Specialized’s lunchtime rides. They’re a brand institution and notoriously competitive – apparently pros have been dropped in the past because riders need a very specific type of fitness that Piper and Cote dub ‘lunch ride strength’.

‘A few years ago people started showing up on the ViAS and did so well on the ride that everyone started seeing the value in being aero. Now each lunchtime you can’t move for skinsuits and Evade helmets.

‘It has been accepted, which I think is representative of the market now too. We credit the Venge ViAS for helping to kick-start the aero trend.’

A key factor in the well-roundedness of modern race bikes has been the move to wider tyres – even the raciest of bikes now have clearances for tyres that were the preserve of endurance bikes a few years ago.

With the explosion of gravel at the other end of the spectrum, is Specialized’s venerable endurance road platform, the Roubaix, at risk of being made obsolete by the widening capabilities of the Venge and Diverge?

‘I don’t see endurance road being edged out by the combination of race and gravel,’ says Cote. ‘There’s still a definite application for the Roubaix. Geometrically and technically it has features that allow it to specialise between race and gravel – it has similar aerodynamics to the Tarmac but the Futureshock suspension unit of the Diverge, for example.

‘The widening scope of each bike just means the rider has a more adaptable machine that still performs highly. That didn’t used to be possible, and can only be a good thing for riders.’

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Image 7 of 11

New horizons

Cote says that while naysayers may claim that the road scene is tapering off, Specialized believes that worldwide it is still as vibrant as ever. That said, the brand is focussed heavily on gravel and e-road too.

‘We just can’t get enough of how forward-thinking and experimental gravel riding is,’ he says. ‘The future is really open for gravel and it’s one of our biggest areas of investment.’

Specialized’s ‘biggest single investment in product development ever’, though, was in the drive system for its new Turbo Creo SL e-road bike. Unlike other e-road bikes that are designed around third-party systems, Specialized developed a proprietary drive system, which Cote says sets the e-bike apart in terms of ride feel and battery range.

‘We opened an e-bike hub in Switzerland seven years ago, which now has 40 employees,’ says Cote. ‘The Creo is my favourite bike of ours without doubt.

‘We had a taco night at our HQ for our pro teams at last year’s Tour of California. Bora-Hansgrohe’s Max Schachmann took off on a prototype Creo, disappeared up the road and came back with a huge grin on his face.

‘No matter if you are in the WorldTour or haven’t ridden a bike since you were a child, e-bikes have this ability to put a giddy smile on your face. It’s so exciting.’

Specialized says the Creo can be set up to suit gravel just as well as road. ‘People who were racing triathlon now want to go bikepacking,’ says Cote. ‘That type of crossover simply wouldn’t have happened a couple of years ago.

‘It means people are spending more time on their bikes and enjoying it more, which is ultimately all we want to facilitate. As I said, we’re still running on the same principles Mike fostered when he founded the company. The rider is still the boss.’

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Aero gets practical

‘The Venge ViAS was released in 2015 and for us this was the moment when aero was widely accepted as something tangible,’ says Cote. ‘But there were so many things that made it not your go-to bike.’

Not least was the cockpit design – it hid every cable away from the wind but was notably convoluted to adjust. The latest Venge is just as clean but uses split spacers and smart, easy-to-remove fairings to make sure the bike is easier to live with day-to-day.

Shock of the new

The second iteration of the ‘Futureshock’ suspension unit is a lot more refined than the first. That was a simple sprung system but the redesign has introduced two significant features.

First, the unit’s travel has been damped using an oil reservoir, which ensures that both the compression and rebound are more controlled and progressive. Second, the unit is adjustable now that the original top cap has been replaced by a dial that can be turned on the fly to stiffen or soften the suspension.

Thinking inside the box

With the Diverge gravel bike, Specialized has been able to try out some new concepts, one of which is the SWAT storage unit. Standing for ‘storage, water, air, tools’, SWAT is a range of solutions for carrying stuff on the bike, and this SWAT Road Kit bolts into the junction between down tube and seat tube with space for a spare inner tube, multitool, CO2 cartridge and tyre levers.

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Dropping like flies 

It seems like every endurance race bike now features dropped seatstays – something the US company was among the first to champion. ‘Dropped stays are more aero and naturally promote compliance in the seat tube,’ says Piper.

‘As the tubes are shorter they’re also lighter. Thanks to our R&D lab and wind-tunnel we could understand and optimise their inclusion in our SL6 Tarmac design quickly. We know other brands have found the same thing as it’s now hard to find a race bike without them.’

A great climber’s bike needs to be a lot more than simply lightweight. Cyclist’s expert testers choose their favourites

Photography: Mike Massaro

Back in the early 1900s the idea of a bike weighing less than 15kg was a pipe dream. But by the 1960s a skinny steel racer could comfortably hit 10kg, and with a little help from ‘drillium’ – the fad that saw mechanics and riders drill holes in brake levers and chainrings to shave grams – even lighter.

Eddy Merckx’s Hour Record bike of 1972, built (and drilled) by Ernesto Colnago, weighed just 5.75kg, and even De Rosa’s heart logo was a result of weight saving, with Ugo De Rosa drilling three holes into a bottom bracket shell then cutting a triangle between them to lose excess material.

Aluminium followed steel, with Italian manufacturer Alan creating the original mass-production aluminium frame, which weighed as little as 1.6kg, in 1972. A few years later titanium joined the party, among the first the 1974 Teledyne Titan whose 2kg frame was a third lighter than comparable steel.

And then carbon fibre came along and started chipping away, bike by bike, at weight targets once thought impossible to reach.

The biggest target was the UCI weight limit of 6.8kg, which might have seemed optimistically low when it was introduced in 2000 but is now embarrassingly outdated. As early as 2004 Canyon engineer Hans Christian Smolik created the experimental Projekt 3.7, a 3.7kg, 16-gear bike.

In 2006 the Germans were at it again, debuting the Projekt 6.8, a 6.8kg disc brake road bike. In fact weight seems a bit of a theme in Germany, with the record for the lightest rideable bike standing at 2.7kg – a custom project started by German Gunter Mai, then finished off by Jason Woznick of Fairwheel Bikes in Tucson, Arizona.

As for production – ie, not custom – bikes, the feathery crown rests with German brand AX Lightness, whose Vial Evo Ultra tips the scales at 4.4kg thanks in part to a frame weighing under 600g. Most recently Specialized has hit the headlines with its Aethos (see p13), a sub-6kg fully built racer that the company claims has the lightest disc-frame ever built – just 585g for a size 56cm.

It’s incredible stuff, but there is a big but. When we put together the list of our favourite lightweight bikes it soon became clear that weight wouldn’t actually be the defining factor. Otherwise a bike such as the Tifosi Mons, which stole 15 minutes of fame by dressing up in the most expensive parts and weighing a claimed 4.6kg, would be on the list.

Not that it’s a bad bike, but it is an example of how if you throw enough money at a light-ish frame (780g) you can hit crazy-light numbers – 790g AX Lightness tubular wheels anyone? That isn’t really cricket.

No, bike design has come so far that at the top end riders can and should expect a more holistic approach, such that stiffness, comfort and even aerodynamics need not be sacrificed.

Weight matters and it underpins our choices here, but there’s much more to these bikes than meets the scales.

For a guide to the best road bikes money can buy, click here 
To see Cyclist's pick of the best aero bikes, click here

Specialized Tarmac SL7

As chosen by editor-at-large Stu Bowers

Read Stu's full review of the Specialized S-Works Tarmac SL7 here

Can a bike be an icon of a sport the way an athlete can? I don’t see why not, in which case the Tarmac is that icon. It’s the Eddy Merckx of bikes – the most successful of all time – having won World Championships, Olympic titles, Spring Classics, Grand Tours… it’s hard to find a race the Tarmac hasn’t excelled in. But there is a common denominator behind much of its success: weight.

The Tarmac has always been Specialized’s lightest, an accomplished all-rounder but one that shines brightest when the road points up. It’s the bike the pros reach for when there’s a summit finish or indeed any big climb. But despite such success Specialized hasn’t always gotten things spot on.

The Tarmac family is so venerable it can trace its roots back nearly two decades, the 2002 aluminium Tarmac E5 chalking up wins under Mario Cipollini before the full-carbon models found favour with Tom Boonen.

Yet since then it has been through a number of revisions, some good, some not so good (here’s looking at you, weird-handling SL2 and annoying-proprietary-wheelset SL5) before arriving at this, the Tarmac SL7. And this time around it’s outstanding.

The key difference here is that Specialized has used the very latest computer modelling techniques and its in-house wind-tunnel to merge the aero performance of its Venge into the Tarmac’s characteristics – cue wide, deep Roval wheels, dropped seatstays and fully integrated cables, all wrapped up in a 6.8kg package (S-Works size 56cm). Its frame weighs less than 800g including paint and hardware, making it one of the first lightweight bikes slippery enough to earn the tag ‘aero-road’.

To flesh that out with some numbers, Specialized says the Tarmac SL7 is 45 seconds faster over a 40km time-trial than the previous SL6 and loses just 2.5W in drag – mere seconds – to the current Venge.

Fratricide

Under normal circumstances I’d almost certainly have had the chance to take the SL7 to the mountains to test it in its natural habitat, but as it was launched amid a global pandemic testing has been restricted to my local routes. That hasn’t stopped me from getting a true sense of this bike’s capabilities.

I’ve ridden almost every version of both the Tarmac and the Venge in the past, and while each new bike generally felt like a general improvement, the Tarmac SL7 feels like it has invented its own category.

I don’t say that lightly. This bike’s predecessor, the SL6, was a standout bike that all in the Cyclist office agreed was one of best disc bikes of 2018/19. So too the latest Venge, which is a superbly fast bike that also manages to be decently light at 7.1kg.

And yet the Tarmac SL7 eclipses them both, in the Venge’s case so much so that the manufacturer has now officially withdrawn the bike from its range (albeit it will continue to produce the frameset for the time being). A lightweight bike killing off its aero sibling? Even just six months ago that would have been unthinkable.

This is why the Tarmac SL7 makes the cut here. It is light enough to be a true climber’s bike yet it could also lay claim to being one of the best-handling bikes on the market. It delivers an electrifying sense of power transfer on climbs, which combined with its low weight means it launches into attacks and accelerates with ease, eating up the road on steep gradients.

Beyond that it is also extremely agile, with a stable and unfaltering demeanour on descents and a road-hugging stance in corners. Then there’s the speed it can hold on flat and rolling terrain – the aero credentials make themselves well known.

If there’s a chink in this bike’s armour I haven’t been able to find it. It’s not even uncomfortable. Tot these things up and this bike proves that we no longer have to accept compromises in handling, stiffness and comfort if we want to go fast uphill or down.

The race to the Holy Grail, that magical triumvirate of low weight, aerodynamics and amenable ride feel, I think is over. I can’t help but wonder how long it will be before other brands start to combine their superbikes in a similar way. 

Learn more about the Tarmac SL7 from Specialized here.

Factor O2 VAM

As chosen by tech editor Sam Challis

Read Sam's full review of the Factor O2 Vam here.

A dusting on the scales must be supported by capability on the road, which is why the O2 VAM made its mark on me. With the frameset coming in under a kilo thanks to a frame weighing a claimed 667g (54cm), a top-end build hovers around 6.6kg.

That’s a disc brake bike coming in 200g under the UCI weight limit, using components that are top-spec but ultimately conventional.

Despite the bike’s skinny silhouette, features such as the ‘wide stance’ seatstays and sculpted bottom bracket junction mean the O2 VAM is stiff enough at the rear for sprint efforts – and that’s coming from an 84kg rider.

Combined with its low weight and disc brakes, that rigidity makes for a brilliantly reactive bike that accelerates and brakes with pleasing promptness. Few bikes have allowed me to dart around the technical Dorset lanes I ride on with the same level of confidence. Firing into turns and powering out of them is consistently rewarding.

The VAM is comfortable and handles well too. The lightest carbon fibres are by definition the stiffest, so to roll around and not have my fillings shaken out, or to find the bike doesn’t hop around like popcorn kernels in a microwave when cornering, was a welcome surprise. I’ve rarely felt so planted on such a lightweight bike.

I’m of the opinion it might even be pretty aero. While Factor shares no data to prove my point, I certainly didn’t feel the bike was holding me back at high speed. Plus the VAM presents a clean, slim profile to the wind, engineers having cleverly integrated cables without increasing the frontal area of the head tube.

To do this a D-shaped steerer tube has been employed so the cables have space to run through the head tube without the need to upsize the upper headset bearing.

The knowledge

In short, the O2 VAM is a complete bike. Its combination of attributes marks it out as something special. What I like is that Rob Gitelis, industry veteran and Factor’s owner, is candid about the fact the bike required some pretty special engineering knowhow and fabrication methods to get to where it is. A superhero is only as good as its origin story and Factor doesn’t scrimp on the details.

Gitelis says this is the most expensive frameset he has ever made. When you consider he has owned factories that manufactured for Cervélo and Scott, and that Factor also boasts the extremely complex One in its range (featuring a split down tube and external fork steerer) you can start to appreciate the sentiment.

The main tubes use Nippon Graphite Pitch fibre, an incredibly stiff, incredibly costly and very difficult material to work with. Boron filaments have been added to the seat tube for both compliance and their ability to cope with the compressive forces of the rider’s weight.

Textreme, a premium spread-tow fibre often used as a top layer for visual effect, has been used as the base structure at tube junctions, chosen for its proficiency at being moulded into complex shapes.

All these unusual materials are subjected to equally unusual manufacturing methods. Latex-covered Styrofoam mandrels are used in the moulds, so it’s possible to compress the composite at a higher pressure and thus expunge more resin. Every gram counts.

Gitelis says the bike was only financially viable because he owns his own factory so can absorb costs from individual projects into the expenses of the business as a whole.

Knowing it took decades of experience, cutting-edge fabrication techniques and a flagrant disregard for production cost adds to the O2 VAM’s appeal for me. Such forthright concessions are in contrast to the ambiguous marketing information we’re fed from many other brands. They rationalise the end product and its performance really nicely.

The core tenet of the bike is that it pushes things to extremes in some areas – the top tube is so fragile under compression that the bike ships with a ‘do not sit’ sticker along the middle – to create balance in others.

By doing so Factor has been able to create something that stands out in a highly congested category, and the result on the road speaks for itself. 

Learn more about the O2 Vam from Factor here.

Canyon Ultimate CF Evo Disc

As chosen by editor-at-large Stu Bowers

Read Stu's full review of the Canyon Ultimate CF Evo Disc here

I find myself in the peculiar position of championing two bikes in this month’s ‘clash of the light ones’. Having already made the case for the Specialized Tarmac I can’t ignore that there is another bike that deserves to be in the mix, one I’ve tested in its many guises over the years and which in this latest incarnation can boast a disc brake frame weight of just 641g. No wonder it gets the name ‘Ultimate’.

When it launched in 2019 the Ultimate CF Evo Disc (the first outing of what is now the Ultimate CFR) claimed to be a record-breaking bike, the world’s first sub-6kg disc brake bike. Not wishing to split hairs, the size medium I tested (issue 93) was a smidgen over at 6.16kg, but it was still unfathomably light for a disc bike, bearing in mind even now there are very few such bikes under 7kg.

I still recall the look of sheer amazement on the face of anyone who picked it up, but there was another reason why the Ultimate immediately sprang to mind when we started discussing our favourite featherweight racers. It was a bike that was instrumental in helping me achieve something I never thought I would do: being the first home in a mountainous European sportive.

The Figure Of Hate in the Pyrenees is a sportive that boasts nearly 5,000m of ascent over a gruelling 195km-long figure of eight, yet there were times when it actually felt like I was cheating. I’ll never forget the feeling as I tackled the biggest climb of the day, the hors catégorie Col de Pailhères.

With every pedal stroke the Ultimate surged forward as if turbo-boosted, and I can honestly say I’ve never crested a 2,000m peak feeling as fresh as I did that day. I’d attribute 90% of that to the bike. So too managing to escape my rivals on that climb and never looking back.

Ups and downs

What goes up must, of course, come down so unless you’re only interested in summit finishes and getting a lift back down the mountain then a lightweight bike must do more than just defy gravity.

The Ultimate really surprised me in this regard, being equally impressive in poise and handling down the many sinuous mountain descents of the Pyrenees. Because it was so light it needed just the deftest of touches to move it around but not in a manner that made it feel flighty or unstable, as was proven by the fact I hit a personal record of 92kmh on one descent. So not only did I climb faster than ever, I descended faster too.

Furthermore there was not a jolt of harshness to the ride feel, a fact I put down in large part to the seatpost assembly.  It was Canyon that pioneered the idea of a silicone sleeve wrapped around a seatpost that’s clamped lower down inside the seat tube. The rationale is there is more seatpost length available to flex, with the silicone offering some damping and filling what would otherwise be a gap between frame and post.

In this top-spec build that seatpost is an 87g Schmolke TLO, and with lowered clamp and sleeve combined the Ultimate remains the most vertically compliant bike I’ve ever tested that doesn’t contain pivots or springs. The result is that the Ultimate is day-to-day practical, as happy back in the UK as it was in the Pyrenees.

I’ve often been asked, ‘Can a road bike ever be too light?’ The answer isn’t straightforward. I’ve tested some very light bikes whose low weight has come at the cost of many of the other desirable traits, specifically stiffness and stability.

Some light bikes are too flexy due to the use of less material, others are skittish due to their high stiffness-to-weight ratio. But that’s not the case with the Ultimate. It is without doubt the most capable climbing bike I’ve tested.

It has often been said that anyone can make a light bike, but the real challenge is to achieve weight goals without sacrificing ride quality and practicality. A six-kilo bike is all very well but do you really want to ride tubulars every day or worry about being close to the weight limit for that stem? Thus in the Ultimate I feel Canyon has created a bike that does everything a bike needs to do – excels at these things no less – yet somehow does it for a shade over 6kg. 

Learn more about the Ultimate from Canyon here.

Trek Émonda SLR

As chosen by deputy editor James Spender

For a full review of the Trek Emonda SLR9, click here.

Halfway up the climb a guy came past me, out of the saddle because… he had no saddle. Given that the seatpost was still dangerously protruding I can’t say this was done for weight-saving, but what I can say is we were still 40km from the end of the Taiwan KOM. I can also say that by the time I struggled over the line this guy was already at the top in the queue for the food.

For those unfamiliar, the Taiwan KOM Challenge is 105km and runs from sea level to 3,275m. It is also excruciatingly hard and it’s why, when I rode it in 2017 along with my seatless chum, I decided I needed every advantage I could get from my bike. Thus I plumped for what at the time was one of the lightest production bikes available, the second-generation Trek Émonda SLR 9, kerb weight 6.08kg for a size 56cm.

To hit these numbers – the frame was a staggering 640g, the lightest of its day – Trek had employed every trick in the book. The frame featured a strikingly sloped top tube in the ‘compact Giants of the 1990s’ vein, a design that uses less material than a traditional shape.

There was also an integrated seatmast, another feature to save grams as it does away with the overlapping material of a seatpost. In the Émonda’s case it enabled more compliance too, offsetting what might otherwise have been an uncomfortable ride given the very stiff carbon fibres employed and the all-carbon, zero padding Bontrager XXX saddle – one of the lightest saddles available at 68g but one that wasn’t quite to my backside’s tastes.

Were I to have taken up full-time relations with this bike the saddle would have had to go, but otherwise I was utterly hooked. Bikes had been getting heavier with the advent of ‘everything aero’ and disc brakes, but here was a purists’ race bike.

Light at all costs, and light because it had been designed holistically. Added to that saddle was a set of specifically designed Bontrager Speed Stop rim brakes, Bontrager Aeolus 3 D3 wheels, a Bontrager XXX cockpit and even Bontrager tyres – the 185g (25mm) R4 Hard-Case Lites. By using its component arm Bontrager in tandem, Trek had blazed trails with one of the first homogenously designed road bikes.

Learn more about the Emonda from Trek here.

Heavier but faster

At the Taiwan KOM I came in five hours and nine minutes after, and only 181 places down from, eventual winner Vincenzo Nibali (3 hours 19 minutes). I was two places behind Rob Gitelis riding one of his original Factor O2s and competing in the over-50s category. Perhaps his bike was even lighter, yet I look back on that experience and think I couldn’t have chosen a better ride partner.

I did ride that Factor latterly (though to note, the O2 VAM is the lightened variation) and while it is impressive, the Émonda trumped the O2 in handling and comfort. In fact it trumped everything for a long while. Weight aside is was a ‘complete’ bike, light but near impeccable in every other regard too.

In the three years since, the Émonda has undergone a further facelift followed by full-on replacement surgery. First it got disc brakes, then earlier this year it got an entire overhaul. Gone is the compact shape, with the bike now looking much more regular side-on, although closer inspection reveals aerodynamically sculpted tubes and hidden cabling. Still, the ethos remains the same, even if somewhat a product of its time.

The new Émonda frame is actually 38g heavier than the outgoing model but, says Trek, it generates 180g less drag. That’s an 18-watt power saving or the equivalent of arriving at the finish line in 59 minutes when the previous generation would take 60.

This is indicative of where lightweight bikes are headed – it’s not good enough to just be light – but it does seem strange that the 2017 SLR 9 weighed 6.08kg, whereas the new SLR 9 weighs 6.82kg. But that’s disc brakes, aero tube profiles and hidden cables for you, all wonderful things to make a bike go faster, but all elements that manufacturers are desperately trying to pare down.

If the bike is faster overall, one can’t complain. Now where do I sign up for the next Taiwan KOM?

And the winner is...

They’re all light, but which is our light fantastic?

It’s an exceedingly tough call but while we each had our personal favourite, when we totted up the second place votes (OK, totted is a bit grand, we only had three to count), there was a clear… draw. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

Stu’s favourite alternative was the Trek Émonda, while James chose the Canyon Ultimate. This left Sam to be incredibly unhelpful, having given a somewhat leftfield vote to the BMC Teammachine (although the BMC does deserve honourable mention). So it was back to socially distanced arguing up a windy hillside in the New Forest (at the time of arguing, a Tier 1 area).

Unequivocal was the fact that the Ultimate was the significantly lighter bike, yet all agreed the Émonda is truly excellent, a worthy steed and unlike the others, boasting some seriously flamboyant paintwork.

Brands often sneak gram-savings in via lack of paint, which can weigh well over 100g a frame, so it’s little surprise the other three bikes here are basically variations on black. But while the Émonda would win a catwalk we’re not that superficial. No, the defining factor came down to day-to-day usability.

The Tarmac SL7 could well be said to be a superb all-rounder but it doesn’t excel – or perhaps excite – in any one area. The Émonda by contrast does, being wonderfully stiff and punchy up climbs and out of the traps. So too the Ultimate. But when the road gets rougher the Émonda gets a touch jarring while the Ultimate continues to roll with pronounced comfort, and all told the Ultimate just handles that much more sweetly. Which is a rare thing in a truly lightweight bike, and it’s why the Canyon Ultimate CFR is our overall winner.

It will get you to the top first by a nose, but will have you at the bottom by several bike lengths and a broad smile.

The bicycle is a vehicle with two wheels of equal diameter. The front is steerable, the rear is driven through a system comprising pedals and a chain. So sayeth Article 1, Sub-section 3.007 of the Union Cycliste Internationale’s technical regulations.

At this point, most of us are on the same page. It’s the other 55 pages of its bicycle design bible that sometimes cause disagreement.

The problems started towards the end of the last millennium. Until then bikes had been built from metal and there wasn’t much bike builders could do to create radical new designs.

But in the 1990s, advances in composite materials and aerodynamics led to a golden age of weird and wonderful bicycles that handed their riders a winning advantage – remember that Pinarello Espada bike ridden to time-trial glory by Miguel Indurain, or that Lotus bike propelling Chris Boardman to Olympic gold?

In 2000 the UCI stamped down on this flowering by decreeing that henceforth a bike should look like a bike – that its frame should be ‘of a traditional pattern’.

Its reasoning was that bike races should be won by human endeavour, not by hi-tech equipment, and so restrictions were placed on design aspects such as minimum weight, aspect ratio and rider position.

At a stroke, all wilder unibody designs, along with unconventional rider positions and aerodynamic fairings, were binned.

At the time, the UCI said, ‘If we forget that technology is subordinate to the project itself, we cross the line beyond which it takes hold of the system and imposes its own logic.

‘The bicycle is losing its user-friendliness and distancing itself from a reality which can be grasped and understood. The performance achieved now risks depending more on the form of the man-machine ensemble than the physical qualities of the rider.’

From a sporting point of view, this seems fair enough. But bikes aren’t just for racing. Some of us are happy to compete against ourselves or just to see how quickly we can go.

Yet with the UCI rules rendering bikes used in competition recognisable to any cyclist stumbling in from the 1880s, it begs the question: where might we be if they were ripped up?

Turning off the trickle

One man who knows all about radical design is British bike builder Mike Burrows. He created Boardman’s Lotus and was the brains behind Giant’s TCR compact frame, as seen on virtually every road bike now, in the period after the rules were laid down.

‘There were plans to ban the compact bicycle,’ he says. ‘The only reason it wasn’t banned was because the head of Giant Europe, Jan Derksen, was a famous Dutch speed skater and could ring up Hein Verbruggen at the UCI.

‘He had a quick word and said, “Hein, this compact geometry thing, it makes bikes a little lighter and a little cheaper. And wouldn’t that be a good thing?” That was the only reason.’

Burrows remains emphatic that the UCI’s prime aim should be to help sell bikes and encourage development, and he believes the rules are stifling that. Even more, he suggests the rules are harming pro racing by making sponsorship less attractive to bike companies.

‘In road racing you need variety to justify the claim that your bike is better,’ he says. ‘Many of the early bike races were put on to promote bike makers. But as the bicycles ceased to evolve, the bicycle makers ceased to be the main sponsors.

‘Working at Giant I saw the power of trickle-down. What wins the Tour will be noticed on the streets. And if monocoque bikes were winning the Tour, people would have been doing their shopping on them soon enough.’

So does Burrows believe that, without the rules, pro bikes would be significantly different? ‘Actually, I think broadly speaking what we have now with the double diamond frame is correct, although they should have better profiles.’

He suggests a lower top tube would leave more space to improve aerodynamics around the seatpost, ‘and an enclosed chaincase could be worth an extra mile an hour on top speed, because aerodynamically the drivetrain is a disaster area.’

These days, Burrows concentrates mainly on recumbent and utility bikes, where radical design is unaffected by the rules of any governing body, but he believes that the UCI still has a duty to consider the everyday rider as well as the pro racer.

‘The bicycle is the only piece of sporting equipment that’s more useful away from the arena than in it,’ he says. ‘It can change the world, so it deserves to be promoted as the future and not the past.’ 

Seeking approval

Not that significant innovation is impossible. Having come to a similar conclusion about drivetrain drag as Burrows, California-based Felt Bicycles had a radical solution.

When designing the US national team’s track bikes for the 2016 Rio Olympics, it swapped the drivetrain to the left-hand side. This improved the bike’s aerodynamics and centre of balance, and there was nothing in the rules to stop them.

Of course, not every bike can manage such a radical trick. ‘The rules have just become an integrated part of how we construct a frame,’ says Alexander Soria, Felt’s director of product development. ‘At this point they’re neither good nor bad, just part of the process.’

A UCI logo on a bike now means it has been approved for racing. Introduced in 2011, this accreditation process has increased interaction between manufacturers and cycling’s governing body.

Restricting racers from competing on prototypes, it means brands no longer find designs banned after they’ve sunk time and money into their production.

‘Since the rules and regulations became more stringent we’ve had to interact with the UCI much more. We have to pay, and we have to send them our designs and samples so they can check they are correct,’ says Soria.

This rule-tightening has had some positive effects for athletes. Take the stipulation that ‘equipment shall be of a type that’s sold for use by anyone’.

‘Over the past few years we’ve seen bending of the rules around athletes riding commercially available bicycles,’ says Soria.

‘Making the TA FRD Olympic track bike commercially available was a huge undertaking. We could have just stuck a button on the website saying click here to buy, then taken six months to build you one and charged $50,000.’

Although he’s too polite to say, this could well be termed ‘the Team GB method’. In the end, Felt’s bikes went on sale for $25,999 – expensive, but with nothing stopping another team buying up a fleet, not as expensive as running your own Olympic-level R&D and production.

Flagging breaches of the commercial availability rule is one area Soria says bike makers now have more influence with the UCI. Yet, with regards to the rules themselves, the relationship remains more a ‘Moses and the tablets’ type arrangement.

Employed as Felt’s engineering manager, Jeremiah Smith is less enthusiastic about any form of regulation: ‘I’m not such a fan, because they restrict what I can do,’ he says.

‘I can appreciate the intent, but the statement about seeking to preserve the traditional look of a bike? I’d question its logic.’

Working across the brand’s non-regulated triathlon bikes and its UCI-certified models, Jamie Seymour also often finds himself butting up against the rules regarding aero profiles.

‘You have maximum depths for the head and down tube, but these don’t necessarily coincide with the best airfoil shape for those areas,’ he says.

Yet just because the crazy designs of the 1990s have disappeared doesn’t mean that advances aren’t happening.

‘That same level of innovation is still happening today,’ says Soria. ‘With material technology, the period between 2005 to 2015 saw an increase in performance that’s easily worth the same consideration as the 90s.’

Strict machines

While bemoaning the restrictions, Smith does admit that the current regime may actually have led to the development of better bicycles.

Given cycling’s obsession with weight, the 6.8kg minimum has steered our bikes in a healthier direction than they might otherwise have taken, allowing engineers to focus on things with greater real-world benefit such as aerodynamics and comfort. The machines we ride are all a product of this regulation.

‘If the industry hadn’t embraced disc brakes I think lowering the weight limit would have been reasonable, but it’s about right for where we are now,’ Smith says.

Soria adds, ‘When designing a frame, there’s a sweet spot that balances frame weight against the performance metrics we want. It’s pretty easy to make a light frame. It’s harder to make one that’s also stiff and handles the way you want it to.’

At the moment, the bikes most companies want to make tend to weigh in at around the UCI’s limit, and if they dip under, a couple of added accessories easily solves that. And, as with weight, so the pursuit of the most aerodynamic bike is not necessarily a sensible course.

‘Even within the rules we could make a more aero bike,’ says Soria. ‘But would there be compromises in other areas? Maybe the compliance, weight or stiffness wouldn’t end up where you’d want it to be.’

Smith points out that designing inside the box (literally, see below) comes with frustrations.

‘Designing our AR aero bike there were shapes that fell outside the permitted boundary boxes, or once I’d got them in the boxes, some aesthetic element would fall outside again.’ Yet he’s not sure scrapping the rules would have resulted in the bike being any faster, perhaps only better looking.

A world without limits

Turns out, when you ask designers what they’d do if freed from all rules, the answer isn’t build some fantastical freak-bike.

In reality they might tweak tube shapes, drop the seatstays, maybe adjust rider position. Right now a lot of innovation comes down to materials, with software also emerging as a potential battleground.

It’s hard then to see the rules as hugely stifling design. Bikes improve year on year to the extent your next one might make you a few seconds faster than the previous model.

However, in an imaginary 25-mile race where World Champion Rohan Dennis rides his Pinarello and I turn up on a fully faired recumbent, I’d be into my second slice of cake before he crossed the finish line. Clearly, some regulation is needed to keep things fair.

The truth is, if you want to see a fundamental re-evaluation of the bicycle, sport isn’t really the place to look for it. While brands may grumble about the rules, few are looking to radically redesign the road bike, and no one is agitating for a recumbent Tour de France.

Much as the anarchist in us hates to admit it, in sport there have to be rules. Given the enjoyment provided by the bikes these rules have shaped, they seem to work OK.

Rules is rules

Just a few of the UCI decrees regulating race bike design

• The weight of the bicycle cannot be less than 6.8kg
• A bicycle shall not measure more than 185cm (length) by 50cm (width)
• Wheels of the bicycle may vary in diameter between 70cm maximum and 55cm minimum, including the tyre... Wheels shall have at least 12 spokes; spokes can be round, flattened or oval, as far as no dimension of their sections exceeds 10mm
• For road competitions other than time-trials and for cyclocross, the frame shall be of a traditional pattern, ie built around a main triangle
• Tube dimensions: the maximum height of the elements shall be 8cm and the minimum thickness 2.5cm. The minimum thickness shall be reduced to 1cm for the chainstays and the seatstays. The minimum thickness of the elements of the front fork shall be 1cm; these may be straight or curved.

For a full list of rules visit uci.org

Inside the box

The rules governing frame shape and tube dimensions

Triangular shape

The frame and forks must be able to fit entirely within the template formed by seven rectangular boxes of 8cm width, as shown by the diagram right.

Sloping top tube

The top tube may slope provided that this element fits within a horizontal template defined by a maximum height of 16cm and a minimum thickness of 2.5cm.

Illustration: Rob Milton

Bike manufacturers are experts at claiming performance benefits only to back them up with terms like ‘wind-tunnel-developed’. But the Cannondale SystemSix Ultegra puts its money where its mouth is, with the publication of a 52-page white paper which breaks down the science behind why Cannondale proudly claims this is ‘designed to be the fastest road bike on the planet’.

This document lays out the detail behind demonstrable claims. Namely, that the Cannondale SystemSix Ultegra is faster than a dedicated lightweight climbing bike on gradients up to 6%; it saves you up to 50W at 30mph; it gets you to the finish line of a 200 metre sprint four bike lengths ahead of anyone else putting in an equivalent 1,000W effort; and that if you were spinning at a ‘recovery effort’ down a 5% descent, a rider on a lightweight climbing bike would need to put out 300W to keep up.

Did someone say ‘fastest bike on the planet’?

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Dripping with six appeal

Cannondale calls this the ‘SystemSix’ because each of its six major components is optimised for speed. So, that’s the frame, forks, seatpost, stem, handlebar and wheels.

The kamm tail-profile carbon frameset and fork is said to generate areas of ‘quiet air’, especially behind the seatstay-seat tube junction and head tube.

Buy the Cannondale SystemSix Ultegra from Tredz now

The seatpost is an aero-profile carbon unit, adjusted beneath the junction of the top tube and seat tube with a 4mm hex key; the carbon handlebar is flat-topped, the aero stem segues neatly into profiled spacers; and the Vision SC55 carbon clinchers on which the SystemSix rolls have a 55mm section rim.

It’s built for speed, and it feels quick on the road – in pretty much every situation.

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On the up and up

It might seem unusual when discussing an unashamedly aero road bike to focus first on climbing, but this is where the shock hits hard.

Riding the Cannondale SystemSix up the first climb of my first ride reveals one of the big surprises up its carbon sleeve: this 8.48kg racer climbs better than my old Ritte Ace, which I’d built to come in on the UCI weight limit of 6.8kg.

Given the Vision SC55 wheelset on the Cannondale weighs in just north of 2kg with tyres, tubes and thru-axles, credit needs to be given to the slipperiness of the bike’s components as well as the efficiency of the drivetrain.

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On shallower climbs, I didn’t have a need for the smaller, 36-tooth chainring, the HollowTech chainset’s 52-tooth ring combining nicely with the Shimano Ultegra rear mech and 11-30 Shimano 105 cassette.

This array of gears, as well as the chain, are the only two Shimano elements which shy away from the Ultegra approach, presumably as a cost-cutting exercise that isn't easy to discern with the naked eye.

Buy the Cannondale SystemSix Ultegra from Tredz now

Specifying Ultegra here would have shaved a few more grams off the overall bulk but likely added to the bike's retail price.

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I’m the rocket man

Cannondale might claim that you’ll only need to spin the cranks to enjoy rapid downhill progress, but it’s unlikely you’ll take it easy for long.

Speed freaks need apply… The SystemSix picks up enough speed downhill to coast alongside my riding partner who’s four stone heavier than me, when usually – holding the ultimate trump card of gravity – he’d disappear down the road.

Select the big ring and get the power down and this bike conjures images of lengthy descents in the Atlas Mountains: accelerate, brake, hairpin, out of the saddle, accelerate, repeat…

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A 73° head tube angle helps ensure the steering is as rapid as the acceleration. It’s hands-down the most exciting bike I’ve ever pointed down a hill.

And the hydraulically actuated Ultegra callipers grip 160/140mm Ultegra rotors confidently in even the rainiest conditions, if with a little squeal when damp.

Trifling matter though it is, some riders might not appreciate the incredibly noisy freewheel soundtrack when coasting. Personally, I reckon it just sounds more ‘pro’…

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Keep them dogies rollin’

Little known Rawhide fact: it’s ‘dogies’ – as in orphaned calves, not ‘doggies’. Anyway…

Get the Cannondale SystemSix on to flat or rolling terrain and you’d be forgiven for asking where in the frame the motor is hidden.

Find the sweetspot somewhere halfway up the 11-speed 105 block and a five-mile stretch of lumps and bumps, false flats and moderate descents is dispatched in a flurry of pedalstrokes, the occasional out of the saddle injection of pace, and only two or three gears.

Sit behind your riding partner and you’ll have to sit up to increase the wind resistance just to avoid rear-ending them.

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The Vision SC55 wheels really come into their own in these conditions. Their 19mm internal profile and 25mm external diameter accepts 25mm Vittoria Rubino Pro tyres in a way that ensures the tyre’s inflated diameter doesn’t exceed that of the rim, for optimum aero efficiency (ie, less drag).

You might baulk at the potential for ‘all the gear and no idea’ afforded by this wheelset’s fitment, but I’m here to tell you: it doesn’t matter.

Have fun on your bike – that’s what it’s for – and your mates will be laughing on the other side of their faces when you’re whomping by them on your deep sections. What’s more, you’ll be ripping their legs off in comfort.

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The carbon seatpost and handlebars translate little in the way of road vibrations, while the tyres smooth the way.

A snub-nosed Prologo Dimension STN NDR saddle distributes pressure evenly and is deeply padded.

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Believe the hype

The Cannondale SystemSix is that rare beast of a bike: although I’m not going to translate the scientific report behind its performance, I am going to tell you it fully lives up to its brief.

Buy the Cannondale SystemSix Ultegra from Tredz now

I can’t remember a bike that made me feel this quick for this little relative effort, and I have absolutely no problem with being ‘that guy’ rolling around on 55mm deep sections through winter.

The SystemSix is a bike that’s too good not to ride all the time, too addictive to consign to the garage for winter. It’s a pure-bred race bike that’s suitable for everyone. And I never thought I’d write that.

Spec

All reviews are fully independent and no payments have been made by companies featured in reviews

These are perilous times for aero bikes. As we have seen in these pages already, even the mighty Specialized Venge has fallen victim to the convergence of models, as brands learn how to blend aerodynamics, light weight and comfort in a single bike – a bike that is fast, yet easier to live with day to day.

German brand Cube, however, is fighting the aero corner. Far from watering down an aero model, it has taken a lightweight racer and turned it into an all-out speed machine with deep tubes and sharp angles.

In fact, Cube says the new Litening C:68X Pro bears more resemblance to its Aerium TT bike than to the previous Litening model, which was all slim tubes and rounded profiles. As a result, Cube says this new Litening is 30% faster than the old design, and is the fastest road bike it has ever made.

Shifting opinion

I’ll admit that my view of Cube has always been as a brand that makes good-value bikes rather than high-performance ones. So when I got up close and personal with the Litening and was able to properly appraise its exotic-looking C:68X carbon layup and extreme tube profiles, I have to say I was taken aback.

Cube claims the frameset is the product of 100 hours in the wind-tunnel and 1,000 hours of computational fluid dynamics, and I can believe it.

This bike is so shapely – apparently pushing UCI frame regulations right up to their limit in several places – it looks as though Cube has placed a block of carbon in a force 10 gale and simply allowed the wind to carve it into shape.

To buy the Cube Litening, visit Tredz here.

The Litening is nothing short of badass. If it were a person, it would have a mohican and wear leather mitts with spikes on the knuckles. It looks ready to tear up the road, to a degree that almost makes me nostalgic.

While most modern aero bikes are being toned down, the Litening harks back to a time when speed was the only priority. The bike is as stiff as it looks and feels quick, generating the impression that it can keep accelerating way beyond the point at which most bikes hit their peak.

I’d attribute that to the frame. Considering the depth of the bike’s tubes, Cube has done an admirable job of keeping the frontal profile small.

Despite fully internal cable routing, the Litening’s head tube is elegantly scalloped in between the headset bearings, the tops of the bars are dramatically squashed and elongated, and the fork legs and crown are exceptionally svelte. The time refining the Litening’s shape has definitely been well spent.

Compromise is key

Luckily the Litening’s extreme looks, which hark back to classic aero bikes, don’t recreate the heavy and harsh ride attributes of those old designs. The bike’s 7.87kg weight, though pretty chunky, is reasonable for the price, and is made possible by the high-quality frame. This is the fourth-tier model in the range but it uses the same frame as the top-tier one.

Cube claims a 980g frame weight thanks to its use of an updated blend of six types of carbon fibre. The lacquer helps reveal Cube’s layup techniques, one of which is the use of spread-tow carbon to help construct the fork and bottom bracket and head tube junctions.

Spread-tow is a weave known for its high stiffness-to-weight because it needs less resin to bind it than other fibre weaves.

Cube also says the frame is made using ‘twin-mould technology’ – two solid moulds instead of inflatable bladders. This, the brand claims, helps minimise the amount of resin required, which reduces weight.

I did find that the bike transmitted a noticeable amount of feedback from the road, which I would attribute to the sheer amount of carbon in the areas directly below both the seatpost and cockpit.

However, I’d say the ride wasn’t as harsh as it had the potential to be. Bumping up the tyre size would undoubtedly help, though.

The Litening comes specced with now-old-fashioned 25mm tyres, and although they are high-quality Schwalbe Pro One tubeless numbers, I’d welcome the inclusion of 28mm versions as standard instead.

As is so often the case with high-quality frames that have been priced so aggressively, the wheels are the only area of the spec list that aren’t quite at the same level as the rest of the components.

My advice in this situation is always the same: use the money you’ll save against a comparable bike from another brand to invest in a wheel upgrade. All that would be left to do then is hold on tight, because aboard the Litening you’ll be in for a thunderous ride.

Pick of the kit

Sidi Sixty shoes, £330, Buy now from Wiggle

These shoes, released on Sidi’s 60th birthday last year, are the Italian marque’s lightest ever. To keep the weight down, the brand’s adjustable heel mechanism has been ditched and the Sixtys eschew the usual dual Tecno-4 dials in favour of a single dial and Velcro strap. The result is a 516g pair of shoes that doesn’t compromise on build quality and comfort.

The TechPro microfibre upper has moulded neatly to the shape of my foot over time, and while they don’t grip my heel quite as securely as other Sidis, I can’t say I’ve noticed any difference in performance.

Alternatively…

Top of the tree

Complete with Sram Red eTap AXS groupset and DT Swiss ARC 62 wheels, the Litening C:68X SLT is around 400g lighter than the Pro but costs almost twice the price at £7,499.

Buy now from Rutland Cycling

All-round performance

For something a little less racy than the Litening but a bit more comfortable, the Cube Agree C:62 SLT comes in at £3,999 with carbon wheels and Sram Force eTap AXS groupset.

Buy now from Leisure Lake Bikes

Spec

All reviews are fully independent and no payments have been made by companies featured in reviews

I'm of the opinion that a review of a bike should never been based on less than 500km and over the course of several weeks or months, and that's certainly the case for my experience of the Specialized Venge Pro. That's because, whatever some in the industry will claim, I don't believe that you can properly know a bike after just a couple of rides.

The first few times I rode the Venge Pro I wasn't all that keen, by the time I was packing it into a box to go back to Specialized's UK office I considered 'accidentally' putting my home address on the label and feigning ignorance when it didn't turn up where it should have.

First impressions matter but shouldn't hold any greater influence over a final analysis than any other ride on that bike. In fact, fail to set the thing up properly – the saddle a little bit too high, the gears not indexed properly – and the resulting discomfort or frustration are hardly a fair reflection of the bike.

In the case of the Specialized Venge Pro when I started with the front end too high and as a result couldn't get into my usual riding position.

Once the fit was dialled – thanks to my colleague Stu for some inventive use of round spacers above the stem in place of the proprietary oval ones they replaced below, and I let a bit of pressure out of the rock hard front tyre to suck up any increased road buzz, I was enamoured with this bike over all terrains and road surfaces.

Ride

I don't mind admitting that I loved this bike and from about the third ride onwards – fit dialled and feeling familiar with it – I enjoyed pretty much every one of the 2,900km I rode on it (which included, say it quietly, a couple of triathlons).

Fast on the flat, comfortable on the climbs and aesthetically pleasing, this bike encouraged me to get out and ride when my motivation might otherwise have been lacking.

The climbing ability has been boosted from the previous Vias version thanks to a significant drop in weight, down 460g for the frameset. But it also comes from the comfort of the bike; thanks to a good bit of seatpost protruding from the compact geometry of the frameset, the flex helps neutralise road buzz and keep as much energy propelling you forward as possible.

I'd say the main reason for the speed of the bike – and it's certainly not this rider – is thanks to the work of Specialized's engineers in the brand's 'Win Tunnel'.

Specialized says that every part of the bike has been checked for its efficiency, with aerodynamics pitched against weight, so the frameset left the wind tunnel as fast as Specialized could make it. For now. The industry doesn't stand still, and will always need to give us new reasons to buy, so expect to see yet more gains to the next Venge or even the next Tarmac, rendering the Venge unnecessary.

Frameset and components

Unlike the rest of the Specialized range, the second tier Venge has the same frameset as the S-Works version. Beyond the change of decal, it's the build specification that sets the bikes apart. The Venge Pro comes with Ultegra Di2 rather than Dura-Ace Di2 and Roval CL50 instead of Roval CLX64 wheels.

However, anyone claiming to be able to differentiate between Ultegra Di2 and Dura-Ace Di2 in a blind test is delusional, while for many of my rides on Venge Pro I would not have wanted to test my nerve any further in the crosswinds by riding deeper rims.

The frameset's aero credential mean it whipped along the flat like few bikes I've ridden while no quarter was given when climbing on it. My rides were limited to southern England's short and sharp ascents but I would gladly have taken this bike to the longer climbs of Mallorca or the Alps.

The only major flaw I could find with this bike was one of the components: the bottom bracket. The bike came with a Praxis Works press fit BB30 and it wasn't long before it made its presence known. A creak soon developed and steadily increased in volume over the months I had this bike.

This had little or no impact on performance but climbs became all the more arduous with the addition of an irritating soundtrack.

Really so different?

Price and value

As mentioned above, and unique in the bike models from Specialized, the Pro-level Venge has exactly the same frameset as the S-Works. Same carbon, same lay-up, just different decals.

The differences between the S-Works and the Pro, arguably, serve to show that the latter is probably the better value offering. Whether that means it's good value overall is another matter, but I am inclined to say it is. But with an RRP of £5850, it's for anyone looking to buy a new bike to decide if that's how much they want to spend.

Make the Tarmac ever more aero and there might not be a need for the Venge

This town might not be big enough for the both of us...

Specialized's marquee offerings – the Venge and the Tarmac – have been creeping closer and closer together, getting ever more similar over the past few years thanks to changes to both models.

The Venge has dropped weight and got more comfortable while aerodynamics, Specialized's key consideration with regards to all its top end bikes, has improved vastly on the Tarmac.

Add into that mix the Roubaix, which is claimed to be as fast and aero as the Tarmac but with the added comfort provided by a front suspension system that can be turned on and off, and it starts to look like Speciailized is crowding itself out of the market before competition from rival brands is even considered.

As such, speculation turns to which – if any – of the bikes would be culled should the similarities get ever closer, and it's hard not to see the Venge reaching its natural conclusion sooner than the others – certainly the Tarmac.

The S-Works Venge is popular with pro teams but it feels unlikely that many WorldTour riders would opt for the out-and-out aero machine when offered a lighter option on a mountainous day at a Grand Tour. Take that theme to the next level - with an even more aero Tarmac, and the Venge's niche will have been sufficiently encroached upon to potentially make it obsolete as teams opt for one model for all parcours.

Speculation, conjecture, rumour. Based on my time with the Venge Pro I'd be quick to point out that the end of this model would be a shame, but if the Amercian mega-brand did decide to trim its offering I really can't see the Tarmac being discontinued.

Summary

When lined up next to other bikes – whether that's the S-Works version of itself or top-tier offerings from other brands – the Specialized Venge Pro is able to hold its own in both performance and looks.

Bikes are pricy these days, and this follows that trend rather than bucking it, but anyone who buys the Specialized Venge Pro is unlikely to regret it – especially if they service their bottom bracket regularly.

Photos: Alex Wright; Laura Fletcher; Jack Elton-Walters

Giant never intended to be the world’s biggest bike brand. Cyclist discovers how it grew to be the colossus it is today

Words: Sam ChallisPhotography: Danny Bird

With a name like Giant, it would be easy to assume that the Taiwanese bike brand always planned to be a global behemoth from the day it was founded. But actually it started life in original equipment manufacturing (OEM), making parts for other companies.

The company began in 1972 but it wasn’t until 1977 that the Giant Manufacturing Company’s chief executive, Tony Lo, secured the golden ticket of contracts that was to be the launch pad for future growth. The contract was to produce bikes for Schwinn, a US bike brand that dominated its market at the time with its 10-speed steel machines.

The Schwinn deal followed five fairly barren years since King Liu and a group of his associates founded Giant, but it wasn’t blind luck. Having learnt Japanese while Taiwan was under Japanese rule, Liu spent time in Japan to study what was then the premier bike-building economy.

The working practices he observed and subsequently replicated at Giant were key in securing the Schwinn contract, but in many ways it was when that partnership came to an end in 1987 that the Giant brand really took off.

When Schwinn chose to switch supplier in search of cheaper production costs, its orders accounted for 75% of Giant’s business. That prompted Giant to switch its focus to producing bikes under its own name. Fortunately it had been nurturing this side of the business since 1981, thanks in part to the resources the Schwinn relationship had allowed Giant to develop.

‘It was definitely a make or break moment for us because until then Giant as a brand in its own right had been comparatively small scale,’ says global marketing manager Ken Li. ‘Going global in 1986 was a huge risk but one that paid off.’

Interestingly it was and continues to be Giant’s expertise in OEM that has played a role in the success of its own products.

‘I think it definitely adds a trust and respect factor to our products,’ says Erik Klemm, Giant’s performance design manager. ‘When people know that other brands come to us for production it tells them our manufacturing is top notch.’

‘Being an OEM pushes us to maintain our competitive edge in manufacturing,’ Li adds. ‘But being a successful consumer brand takes effort in R&D, marketing and sales, more so than in manufacturing. Currently our OEM business accounts for only 30% of sales.’

Considering that Giant counts Trek, Scott and Colnago as clients – but that combined they amount to less than a third of Giant’s revenue – helps put into context the sheer size of the Taiwanese corporation. Now the company really does live up to its name.

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Driving change

The geographical location of Giant’s HQ has also played an important role in the brand’s success. The company’s rise can be seen as the perfect example of a rebirth in Taiwanese manufacturing more generally after the country underwent an economic and industrial transformation at the start of the 1990s.

Taiwan became the place to manufacture technological products, and that included bikes. The fact that Taiwan has for many years possessed the most comprehensive supply chain continues to benefit Giant today.

‘Whether it’s a phone call or a face-to-face meeting, being in the same time zone and island is extremely helpful,’ says Klemm. ‘Having our development centre here allows designers and engineers to meet with the vendors quickly.

‘If we design a new saddle it’s easy to take our 3D print, go to the saddle vendor and interact on ways to improve it for manufacturing. We might have a new decal concept that requires some input. One of our graphic designers can easily visit the supplier to learn how to make this design better for production. Everything is just so much more efficient.’

As is the way of the world, success breeds success. ‘Giant is the only bicycle company that covers the full value chain from R&D through manufacturing to marketing and branding,’ says Li. ‘Despite our size, and because everything can be done in-house, we can get market information quickly and respond quickly.’

‘I feel that raw material suppliers are eager to work with Giant,’ says Klemm. ‘Our reputation definitely gets us in the door if it’s a new partnership and allows us to work collaboratively. Most of the time we have the capacity to experiment in-house and will then approach a supplier with a concept – for items that we cannot simply produce ourselves, that is.’

These wide-reaching internal capabilities have only become more valuable in recent times. Klemm says they have allowed the company to adapt quickly and work around the complications caused by the Covid-19 pandemic with minimum disruption. In some cases the enforced change has even been to the brand’s benefit.

‘We have had to streamline many projects and procedures, but honestly this is maybe something we should have done all along,’ says Klemm. ‘The pandemic has opened up our thinking to new forms of communication.

‘For instance, we would usually have multiple in-person meetings with product managers from around the world to discuss colours and graphic styles for the coming year.

‘Travel restrictions caused our designers to come up with better methods of visual communication. We have made videos of colour samples, upgraded our rendering capabilities and connected more for feedback.’

Li believes this means Giant is well placed to take advantage of the uptick in the global cycling market triggered by the pandemic.

Leading the way

With 14 sales subsidiaries distributing its bikes all over the world, Giant is known for different types of bikes in different regions, but it’s in road bikes that the company built its reputation. Giant has repeatedly innovated within the sector, with the Cadex bike giving the brand a flying start in 1987.

‘The Cadex meant we became the first bike maker to apply computer-aided design and volume production techniques to carbon fibre road bikes,’ says Li.

Among Giant’s many achievements, though, its TCR innovation must sit atop the pile. The concept, conceived by British engineer Mike Burrows in the mid-1990s, is ostensibly the most influential development ever in modern road frame design. It was so revolutionary the UCI banned it for a while before coming to its senses.

Having been recruited by Giant off the back of his radical TT bike designs – one of which was the iconic Lotus 108 that Chris Boardman rode to gold at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics – Burrows drew inspiration from mountain bikes, which back then had just started to incorporate sloping top tubes.

‘Sloping the top tube yielded instant results,’ says Klemm. ‘The smaller front triangle was lighter and the correspondingly reduced rear triangle was stiffer.’

The design’s true validation came from Giant’s sponsorship of the ONCE pro team, which had several hugely successful seasons aboard the TCR.

It later transpired that it wasn’t just the bikes giving the team a competitive advantage, but nonetheless the Total Compact Road blueprint has been adopted by virtually every other bike brand in one form or another since Burrows and Giant first introduced it.

Pro rider feedback has continued to feature heavily in the development of the TCR. Klemm says that CCC Team frontman Greg Van Avermaet was influential in the latest iteration.

It occupies the ‘lightweight race’ slot in Giant’s range, a niche that has seen much design convergence in recent years as bikes from competing brands all start to look the same. As the builder of several brands’ lightweight race bikes, Giant is well placed to say why.

‘There are a number of reasons why this is the case,’ says Klemm. ‘It’s related to the materials and techniques available to everyone, plus what is available from drivetrain manufacturers.

‘It’s also a little bit of consumers changing and being bolder about where they take their road bikes. They want on-road speed performance, hence the aero styling, but also more versatility, hence the wide tyre clearances and disc brakes.

‘It also has to do with UCI regulations, which definitely prohibit experimentation,’ he adds. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised to see more non-UCI-legal road bikes being released over the next couple of years purely to exploit the technological capabilities that are continuing to develop.’

eyeball

The convergence notwithstanding, Giant’s latest TCR is one of the few in the niche to stand out. It has an integrated seatpost, its seatstays aren’t dropped and the cables aren’t routed entirely internally.

‘The TCR has always been about stiffness to weight and providing the best acceleration,’ says Klemm. ‘We chose to maintain the position of the seatstays because their higher connection to the top tube equates to a higher torsional frame stiffness.

‘An integrated seatpost allows us to lay up uninterrupted carbon fibre to the saddle, which helps create a smooth ride. The decision to run external cables at the front was made based on ease of assembly, consumer maintenance and lower weight.

‘Although we have full internal cables on our Defy and Propel, we felt that was not the best solution for the TCR right now.’

By comparison Giant’s aero race bike, the Propel, does appear somewhat similar to its competitors. Klemm agrees, but says it’s important to note that like the TCR, the Propel was a leader, not a follower, in terms of modern aero design cues.

‘We have always been big supporters of the disc trend, being one of the first brands to release a full line of disc brake bikes with the Defy in 2015. The benefits of handling and safety they provide meant we knew we needed to include them in our second-generation Propel.

‘From early on we had full confidence we could integrate disc brakes and not compromise aero numbers or add too much weight in the process. Since that time the market has caught up and become extremely competitive. In many instances aero bikes are now only separated by one or two watts and a few grams in weight.’

Klemm doesn’t necessarily think this will lead to aero bikes’ obsolescence as lightweight race platforms catch up in aero terms, but does admit the ability now for brands to combine lightweight and aero qualities is interesting.

‘We still believe there is a separate market for aero bikes. It may not be as strong as for complete race bikes like the TCR but there is still demand in the consumer world for an aero bike.’

Bikes for the real world

Just as lightweight race bikes are encroaching into aero race bike territory, their wide tyre clearances could equally let them expand the other way and take on more comfortable endurance category characteristics. But here too Klemm sees the endurance category thriving in future.

‘While race bikes can now be made more comfortable, most consumers are simply better suited to the geometry of our Defy. They won’t like to admit that but a quick glance at their stems and positioning would confirm they don’t fit the mould that the TCR provides. So we focus on creating an endurance bike that has the appropriate geometry but still looks racy and has good performance characteristics.’

Race performance very much informed Giant’s Revolt gravel bike too. ‘Almost all markets kept wanting a lighter, faster, more capable bike,’ Klemm says.

However, rather than look to its road portfolio to incorporate those qualities into its gravel bike, Giant looked to its off-road experts to develop the current Revolt. This, says Klemm, allowed the brand to blend off-road capability with responsiveness and light weight.

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Gender roles

Another benefit of being the biggest bike company in the world is that Giant can give proper attention to women’s cycling in a way that few other brands can match.

‘Liv was founded in 2008 by Bonnie Tu, chairperson of the Giant Group, when she couldn’t find the right gear and bikes for herself,’ says Li. ‘She saw an opportunity to develop a women-centric brand to make cycling more inclusive.’

Some bike brands have reduced or dismantled their women-specific product development, suggesting a separate line of women-only products isn’t necessary. Li says Liv remains steadfast.

‘Ultimately it ensures fewer barriers and more choices for everyone, while also providing consumers with an opportunity to support a female-founded and women-led brand,’ he says.

‘The debate about the validity of women-specific geometry is a distraction from meaningful conversation and is counterproductive to developing the necessary action our industry must take to welcome more women into the sport.

‘We believe that there is no “right” or “wrong” way to design a bike but that access and market confusion are key contributors to lower participation rates by women. We believe that the broader the choices for women, the more opportunities there are to reach our goal of getting more women on bikes. When more women ride we all win.’

Despite starting out behind the scenes, Giant is now using its scale and visibility to instigate positive reform. It is a mission befitting Giant’s size.

Taking the lead

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Image 2 of 11

The aero Propel is a trailblazer

When the latest version of the Propel appeared in 2018 it may have looked fairly conventional compared to more radical competitors such as the Specialized Venge ViAS or Trek Madone 7 Series.

But time has proven the Propel’s design. Many other aero bikes have since updated to incorporate features this bike already possessed, notably disc brakes and a cockpit that lends itself to easy maintainance.

The Propel uses a clever jigsaw of caps and spacers to hide cables cleanly but keep adjustments easy to make. Erik Klemm, Giant’s performance design manager, says incorporating disc brakes actually made the Propel faster with only a minimal weight penalty, which was quite the feat back when the bike was released.

Building a dynasty

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The TCR just keeps getting better

The TCR has always been Giant’s lightweight racer, but performance design manager Erik Klemm says new technology has given the latest TCR a more well-rounded set of attributes.

‘We’ve used laser-cutting of the carbon fibre fabric as well as robotic construction techniques. It allows us to efficiently manage the overlap of all the carbon pieces coming together in the frame.

‘In the past there perhaps wasn’t as much attention shown to where certain pieces end or the minimum overlap with that next piece. Accounting for that in the TCR this time resulted in less material used and a lighter structure. It also opened up the possibility to build in aero tube shapes and wider tyre clearances with no weight penalty.’

Defying gravity

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Image 7 of 11

Giant’s endurance machine closes in on the race bikes

Most consumers just aren’t suited to the aggressive geometry of pure race bikes like the TCR and Propel, according to performance design manager Erik Klemm. Going for the raciest option may actually make the rider slower and their time on the bike less enjoyable.

That’s why Klemm says the Defy attempts to bridge the gap between performance and usability, creating an attainable riding position while remaining stiff and lightweight. The top-spec version even features the Power Pro power meter, with a proprietary design that has been developed and produced entirely in-house, of course.

Revolting against the norm

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Image 9 of 11

Giant’s gravel bike was developed with an unusual approach

In demonstration of the company’s expansive resources, Giant chose to employ its off-road pro team rather than one of its many road pro teams to inform the latest Revolt gravel bike. Performance design manager Erik Klemm says it allowed the brand to make the Revolt stiffer and faster, but also more capable.

The bike takes the TCR concept to the extreme, compacting the frame triangles as much as possible to create a lightweight and efficient frame. Klemm says the Revolt uses features such as 45mm tyre clearance and Giant’s D-Fuse seatpost and bars to introduce some comfort-inducing flex.

When a heart problem stopped Alistair McLean from cycling, a hobby became an obsession and Fatcreations Custom Paint was born

Words: Sam ChallisPhotography: Geoff Waugh

In front of me is a Cervélo S5, but to my eye it is more beautiful than anything the Canadian brand has ever produced. The frame is a lustrous, deep blue, as smooth as if it had been dipped into a pool of molten glass.

Under sunlight the lacquer reveals the frame’s carbon layup, which is still visible like the seabed in a crystal clear ocean. The beauty of the bare carbon plies are magically enhanced by their new ultramarine tint.

That isn’t the end of it. Adorning the frame are details of tattoo-like intricacy – a lion on the seat tube, a bumblebee at the bottom bracket – specified by the customer for sentimental importance.

Although water-slide decals would be far more convenient at this level of complexity, all of them have been painted using bespoke stencils so they don’t disturb the perfect evenness of the lacquer.

The frame captivates me for several minutes, but Alistair McLean can afford to give it no more than a fond glance. That was yesterday’s work, the customer is satisfied and so is McLean, so it’s time to move on.

McLean is the founder and owner of Fatcreations, a paintworks that has garnered global renown, although when Cyclist arrives the facility proves to be far from a palace of cycling dreams.

The set-up is a fairly rustic conglomeration of outbuildings in the back garden of McLean’s house in Chichester, near the West Sussex coast. The workshop is little more than a glorified shed with a tacked-on paint booth, but when you learn McLean’s back story the setting begins to make sense.

On the up

‘Fatcreations developed fairly organically, kickstarted initially when I had some time off the bike after breaking my collarbone racing elite-level downhill,’ McLean says. ‘I’d bought an airbrush 18 months prior, but never got the time to plug it in and try it. Out of nowhere I couldn’t do any riding for six weeks so I painted a motorbike helmet.

‘The injury came at the worst possible time in my season. I missed World Cup rounds and my sponsor wouldn’t honour my contract, so it was very stressful. I found that the painting helped – it was very therapeutic.’

McLean started asking his friends if they wanted their helmets painted, and his interest and ability grew from there.

‘It was always motorbike bits and bobs up until about 2012, even though I was obsessed with bicycles. I didn’t need it to be a job back then. I was in an incredibly privileged position where I was good enough to be paid by my mountain bike sponsors and had a well paid job as R&D manager at Ultimate Sports Engineering, the company behind USE components and Exposure lights, so I never had to earn much from painting.’

Some changes in personal circumstance meant McLean started saying yes to more paint work in 2012, around the time cycling exploded in the UK off the back of the exploits of Wiggins, Hoy and the rest at the Olympics and Tour de France.

‘Fatcreations was really born around that time,’ McLean says. ‘Then once the chaps I used to race against got wind of what I was doing they were keen for me to work on their bikes. Steve Peat was the first, then within a few months it was Aaron Gwin, Troy Brosnan and Bernard Kerr.

‘I still paint Danny Hart and Matt Walker’s World Championship Downhill bikes,’ he adds. ‘It was a massive springboard and gave Fatcreations an international reputation, which meant that by 2014 we were incredibly busy.’

Image 6 of 23

Image 6 of 23

Shifting perspective

How McLean would find the time to cope with demand was becoming a concern, until work issues were made to look trivial when out of the blue he developed a serious heart condition: arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy.

‘It means that if my heart goes above 100 beats per minute I’m at serious risk of my heart going into ventricular tachycardia, which means irregular electrical impulses make it beat exceptionally fast. This could lead to fatal cardiac arrest if a defibrillator I have implanted doesn’t succeed in getting my heart back into its normal rhythm,’ he says.

McLean’s demeanour changes when talk moves to his condition. It’s clear the situation has caused him a great deal of distress.

‘I was training and racing around 20 hours a week before the onset of my condition, and I had so much pent up frustration and energy that had nowhere to go. It could have been easy for me to spiral as the condition increasingly affected my life, but I’ve had friends with depression and knew enough to recognise the signs and do something about them. We had all these requests for work, so I threw myself into that.’

McLean’s pedigree in road cycling stems from the 2014 Bespoked Handmade Bicycle Show, where no fewer than 11 of the bikes that got awards were painted by him. Not all the awards were for the paint, but it was enough to generate demand for his services in the Lycra-clad community as well as riders in baggies. He has painted road frames for several national champions, including USA’s Larry Warbasse, Ireland’s Connor Dunne and Britain’s Ian Bibby.

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Image 9 of 23

‘I think it’s fair to say I’m obsessed with my work, because it’s one of the only things I feel I can do really well anymore,’ says McLean. ‘Always having something to do is the mark of an efficient process,’ he adds, gesturing behind me where Becky, his partner, is fastidiously masking off the main paintjob for today.

Coincidentally it’s another S5, which is due to receive something totally different to the finish I was ogling earlier – a black, white and grey camo scheme.

‘From the customer’s perspective, this is when our work begins,’ says McLean as he hangs the frame in his booth. ‘But there has already been almost 20 hours of labour to get the frame to this point. Hand-sanding off – “flatting back” – the original paint and prepping the carbon is a long job in itself.’

McLean dons his respirator and applies paint with a spray gun. He methodically covers the whole frame – the quirks, bends and angles of the tubes never disturb the even, fluid movement of his gun. Within minutes a coat is applied and it dries before McLean has finished cleaning his gun.

Immediately the frame is back in the hands of Becky, who begins masking off the next patches of camouflage with vinyl stickers that block the next colour of paint from covering sections of the one below.

‘Becky is extremely talented in a creative, artistic way. Where I’m weak, she’s stronger and vice versa, so we fit well,’ says McLean. To any other couple the homely workshop would be considered cramped.

It’s crammed full of equipment, bikes, tins of paint and the inevitable accumulation of sentimental objects that comes with years of working in the same space, yet the pair work seamlessly and efficiently around each other.

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Image 12 of 23

Painting tête-à-tête

While it looks as though the frame has only begun to be painted today, its journey started around eight months ago.

‘It begins with a call or email,’ McLean says. ‘We have a chat, I get an approximate idea of what the customer wants, they get a rough quote – road framesets start from around £575 – and we’ll book it in. Then nothing happens until the frame is here and prepped for colour. That day is quite a full-on experience for the customer.

‘I’ll have a picture dialogue going with them all the way through. We like to make it a back-and forth process – is the customer happy with the decals, the colour being applied? If not then we’ll sand it back, recut another stencil or remix a colour. The process is as fluid as the paint.’

That might add time to a job but McLean explains that it takes the stress out of it for him: ‘I’m not the sort of person to say “tough, that’s what was written down” to someone who’s not happy with an end product. I’d sooner flat it off and start again tomorrow.

‘Customers love it,’ he adds. ‘Without fail they’ll comment that the process is incredible, that they can tweak as we go. I don’t think there’s another painter in the country who does that because it’s so time-consuming. They can’t afford to do what we do – they have higher overheads, finite studio time, other priorities – but that’s where my illness works to my advantage. It keeps me close to home and limits what else I can fill my life with, so I’m much freer to pour time into Fatcreations.’

The S5 changes rapidly, switching from the paint booth to stencil mount several more times. ‘This frame was primed yesterday,’ says McLean. ‘The paints we use are acrylic-based and we use a 2K primer, which is no different to what you’d find in a car body shop. It’s not like 1K paint because it requires a catalyst, but 2K has etching properties that make it bind to the carbon better, meaning it’s harder wearing.

‘We make the finish even tougher by applying the base coats we’re doing now when the primer is still a little soft,’ he adds. ‘That way you get a mechanical bond of the primer to the frame and a chemical bond of the base coats to the primer.’

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Image 15 of 23

The process of Becky’s stencil work and McLean’s painting smoothly turns the once-black S5 into something worthy of a double take. It’s ironic really, considering the frame is getting a camouflage paint scheme.

‘There might be only 35 minutes of actual labour in the coats of paint, even though it’s a 27-hour job,’ says McLean. ‘After this phase the bike will look finished from a distance, but in fact there is at least another seven hours of work to do.’

Next comes a finicky process of masking up and painting in to perfect any tiny defects: ‘Things that no customer would ever notice, but I don’t want another painter who might be of my standard being able to look at my work and find fault in it,’ says McLean.

A progressive lacquering/sanding process then takes place over a few hours and the frame will be finished with a polish. Even that isn’t simple: ‘We use a course machine-operated polish, then go over again with a fine one. It gives the paint a glass-like quality.

‘While it sounds like a lot of paint will go on our frames, we use a lot of sacrificial coats for a better finish when it’s flatted back,’ McLean says. ‘Typically our work adds 60-90g to a frame, whereas stock paintjobs can add almost 200g. It’s bonkers when you think of the years of development that bike engineers go through to save that weight in the carbon layup.’

The growing reputation of Fatcreations means McLean has an increasing problem coping with demand.

‘It’s getting to the stage where I have to be careful. I’ve really got to grow in the next 18 months or I’ll be turning away too many people. The last thing I’d want is for the love we get to turn sour. We’ve got plans to expand but it’s been tricky. We’ve had to balance my health with work, plus plans to move into a bigger property recently fell through.

‘The demand is there, though, so it will happen – we’re going to employ a couple of other people and double our output to around 10 frames a week. There would still be a six-month lead time but hopefully that output is a good level to show people that we’re working as hard as we can.’

Six months may seem like a long time to get a bike frame painted, but anyone who sees the results will realise that it’s well worth the wait.

Finest Fatcreations No.1

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Image 16 of 23

Spring Classics Cannondale Synapse

‘This was a joint project between us and Cannondale for the 2017 Rouleur Classic show,’ says McLean. ‘The show includes an auction, and Cannondale put up a frame that included a custom paintjob from us as a prize. This one was painted to give bidders an idea of what they could own.

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Image 17 of 23

‘That year the theme of the show was the five Monuments, so the idea was conceived to weave the cobblestone logos from each of the races into the frame’s design. Each and every cobblestone in the pattern is unique – they were all cut and applied by Becky by hand. The racing stripes were added to make the frame more eye-catching.

‘The prize garnered a lot of interest and raised a decent amount of money. Cannondale recently gifted this frame to me, and it’s now my pride and joy.’

Finest Fatcreations No.2

Image 19 of 23

Image 19 of 23

Miguel Angel Lopez’s Argon 18 Gallium Pro

‘This was a last-minute job for Astana’s young star,’ says McLean. ‘We’ve painted a few custom colour frames for Miguel in the past so we usually have a suitable Argon 18 frame in the workshop just in case.

‘Miguel rode into some good form during last year’s Vuelta – had Simon Yates faded like he did at the Giro, Lopez could have taken the lead – so Astana wanted a frame painted for him to ride to match his potential leader’s jersey.

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Image 20 of 23

‘We got the go-ahead in the early hours of a Wednesday morning and had 48 hours to finish the project. Becky was primed to fly it out to the team in Barcelona on the Friday afternoon but unfortunately for Astana, Yates held onto the race lead so the frame wasn’t needed.’

Finest Fatcreations No.3

Image 21 of 23

Image 21 of 23

Anodised Vaaru Cycles Octane 6-4

‘The founder of Vaaru Cycles, James Beresford, and I have a long history both as friends and on a professional level,’ says McLean. ‘We learned how to anodise together over the course of about a year.

‘As I’m not good at marketing Fatcreations, people don’t really know I can anodise, so the idea behind this frame was to show multiple finishes in one design. That way it could be used as a demonstration piece in the Vaaru studio, showcasing my finishes and James’s frames.

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Image 22 of 23

‘It has been anodised in a wide spectrum of colours, glass-bead blasted, aluminium-oxide blasted, polished and brushed but still designed to look like a single cohesive design,’ McLean adds.

‘The glass-bead blasting gives a satin finish and the oxide blasting a more matte/coarse finish, but I think both contrast nicely with the polished anodising.’

This article was originally published in issue 90 of Cyclist magazine

Pulling the Boardman out of its box, I couldn’t help but tap the top tube to check the frame wasn’t carbon. Although it’s alloy, the well-smoothed welds at the top tube, head tube and seatstay junctions have the look of a carbon frame.

That’s given the lie by the fishtails around the bottom bracket welds, but it’s still impressive in a lower priced frame, where large lumps of excess metal are more the norm where the tubes meet.

It’s part of a package that looks and rides well above its entry-level pricetag and includes a slender all-carbon fork and dropped seatstays for a modern looking frameset.

Boardman has redesigned its alloy SLR frameset for 2021, swapping from rim brakes to the disc brakes that are now rapidly becoming the norm for most road bikes, from race-proven thoroughbreds and increasingly down to lower priced machines.

The change also lets it fit wider 28mm tyres for a more comfortable, more grippy ride.

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Image 8 of 12

The SLR 8.8 is Boardman’s top spec alloy road bike and made of triple-butted alloy. Above this model, Boardman moves to carbon frames; there’s a parallel line of gravel bikes with bigger tyres, including a couple of alloy framed options if you’re more into mixed surface action.

Buy the Boardman SLR 8.8. road bike now from Halfords

The external cabling on the SLR 8.8 isn’t as flashy as the internal routing that’s more common on higher priced bikes, but it leads to easier maintenance and adjustment. Even on grotty winter roads and liberally coated with dirt and grit, everything continued to work effectively.

For all-weather use, there’s plenty of tyre clearance to the frameset and the mounting points to fit full mudguards, while you also get rack-mounting points on the rear triangle, allowing you to set up the SLR 8.8 as a winter bike or commuter.

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Image 5 of 12

Thoughtful spec choices

Boardman has specced the SLR 8.8 cleverly too. Although disc brakes are trickling down to lower priced road bikes, many bikes costing around the Boardman’s £750 price still rely on rim brakes.

Despite the SLR 8.8’s mechanical, rather than hydraulic, disc brakes they’re almost as effective. That’s not true of all mechanical setups, but the Tektro MD-C511 callipers and 160mm rotors work well.

Once bedded in, stopping was effective, with plenty of bite and a progressive action. The all-weather reliability of discs was a boon when riding wet winter roads.

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Image 7 of 12

Boardman’s wheels are well built too. They’re quite wide and they’re also tubeless-ready – another feature not always found on lower-priced bikes. So with a change of tyres you could ditch your inner tubes should you wish.

The extra rim width means that the Vittoria Rubino Graphene 2.0 28mm tyres come out closer to 30mm.

Again, that’s a nice, modern feature that lets you lower tyre pressure for a more comfortable ride. Tyres are important for ride quality and puncture protection.

It’s another area where brands will often skimp to hit a price point, so it’s good to see Boardman bucking the trend and fitting quality, branded tyres.

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Image 6 of 12

Although the axles are quick release rather than the more modern thru-axles, the rotor alignment was fine and not prone to rubbing. The brake callipers use the flat-mount standard which is usually found on road bikes, rather than post mounts, for a sleeker look.

There’s a 10-speed Shimano Tiagra groupset on the Boardman SLR 8.8, so you’ve got one less gear than with Shimano’s next step up, 105. But I really didn’t miss the extra ratio and the combination of an 11-32 tooth cassette with the compact 50/34 chainset gives ample range to handle climbs, however steep they come.

Tiagra’s shift quality, lever feel and its cable routing under the bar tape are the match of 105 too, and again speccing this groupset is a notch up on many sub-£1,000 bikes and provides at least one extra ratio.

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Image 9 of 12

Boardman fits an FSA Vero chainset on a square taper bottom bracket axle. It’s another canny choice that’s less expensive than other options but still works fine and should lead to easy bearing maintenance.

Buy the Boardman SLR 8.8. road bike now from Halfords

High torque starts in high gears could lead to a bit of rub against the front derailleur cage, so there’s a bit more flex than with a more robust axle setup, but it’s not something I noticed in normal riding once I was moving.

As you’d expect at this price, finishing kit is all own-brand alloy. But it’s effective, feels robust and is comfortable, with the Boardman SLR saddle in particular giving just the right mix of comfort and support.

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Image 2 of 12

A refined ride

Despite the wet and cold December weather I found myself out on the Boardman more than I’d expected. It’s a bike that punches above its £750 price tag in performance, with a comfortable, reassuring ride quality.

The seating position is pretty neutral: neither too upright, nor too stretched out, so it doesn’t trouble your lower back or shoulders but also means that you don’t catch too much of any headwind and the front end is well weighted. That leads to predictable handling and I was never caught off guard by the inevitable road imperfections.

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Image 10 of 12

There’s plenty of grip from the Vittoria tyres and, riding them at around 80psi, they really helped smooth out the road surface. There was little tendency to slip, except on the steepest climbs on wet roads – even here it was minimal and easily controlled.

The tyres seem pretty robust too and there were no issues with punctures despite riding plenty of wet, grit-strewn back roads.

Some lower spec bikes can feel a bit lumpen and heavy to ride, slow to accelerate and generally a bit plodding. That’s not true of the Boardman, which just feels fun and engaging to ride wherever the road leads.

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Image 11 of 12

On flatter roads and downhill, it rides fast and the disc brakes give confidence that you can regulate your speed effectively when you need to. I didn’t feel like I was labouring on hills either, whether spinning up a more gentle slope or pushing harder to crest steeper rises.

An impressive, well priced all-rounder

It all adds up to a bike that punches above its price point and its 10.7kg weight. That’s significantly more than the 9.9kg quoted by Boardman, but again not out of range for a lower priced bike.

If you’re after a robust winter bike or all-weather commuter, the Boardman SLR 8.8 would fit the bill perfectly without breaking the bank or upsetting your company’s Cycle To Work scheme organisers.

It’s versatile enough too that you’d be happy to take it on longer excursions once summer weather tempts you out.

Spec

All reviews are fully independent and no payments have been made by companies featured in reviews

The Focus Izalco Max Disc 8.6 may be painted in what’s best described as ‘primer grey’, but it’s most certainly the finished article. To extend the analogy, it’s the road cycling equivalent of the ‘Nardo grey’ Audi RS3, where a flat, innocuous colour scheme belies a bellyful of gut-punching acceleration and otherworldly handling.

Leaving the world of motoring behind, and before this comparison becomes any more strained, the Focus Izalco Max Disc 8.6 represents one of the most affordable examples of a sorted, aero-focussed road bike I’ve ridden since… well, probably since we were last allowed to shake hands and hug total strangers.

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Image 5 of 19

The gains game

To achieve as slippery a frameset as possible, Focus – like so many bike companies these days – took to the wind-tunnel to hone its frame tech. The resultant kamm tail tubing in the carbon frame and forks contributes to Focus’s claim that this most recent incarnation of the Izalco Max is a whopping 90 seconds faster over 50km at a consistent 200 watts.

In aero frame-building terms, the kamm tail profile has assumed the throne once occupied by the late-20th century favourite, the aerofoil.

Essentially, while an aerofoil tapers to a point, a kamm tail has the same frontal shape, yet ends abruptly at its tail, rather than coming to a point.

Where this gives the Focus Izalco Max Disc 8.6 an advantage over bikes of yore (I’m looking at you, Cervelo S1), is that the frame profile is optimised for better performance at wider yaw angles. In practice, that means crosswinds, in fact anything that’s not a block headwind.

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Image 9 of 19

Successful integration

Also unlike many lower-rung offerings in bike brands’ performance road ranges, the neatness of finish is not forgotten on the Focus Izalco Max Disc 8.6.

The front brake cable is neatly channelled through the fork leg, emerging on the inside mere centimetres from the Shimano 105 flat-mount calliper.

Buy the Focus Izalco Max Disc 8.6 from JE James Cycles now

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Image 3 of 19

Cables for the rear brake and both derailleurs enter the fist-thick down tube via a neat guide on the tube’s upper (crucially, out of the airflow). And when it comes to functional details, beyond the fact that a Shimano 105 groupset is a thoroughly dependable choice here – with the possible exception of the heavier RS510 50/34 chainset, Focus has employed a RAT (Rapid Axle Technology) thru-axle front and rear.

Its quarter-turn closure is quicker and less fiddly than any quick-release, and certainly any thru-axle I’ve used.

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Image 12 of 19

Throw anything at it

Focus claims the high modulus Izalco Max Disc 8.6 frame weighs 1040g, with the forks adding another 376g. The all-up weight of our size M test bike of 8.98kg is thanks mainly to a wheelset that borders on 2kg, and the fact it’s wearing a mid-level 11-speed groupset.

That aside, it still feels eager when you ask it to do the business. Modern aero bikes need to also be all-rounders, so the fact that this bike can climb as well as rocket along on rolling roads is a huge bonus.

An 11-30 Shimano 105 cassette at the rear offers more than enough scope for steep hills, but the stiffness of the frame makes ascending borderline-enjoyable.

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Image 2 of 19

Descents are thrilling, even in November. A 72° head angle offers quick steering when needed, but retains enough manners to at least signal its intention to drop into a corner before doing so.

Applying some gradual pressure to the pads to grip its 160mm rotors results in finely modulated braking performance when lining up corners, while a handful of panic-braking doesn’t unsettle the Focus (said panic-braking involved gravel and mud approaching a sharp, downhill left-hander. Because it was November; because I live near farmland…).

Buy the Focus Izalco Max Disc 8.6 from JE James Cycles now

While the low bottom bracket (it’s a 78mm drop) is actually rather comforting in the depths of late autumn, it might cause some mid-corner consternation in the height of grippy tarmac season. If in doubt, don’t pedal through…

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Image 15 of 19

Comforting thoughts

Aero was once a byword for ‘crippling discomfort and numb hands’ (again, Cervelo S1…), but in the past five years, a number of aero road bikes have shone for their considerable comfort. The Bianchi Aria is notable in this area, and so, too, is the Focus Izalco Max Disc 8.6.

Vittoria Zaffiro tyres wrapped around the 30mm alloy rims of the Novatec wheelset are ideal partners for November to March riding, with their slow wear-rate, easy grip and puncture-resistance. The 25c clinchers on the Focus Izalco Max Disc 8.6 run best with around 85psi at this time of year, which felt to me at my weight like it offered a good combination of feel for the road surface and road-flattening squish.

There is frame clearance for 28mm tyre options, should you wish to go ‘bigger volume, lower pressure’ for greater comfort and confidence.

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Image 8 of 19

Narrow, dropped seatstays have just enough flex in their aero profiles to dial out butt-numbing vibrations; whether the D-shaped aero seat tube is contributing much to the party is honestly hard to discern.

Buy the Focus Izalco Max Disc 8.6 from JE James Cycles now

Geometry-wise, a stack and reach of 544mm and 390mm on this size M frameset, allied to a 997mm wheelbase, makes the Focus Izalco Max Disc 8.6 fairly compact.

Match this to a set of shallow drop 420mm alloy bars up front and all-day rides (albeit with a few food stops) are within range.

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Image 10 of 19

Basis of truth

It’s true, you can buy many Shimano Ultegra-equipped bikes for the same price as the Focus Izalco Max Disc 8.6. But very, very few of them have a frame this good.

Even when wearing a 105 groupset (chainset notwithstanding), you can appreciate just how good the heart of this bike is. And, importantly, it offers one hell of a basis for performance upgrades later down the line.

Plus, it doesn’t matter what manner of fancy, shiny or altogether gaudy baubles you hang off this bike – everything goes with grey.

Spec

All reviews are fully independent and no payments have been made by companies featured in reviews

The first bikes to ever roll off a production line were made of steel. It’s the material that kick-started the industrial revolution and gave birth to the modern age. But in an era of space travel and smartphones, why would you want a bike made from anything other than carbon fibre?

Perhaps because in some ways the ride of a steel bike just can’t be matched by any modern material, however wondrous the technology or marketing pitch.

Steel bikes tend to be strong, comfy, resistant to damage and, with care, will last a lifetime. And although you’re unlikely to see one at the Tour de France, steel can also still form the heart of a proper racing bike. Here are some of our favourites...

Best steel road bikes

1. Condor Super Acciaio Disc

Made in Italy from custom Columbus Spirit HSS tubing, the Super Acciaio has been created by venerable London bike sellers Condor Cycles. Left to be made up to your own design, not only does it look fast, in most builds it's legitimately race-ready.

At 2.1kg for the frame, that’s light for steel, yet double what you’d get for carbon. However, those extra grams have been put to good use.

Out of the stalls, the Super Acciaio has the feeling of an excited buck rather than a stately mare, and on the climbs the extra weight is mostly unapparent thanks to the front and rear stiffness on offer. Even when facing the steepest gradients, we'd happily accept the slight extra drag for the way the Acciaio descends.

If the Acciaio has one standout strength, it’s handling. At low speeds it’s fine, but when the road plummets the handling becomes more responsive, with the overall feel of road-holding that much more assured. With a carbon fork offsetting some weight, bolt-thru axles on both this and the frame no doubt help impart its excellent manners.

Available only as a custom-build, our mechanical Ultergra and Mavic Cosmic Carbon equipped creation came out at £5,500 and 8.65kg.

Verdict: A dashing all-rounder, with a racing bent. The classic looking Super Acciaio is quick enough to compete on but still well-mannered enough to ride all day

Read our full review here

Buy the frameset now from Condor for £1,900

2. Cinelli Vigorelli Disc

A proper scrappy little fighter of a bike. Years back Cinelli took its Vigorelli fixed-gear criterium bike and transformed it into an 11-speed road racer. Retaining the low bottom bracket drop required for continuous pedalling through corners and whiplash manners, it’s purposeful, and then some.

Made of light Columbus Thron tubing, this is paired to a Columbus Futura carbon fork. Classic to look at, you still get all the best modern features, like bolt-thru axles and a tapered head tube.

With a broad seatpost and minimalist clearance for tyres up to 28c, the overall emphasis is on speed and handling, although longer rides are possible with a little flexibility on the part of the rider.

Done up in metallic paint with chrome decals, its gorgeous to look at, while the cabling is a mix of internal (brakes) and external (gears), which will suit home mechanics.

With a Shimano 105 groupset paired to an FSA compact chainset, gears and brakes are spot-on, while the Vision Team 30 wheels are decently quick.

Verdict: Performance steel with pedigree. Evolved from a pure-bred racer, handling is the Vigorelli's forte

Buy now from Bike Inn for £1,555

3. Ribble Endurance 725 Disc

The Ribble Endurance 725 takes its name from the material it’s made of: Reynolds 725 triple-butted steel. Combine with the first part of its title, you’ll be unsurprised to discover it’s an endurance-focussed steel bike from Lancashire firm Ribble.

Less retro than it first appears, the Endurance 725 features modern bolt-through axles and a carbon fork. Add to these steady handling and space for big tyres, and it'll happily take a stab at anything from sportives and club runs, to touring or winter training.

Given this versatility, it’s especially welcome to discover that mudguards and racks can be added at the order stage, while gearing and finishing kit can be similarly tweaked via the website, meaning the bike will arrive built exactly as you want it.

Available at various price-points, this mid-range version packs in a full Shimano 105 hydraulic groupset and Mavic Aksium wheels. At £1,399, it’s outrageously cheap.

Verdict: Tough, comfy and cool looking, the customisable Endurance 725 is versatile and exceptional value

Buy now from Ribble from £1,399

4. Genesis Equilibrium Disc

Genesis is chasing the sportive dollar with this steel stunner, claiming the Equilibrium Disc offers all-day comfort with a carbon fork that lets you eat up the miles.

On the face of it, these attributes, allied to a 105 groupset and decent tyres, are a recipe for success.

Featuring a pronounced sloping top tube, the frame itself is constructed of Reynolds 725 tubing and butted to create strength where it’s needed and save weight where it’s not. Aiming to provide all-day comfort, a slack head angle gives a predictable rate of turn-in and contributes to a sensation of being utterly planted to the road at all times.

Although it’s not a touring bike, with mounts and multi-terrain capable 30c WTB Exposure tyres it can do a decent impression of one if that’s what you want. Wherever you take it, with the recently upgraded bolt-thru axles the bike will hold to whatever course you point it down.

With a full Shimano 105 groupset and hydraulic brakes, shifting and stopping is also uber-reliable. And with a compact chainset and huge 11-34t cassette, it’s got a good range of ratios too.

Verdict: A touch over 10kg, there’s no getting away from the Equilibrium’s weight. The price is also perhaps a little premium. However, lovey to look at and charming to ride, it more than justifies its place on our list

Read our full review here

Buy now from Frewheel for £2,600

5. Mason Resolution 2

Part of the joy of a steel bike is its timelessness. Now with bolt-thru axles and flat mount discs, but the same dialled-in geometry, version two of the Resolution has proved exactly that.

Racy to behold, the UK-designed Resolution nevertheless marketed as a four-season bike. How so? Because with the right accessories it can turn its hand to pretty much any road-based discipline.

Hidden all over the Columbus steel-tubed frame and carbon fork are a plethora of tucked-away bosses to secure mudguards and pannier racks. At a glance, you wouldn’t notice them, but check the inside of the fork legs or at the back of the chainstay bridge and you’ll find bolt holes ready to accept the necessary mounts to turn the Resolution into anything from winter hack to full-on touring rig.

Clearances are generous, with space for up to 35c tyres (30c with mudguards), suggesting the Resolution wouldn’t mind a spot of gravel riding to boot, yet strip it back to its bare essentials and the geometry is just about racy enough for someone who wants to mix it on a crit circuit.

Verdict: Delivers on the promise of a racy steel bike. All the bike you’re likely to ever need, it’ll adapt to your whims, yet never threatens to be anything other than a blast to ride

Read our full review here

Buy now from Mason from £1,595 (frameset) 

Since carbon became the sole material from which to make a competitive racing bike, steel has forged a second life for itself.

However, if steel is vinyl, outmoded but charming, then aluminium has risked becoming an eight-track cassette tape – an unloved evolutionary stepping-stone doomed to the charity shop of history.

It wasn’t always so. For around a decade from the mid-90s to the early-2000s, aluminium was the material of choice, with Miguel Indurain winning the Tour de France aboard an aluminium Pinarello for the first time in 1995.

However, with Lance Armstrong'winning' on a carbon Trek OCLV Madone only three years later, aluminium has often since found itself consigned to brands' entry-level machines.

Despite this, it’s now enjoying a revival, with new manufacturing methods once again making it a viable choice for race-winning bikes. Aluminium is potentially stiff, zippy and very light, so should you fancy seeing what the fuss is about we’ve rounded up seven lust-worthy bikes that prove aluminium is still a great material to make a bike from.

The best aluminium road bikes

Cannondale CAAD13 Disc Ultegra

Buy now from Leisure Lakes for £3,000

Cannondale was famous during the '90s for its slinky looking CAAD frames, which are still objects of lust for a particular vein of bike nerd. The new CAAD13, however, is likely to have wider modern-day appeal.

Lovely looking, it’s lighter than many carbon competitors while its ultra-thin tubing also provides a ride far smoother than you’d imagine possible.

Now only available equipped with disc brakes, this range-topping Ultegra version is the go-to choice for aspiring racers.

Recently updated with bolt-thru axles and drop seat stays, you’ll get low weight and racing manners, plus clearance for fat tyres up to 30c. Combined with fast Fulcrum Racing wheels, a pro-compact chainset and aggressive geometry, the CAAD 13 remains living proof that aluminium can still more than match carbon.

Buy now from Leisure Lakes for £3,000

Specialized Allez Sprint Comp

Buy now from Specialized for £2,200

In 2015 Specialized created a limited edition aluminium S-Works Allez. Partly conceived as a method of experimenting with advanced welding techniques that could then be trickled down to its mass-market machines, its unique construction still informs many of the production methods used across the brand’s range of alloy bikes.

While this rare beast has now been retired, its spirit lives on in the disc-equipped Allez Sprint. A cheap and furious racer, it combines a flat aero sculpted seat tube and matching carbon post with a head-down racing position. All considered, it’s a set of fast wheels away from a podium finish.

Buy now from Specialized for £2,200

Trek Émonda ALR 5

Buy now from Trek for £2,000

That a company as large as Trek would bother to create an aluminium bike as nice as this proves there’s life left in the genre yet. Looking for all the world like a carbon bike, a serious amount of effort has gone into hydroforming each tube.

This has been helped along by something Trek calls ‘invisible weld’ technology. Chuck on a full 2x11 Shimano 105 drivetrain and hydraulic brakes and we reckon riders will be on to a winner.

There are bolt-thru axles and flat mount fittings, and even room for a dedicated computer sensor buried inside one of the seat stays.

Sharing the endurance geometry of the rest of the line, the Émonda ALR 5 is also available as a frameset which comes in a rather lovely metallic purple.

Read our full review here

Buy now from Trek for £2,000

Condor Italia RC Disc

Buy now from Condor for £1,200

London cycling stalwart Condor produces its range in Italy. The race-oriented Italia RC is a legitimately fast bike with a moderate price tag, ideal for regular racing and fast training.

Featuring an asymmetric down tube with a flattened profile to resist twisting it should be happy to get thrown about.

Formerly eschewing anything as crassly modern as disc brakes or bolt-thru axles, this latest version sports both. Thankfully, done up in deep two-tone blue, it’s still gorgeous to look at.

Coming as frame-only, Condor will help build the bike up to match your requirements, and can also call on the experience of its in-house fitters to get it spot on.

Buy now from Condor for £1,200

Canyon Endurace AL Disc 8.0

Buy now from Canyon for £1,749

Add together the Endurace AL’s Shimano 105 groupset, DT Spline 1850 wheels, and Selle Italia finishing kit and you’ll feel like you’re getting the frame and fork thrown-in free.

It’s a calculation that’ll give you some clue as to how good value a bike this is. Bolted to a long-distance optimised frame, it’s part of a build with nothing by way of weak links, and that adds up to a bike weighing just 8.7kg.

Done up in matt black or bright blue and neatly accommodating the usual cables and flat-mount brake callipers, its chassis is great looking too, with long chainstays that aim to impart stability and thin seat stays to help smooth over rough surfaces.

Shipped direct to your door, Canyon’s occasional long lead times might put off some. But the quality of its machines is beyond doubt.

Buy now from Canyon for £1,749

Kinesis Aithein EVO Disc

Buy frameset from Probikekit for £780

British based Kinesis has been working with factories to produce top-end aluminium frames for decades. The result of its accumulated knowledge is the very speedy Aithein.

An ideal privateer racer, its fast geometry is well suited to the knockabout world of criterium events. With competition-ready stiffness, it’s still just about forgiving enough for longer rides thanks to thin seat stays.

Recently updated, this disc version now features flat-mount brake fittings and 12mm thru-axles. With internal gear cable routing and space for 28c tyres, it’s very definitely still a racer’s bike. Available as a frameset only, it’s ready to be built up any way you see fit.

Buy frameset from Probikekit for £780

Bowman Palace 3 Disc

Buy now as a frameset from Bowman for £705

Based in London, Bowman makes a small range comprising three unique bikes: the year-round stainless steel Layhams, the chunky tyre and disc-equipped Pilgrim, and this aluminium racer, the Palace.

Named after South London's famous Crystal Palace criterium races, it is now onto its third iteration. Always a snappy handler, this has seen the addition of disc brakes and blot-thru axles.

Keeping things simple at the heart of the bike is a reliable threaded bottom bracket, while cabling and ports for electronic groupsets have also been tidied up.

Buy now as a frameset from Bowman for £705

Here’s a little cycling trivia to tell your friends down the pub (if your Tier permits, of course): Merida is the second-largest bicycle manufacturer in the world, behind only Giant.

From its factories in Asia it designs and manufactures more than two million bikes a year, mostly for its own brand but also for a good deal of others – Merida owns a 49% share of Specialized, for example, so no prizes for guessing which factories those bikes come from. And its net worth makes it one of the largest companies in Taiwan (where it is headquartered).

Here’s another little nugget: the name is derived from the Chinese syllables ‘Me’ meaning beautiful, ‘Ri’ meaning comfortable, and ‘Da’ meaning fluid and mobile.

Roughly translated, Me-Ri-Da stands for bicycles built to perform with style and an amenable ride quality.

This mantra is epitomised in the Scultura Endurance range. The Scultura is Merida’s WorldTour race weapon, as used by Team Bahrain-McLaren, but the Endurance versions have had those racier traits tempered slightly to suit those longer days in the saddle.

A little extra comfort has been dialled in through a combination of a slightly more relaxed riding position and additional compliance, plus the geometry offers additional stability at speed.

On top of that there’s clearance for up to 35mm slick tyres. That’s not to suggest these bikes are tardy and incapable of going fast, just that the stack and reach (584mm and 380mm respectively) are tailored to the more discerning end of the market than the ‘I only care about my power numbers’ types.

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The model on test is the top-of-the-shop 7000-E and it’s undeniably striking in bright blue, specced accordingly with Shimano’s Ultegra Di2 and DT Swiss P1850 Spline DB23 wheels.

The finishing kit consists of Merida’s own in-house parts, which are no frills but deliver more than adequate performance.

Buy the Merida Cultura Endurance 7000-E from Tredz now

Other nice touches include the direct-mount rear derailleur hanger, which is a surprisingly rare feature given this style of mounting (as pioneered by Shimano) stiffens up the junction with the frame to ensure precise, crisp shifting.

Cabling is internalised and dealt with tidily up front, and there’s also a neat multitool hidden under the saddle.

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On the road the Scultura Endurance 7000 is a highly capable mile-muncher. As promised, it delivers a relaxed fit, stability and handling that allows you to cruise down hills at speed with the sureness of a bowling ball rather than an out-of-control shopping trolley.

The CF3 carbon frame and fork weigh a respectable 1,124g and 411g, but overall the bike does feel a touch portly at 8.52kg. Some of that resultant sluggish feel uphill is attributable to the wheels and tyres but I feel features such as the aluminium disc brake ‘cooling fins’ are superfluous.

They are there to help dissipate heat build-up through braking but I’d argue that disc brake manufacturers are already doing enough to ensure safe and effective braking.

As for those wheels and tyres, I feel like Merida has missed a trick here. Wider rubber can potentially offer several benefits – improved grip, comfort and even puncture resistance – but this potential can only be fully realised as a system including the wheels, and most optimally as a tubeless setup.

The DT Swiss P1850 wheels are tubeless-compatible but the bike comes supplied with inner tubes. The 18mm internal rim dimensions are also narrow by modern standards so the 32mm tyres bulge like lightbulbs beyond the rim bead, which increases rolling resistance and aero drag.

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The situation is further hampered by the Continental GP 4-Season tyres, which are the hobnail boots of the tyre world and make the whole system feel wooden and sluggish.

The combination certainly detracts from the ride quality. I made a quick switch to a carbon Zipp 303S wheelset with 28mm tubeless tyres and immediately felt improvements in weight, agility, feedback from the road and comfort.

Switching to tubeless helped to overcome some of the stiffness of the frame and did boost comfort back to a level more like I’d expect of a bike aimed at ‘endurance’.

Fortunately the Merida stacks up well against its rivals on price, so the savings could be spent on upgrades, although it’s frustrating that little tweaks like this aren’t already considered by the brands to make the best of their bikes straight out of the box.

Buy the Merida Cultura Endurance 7000-E from Tredz now

Pick of the kit

Fizik Infinito R1 Knit shoes, £350, extrauk.co.uk

Fizik was the first to market with knit technology, now used widely in top-level race shoes. It offers increased breathability, enhanced comfort, reduced weight and yet remains durable and supportive.

Add in a top-of-the-line UD carbon sole and the result is a race-level shoe that leaves you wanting for nothing (aside from maybe some extra warmth in winter).

I found the Infinito R1 Knits to be some of the most comfortable cycling shoes I’ve ever tested, with zero pressure points or hotspots even when brand new.

Buy the Fizik Infinito R1 Knit shoes from Wiggle now

Alternatively…

Ditch the Di2

The Scultura Endurance 6000 (£2,500) uses the same frame and fork and a near-identical spec, but swaps Ultegra Di2 for its mechanical equivalent to offer a decent saving for a minimal loss of performance.

Buy the Merida Scultura Endurance 6000 from Tredz

Cheaper still

If you drop down to the Shimano 105-specced Scultura Endurance 4000 (£2,000) – again with the same carbon frame/fork as the top model – the saving would pay for a decent wheel upgrade.

Buy the Merida Scultura Endurance 4000 from Tredz

Spec

All reviews are fully independent and no payments have been made by companies featured in reviews

Bike building is a lot like baking. As much art as it is science, experience is everything and the slightest deviation from a trusted recipe can have quite catastrophic results. A soggy bottom is just as undesirable on a race bike as it is on a roulade.

BMC therefore took a huge risk with its latest Teammachine by attempting to factor aerodynamics into an already highly refined formula. It’s an ingredient that is notoriously disruptive in any design, let alone in one as established as BMC’s flagship race bike.

It is the front of the bike that has received the most treatment in the drag-reduction department. The new Teammachine takes cues from BMC’s Timemachine Road aero race bike, with a head tube and down tube that have been stretched front-to-back to adopt kamm-tail shapes in profile.

The forks have been similarly changed and are now thinner and deeper. An extra scoop of slipperiness is said to come from the impeccably tidy ICS carbon cockpit. It pairs with a flattened steerer to guide cables internally into the frame.

All told the new bike is claimed to be 6% faster at race speeds on the flat than the previous design, and BMC believes the new Teammachine is almost on par in terms of aerodynamics with the Timemachine Road.

Indirect advantages

If you’re a pro, anything that makes you faster is a worthy investment, but I am rarely riding at those kinds of speeds so the performance improvements on offer for the likes of me are not as high as 6%.

Indeed I can’t say I noticed the effects of the changes much. What did impress me, however, was BMC has managed to make these changes to the frame design without adversely affecting the Teammachine’s excellent pre-existing handling and stiffness traits, its overall weight or comfort levels.

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Aero profiles and flattened steerers are inherently less stiff, as Cyclist recognised in testing the Timemachine Road back in issue 84, yet this bike handles just as precisely as its predecessor.

BMC says it recognised the issue in the Timemachine Road so has rectified it here by enlarging the clamping height of the stem and creating special ‘half moon’ spacers to fit between the stem and the head tube that connect securely to combat torsional movement. The head tube plays its part too.

I daresay BMC could have squeezed extra aero gains out of it by slimming it down as well as elongating it. However by stretching it backwards while preserving its width the brand has actually improved the tube’s stiffness by a claimed 10%.

Buy the BMC Teammachine SLR01

Coupled with BMC’s tried-and-tested race geometry, the stiff front end makes the bike delightfully reactive, allowing it to dodge potholes with ease. BMC says the frame has been fortified even more at the rear triangle, with stiffness up 20%.

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The gains at both ends lent the bike a wonderfully cohesive feel, with pedal stomps and bar wrenches working in synergy to propel me forwards rapidly.

Using the well-worn (but ultimately credible) ‘advancements in the carbon layup’ explanation, BMC says it has achieved these improvements in stiffness without affecting weight. A painted medium frame continues to hover around the 820g mark, however savings in a revised seat clamp, fork crown and cockpit mean the complete frameset is said to be 150g lighter this time around.

It means a UCI rule-flouting sub-6.8kg bike is easy to build up. That light weight combined with the Teammachine’s stiffness means it accelerates like a stallion who’s just been given a whiff of smelling salts and a slap on the haunch.

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It also means the Teammachine remains fairly unforgiving when it comes to comfort, but to the bike’s credit I never found the feedback came across in an unsettling way. If anything, in contrast to the bike’s stiffness, its comfort was perhaps a little mismatched from front to back.

BMC says it purposefully cedes weight in its seatpost by using heavier fibres that are more flexible. That did a stirling job of improving comfort towards the back of the bike, whereas to save so much weight in the cockpit BMC had to use very stiff fibres that don’t do as good a job at dissipating vibrations up front.

Overall though, that perceived drawback is minor and potentially irrelevant to the racers this bike is designed for. I came away from my time on the bike with the impression that despite the extra ingredients now in the mix, BMC’s Teammachine remains a showstopper.

Buy the BMC Teammachine SLR01

Alternatively, buy the BMC Teammachine SLR02 from Tredz now

Pick of the kit

Met Trenta 3K Carbon helmet, £270, met-helmets.com

The Trenta 3K was the first helmet to use carbon fibre for a claimed structural advantage. Apparently the attributes of this helmet’s carbon skeleton allowed Met to reduce the density of the EPS foam, making it lighter but just as strong.

Luckily I haven’t had an opportunity to test this claim but I’d still like to see MIPS technology included as well. It would bring the Trenta in line with every other helmet at the price point. Safety aside, the lid is light, airy and comfortable. The lacquered carbon weave on show is a rather fetching feature too.

Buy the Met Trenta 3K carbon helmet from Wiggle now

Alternatively…

Bargain hunters beware

The Teammachine SLR01 is typically Swiss in high-quality execution, but also typically Swiss in terms of pricing. The SLR01 Four is the ‘most accessible’ version of the new Teammachine at £6,500

Buy the BMC Teammachine SLR01 Four from Sigma Sports now

Thinking person’s BMC

If you want to trade raciness for a bit more comfort, the Roadmachine 01 One is still aero but uses a less aggressive geometry and is probably a better option for regular riders with a £10,000 budget.

Buy the BMC Roadmachine 01 One from Tredz now

Spec

All reviews are fully independent and no payments have been made by companies featured in reviews

With so many advances in bike design it’s easy to forget that geometry remains critical. Yes it has become fairly standardised, but even within a narrow spectrum there is a sea of difference between bikes pitched at either end.

And here, with Basso’s reincarnated Diamante SV, the geometry dial is turned all the way up to racy. But there is a twist.

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Measured approach

Reading out a string of numbers is boring, which is why robots make terrible speeches. But I’m going to do it anyway because numbers are vital clues to the SV’s character. From the geo charts this size 56cm has 587mm stack, 386mm reach, 406mm chainstays and 985mm wheelbase.

In other words, the SV has a short wheelbase and short rear end, two things associated with fast, reactive handling. A typical middle-of-the-road racer would come in with around 995mm wheelbase and 410mm chainstays.

That said, the bike isn’t quite as aggressive as it once was. As Basso’s Joshua Riddle explains, ‘The previous SV was quite extreme in terms of its racing geometry and some riders had trouble getting low enough to negate the need for spacers.’

Hence this time around the bike has an extra 30mm stack height and a 9mm shorter reach. However it hasn’t lost its racy bent despite now offering up a more upright position, and once again it does so in two clever ways.

First, all spacers can be dropped and the stem slammed into a recess in the frame. Second, that stem has a -11° rise where most bikes have -6°. What that means is that where a 110mm stem adds around 25mm to the effective handlebar height (in how it juts up from the fork at an angle), the SV’s stem only adds around 15mm. 

The result is that the SV still offers up an aggressive position when I want it, coaxing my back towards flattened when in the drops. And as a result of that the SV is rapid.

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Up down dream

In case you’re wondering, SV is Italian for ‘well fast’. OK, it stands for Super Veloce, but you don’t need a 2:1 in Italian bike design to have surmised that. The frame shape is what we’ve come to expect for aero: truncated tubes, dropped seatstays, large gaps between fork legs and wheel, and hidden cables.

Basso provides no aero data but I’m willing to overlook this based on experience. Even with relatively shallow 35mm DT Swiss wheels the SV zinged along the flats and chopped into headwinds.

Yes, a lot of this free speed is down to my body position, but that position is afforded by the bike, so the SV deserves its speedy moniker.

Buy the Basso Diamante SV now

It does a splendid turn up climbs too. Aside from being notably stiff the bike is aided by a competitive 7.5kg weight. Specifically it does well on greasy climbs, that short rear end putting the back wheel closer under the rider’s weight as the road pitches up, which aids traction.

But like its forebears it also barrels down descents in spectacular fashion, thanks I think to the wheelbase, which is not so short as to be unstable but short enough to make snap changes in direction.

However like many bikes now the SV also owes a lot to its tyres – in this case 28mm Continental GP5000s. The crucial element being the width.

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As per its predecessor, Basso has added its 3B elastomer insert around the seatpost in an effort to dampen road buzz. And I should imagine it does work, but still I think the real comfort–heroes here are the tyres.

The bike came delivered with tyres at 110psi, and out of curiosity I rode it like that. And boy did I wish I hadn’t – it was more jarring than a jam factory. I then dropped pressure down to 55psi front/60psi rear and the difference in feel was astonishing.

The sprint stiffness remained but the ride turned from agricultural outhouse to acceptably comfy chair.

I’ve noticed this with other bikes too, and manufacturers are increasingly returning to super-stiff frames and then speccing wider tyres to claw back some compliance.

Buy the Basso Diamante SV now

It’s obvious but it works, and here it has turned the SV into something quite brilliant, unlocking its stiffness and poise by providing not just comfort but masses of grip too.

Still, I think Basso could go one better and spec the tubeless version of the GP5000s, which the DT Swiss wheels are compatible with, and if I owned this bike I’d make that switch as soon as possible. And for those in the tyre-swap market, it’s worth noting clearances are up to 32mm.

Yet tyre choice aside there is so much to love about the Diamante SV. It is perhaps better behaved than its predecessors – smoother and a touch less aggressive – but this bike still has a true racer’s heart. So yes it is Super Veloce, but it’s also Super Fun.

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Pick of the kit

Sidi Wire 2 shoes, £340, saddleback.co.uk

Sidi is a law unto itself, with nutty designs, jaw-dropping pricetags and more adjustment options than a Savile Row tailor. But when it gets its shoes right they are brilliant, and none more so than the Sidi Wire 2.

Yes, they’re a bit heavy at around 650g a pair. Yes, Sidi’s Techno dials are more finicky than Boa dials. And yes, by the end of the first day you will have lost the little screwdriver to change the tension of the clasp around the achilles. But all is forgiven thanks to the exceptional build and material quality – these shoes are two years old and still look new.

Buy the Sidi Wire 2 shoes from ProBikeKit

Alternatively…

Down but not out

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Image 6 of 7

Rim brakes still exist and the Diamante (£2,700 frameset) makes excellent use, turning to direct-mount callipers for better modulation via increased stiffness. Plus you can build a bike that will hit 6.8kg.

Buy the Basso Diamante here

Cut from the same cloth

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Image 7 of 7

With near-identical geometry to its top-tier siblings, the Astra promises fast handling for half the price. The sacrifice is a few extra grams, but for £3,299 you get an Italian-built, Shimano Ultegra Disc bike.

Buy the Basso Astra here

Spec

All reviews are fully independent and no payments have been made by companies featured in reviews

They might look like road bikes, but with a few subtle tweaks here and a wider tyre there, endurance bikes will take you anywhere. This is our pick of the bunch

Photography: Rob Milton

Six hundred kilometres in one go. Consider how that might feel. You’d better be wearing your comfiest bibshorts. Now imagine those bibshorts are in fact woollen plus-fours, your bike is made from pig iron, the wheel rims are wooden and you only have one gear.

That’s because your name is George Pilkington Mills, born in 1867 in Middlesex, and you’ve just won the inaugural 1891 Bordeaux-Paris in a time of 26h 36min 25sec. Impressive as that is, back in 1886 at the age of just 19, you stamped your name on a record that had stood for 133 years, Land’s End to John O’Groats on a penny-farthing, 1,450km in five days, 1 hour and 45 minutes. So you call that 8kg disc brake bike with the slack head tube an endurance machine? My dear child, it has 32mm tyres. That’s a hovercraft!

Pilkington Mills also used to carry a revolver in his pocket to ward off stray dogs, so it’s a stretch to compare his Victorian exploits to those of this year’s Liège-Bastogne-Liège winner, Primož Roglič, who had nothing more dangerous than a banana in his jersey. Yet there is something relevant to Mills’ story here, in that it begs the question, ‘Just what is an endurance bike?’

By definition, isn’t any road bike an endurance bike if taken on the right ride? To a degree this is true, but in 2004 the definition of the term changed irrevocably when Specialized released the Roubaix.

In a sense the Roubaix looked like a lot of road bikes of its time, but closer inspection revealed a much taller head tube, longer chainstays and room for up to 30mm tyres. It even had suspension in the form of ‘Zertz inserts’, elastomers placed in gaps in the seatstays and fork legs – although it’s said these just plugged holes, and it was the flexible tube shapes that provided damping.

At any rate, Trek followed a year later with its similarly pitched Pilot, and Giant in 2008 with its Defy. Endurance was now a category, not just a moniker, and its raison d’être was to provide comfort over long distance and poor terrain.

Longer, slacker geometry remains the primary jumping off point today, but added to that are disc brakes, suspension systems and tyre clearances that would make cyclocross blush. And that’s before aerodynamics, high stiffness and low weight creep in, all things that start to make an endurance bike look like a race bike again. But there remains a primary difference, and it’s the way bike engineers try to meld speed with versatility and comfort.

A lightweight bike is not designed with the Arenberg Trench in mind any more than an aero bike is aimed at climbing the Stelvio, but an endurance bike is designed to make a decent fist of both, on the same day, whether that day is 30km long or 300km.

The endurance bikes of today would have made George Pilkington Mills a faster rider. Here are the four we would have recommended him.

Cannondale Synapse

As chosen by editor-at-large Stu Bowers

Read our full review of the Cannondale Synapse here

Before we get down to the nitty-gritty, a quick bit of cycling trivia to impress (or bore) your mates with. What was Cannondale’s first full carbon road bike called? That’s right, it was the Synapse, released all the way back in 2005 and made entirely in the US too. Anyway, moving swiftly on...

Thanks to Google continuously tracking everything anyone does, we now know that the Synapse is one of the most searched for bikes on the planet. There is, of course, a perfectly good explanation for this, and it’s nothing to do with guerrilla marketing.

Historically the Synapse has set a high bar in the endurance sector. Cannondale’s engineers have done a great job of delivering traits that middle-of-the-bell-curve riders (in other words, most of us) find desirable. More relaxed fit? Check. Comfy? Check. Lightweight? Check. Clearance for wide tyres and mudguards? Why not?

And since this latest generation, released in 2017, disc brakes too. Look back through my reviews of the Synapse, and those written by any cycling journalist worth their salt, and you’ll find heaps of praise and scarce criticism.

I’d argue that Cannondale, as it often has been, was way ahead of its time. Component integration, internal cabling and features such as a hidden seat clamp were present on the Synapse as far back as its second generation in 2013, a bike that Peter Sagan had one of his most successful ever spring Classics campaigns riding.

Some brands are only just getting on board with stuff like that now, and I’d wager if we pitched that near-eight-year-old model against a good number of bikes released in the past couple of years it would still fare favourably.

And yet as I write this I can’t help but ponder what might be in the pipeline from Cannondale. The fourth-generation Synapse is approaching its fourth birthday, and if we know one thing from our industry it’s that bikes rarely make it to five.

An update is almost certainly on the way, and arguably can’t come soon enough. The Synapse’s rivals are threatening like never before. But I’m not here to speculate on what isn’t, rather to tell you why I’m voting for what is.

I like the way Cannondale interprets the needs of the endurance sector differently to its competitors. While for many the prefix ‘endurance’ means sky-scraping head tubes, elongated wheelbases, flexy parts and/or actual boingy bits, Cannondale’s slant is that bike riders are all united by one thing: we all want to ride fast.

Can’t shake the speed

Speed is the measure by which all cyclists compare. So whether it’s giving our mates a kicking up a climb, achieving a gold time at a gran fondo or simply getting to work faster, we want a versatile, agile and fast road bike.

Which is exactly what the Synapse is. Save for a 10mm higher head tube, it is but a hair’s width away from its racier sibling, the SuperSix Evo. In fact it’s hard to decide whether the Synapse is a comfortable race bike or a racy endurance bike.

It hits that sweet spot so well that I chose a Synapse when I wanted to build a proper year-round mile-muncher. I like its no-fuss approach. The lack of any moving suspension parts keeps maintenance seldom and easy, plus it gives the bike a really clean silhouette.

The super-skinny 25.4mm Save seatpost deals with the bulk of the vibrations and bumps well, although most of that work is already being done by the tyres, the Synapse being one of the first road bikes of any kind to really push the tyre clearance envelope.

Getting on board with wide, tubeless tyres (with the Synapse catering for 32mm) and much lower pressures (like 55-60psi) means frame engineers, who have scratched their heads for years over ways to deliver more compliance, can now take a breather. Let’s all hear it for disc brakes!

Thus the frame doesn’t need fancy ways to suspend you when these modern tubeless wheel/tyre combos can do that far more effectively and without compromising performance and weight. Cannondale was quicker to realise this than most, and I’m excited to see where its engineers take the Synapse next.

Learn more about the Cannondale Synapse here

BMC Roadmachine

As chosen by deputy editor James Spender

Read James's full review of the BMC Roadmachine here

I have ridden 250km sportives on aero bikes, and 160km gran fondos on custom tube-to-tube bikes, and commute thousands of kilometres a year on a piece of aluminium from the early 2000s, and ultimately I have found them all palatable. But they are not endurance bikes, says the industry.

And I guess the industry is right, since the aero bike needed wider tyres, the custom bike warranted kid gloves and my commuter? Well that just requires wings, prayers and the odd new bottom bracket.

Endurance bikes exist because they come predisposed to long miles and crap surfaces. You don’t have to hold their hand as you walk into a shop to buy their first 11-32t cassette. So after much deliberating I plumped for the BMC Roadmachine.

For me, BMC has always held serious appeal. Despite the fact that the initials stand for Bicycle Manufacturing Company – could you get more uninspiring or more Swiss? – BMC the company stands for sharp geometry, light weight and ass-kicking stiffness. An endurance bike made by BMC? You’d have better luck upholstering a pub bench.

But bless BMC, it tried. The Granfondo GF01 (clue’s in the name) set out the original stall back in 2012, and with some success. It looked like a BMC, it got raced at the right races – namely that year’s Roubaix when the cameras were looking – and it was one of the early pioneers of the dropped seatstays now ubiquitous from aero to gravel.

The GF01 was good but it failed to find much traction alongside the lauded Teammachine, and when the disc update came in 2015 it fared no better. That bike was heavy, its geometry stately and the stiffness manifested less in buzz kill than buzz kill.

But just like how your first pet slowly grew older then conked out while you were busy playing with the new kitten, the GF01 slipped quietly away when the bombastic Roadmachine entered.

The original top-spec Roadmachines were only available in primary-colour yellow or green, cost the earth – nearly nine grand in 2016 anyone? – and punched like Tysons.

Goodness they were stiff. I remember nabbing Stu’s test bike one weekend and ended up grateful to be on a Wilier Cento10 Air that month instead – an aero bike that was actually more comfortable.

But the Roadmachine was also great fun and did have all the endurance bike traits: a go-anywhere feel and the more upright position that debuted on the GF01. There was still something missing compared to other hitters in the category, but it charmed me.

Coming of age

It’s now July 2019. Grumpy Cat has died, Brexit is in full swing and Boris is on track with his plans to destroy Britain. And BMC has released its updated Roadmachine, and the endurance gods are pleased with all they have made.

The top-spec 01 models are lighter but just as stiff in the right departments, boast 33mm tyre clearances, fully integrated cockpit, hidden cables and finally a decent amount of flex thanks to a retuned rear end and D-shaped seatpost. There’s even a set of mounting points on the top tube for a bag.

Swing a leg over and smash it across a rutted surface and this bike feels robust and stable, but alive like a road bike should. Yes, that longer wheelbase and low BB tells out, but the geometry is surprisingly similar to the Teammachine.

It’s a touch longer, a touch taller and has a slightly lower centre of gravity, but the Teammachine’s assured descending is present, if not quite the same level of responsiveness through quick turns.

The flipside is that the Roadmachine tanks along in the way the Teammachine can’t, the refined layup and the redesigned fork with its spindly legs smoothing the road while offering responsiveness and feedback.

There’s lots of grip too. In these things the Roadmachine fulfils the brief, and offers a bike that is both different to, and more capable in certain areas than its siblings.

But then – and this is the thing I love about all BMCs – everything just feels premium and well put together. It feels lean yet strong, like it wants to go for miles. It feels like you could never break it. But crucially, it finally feels pretty comfortable.

For more on the BMC Roadmachine, see here

Open Min.D

As chosen by tech editor Sam Challis

Read Sam's full review of the Open Min.D here

As tech editor Sam eats, sleeps and dreams cycling kit, and is in charge of selecting which bikes get reviewed in Cyclist each month. As such he has some very distinct opinions on what a bike should offer

My choice for best endurance bike is the Open Min.D, a bike that has reinvigorated a category that in recent years has ceded more and more ground to its neighbours.

Lightweight race bikes are encroaching on one side, their disc brakes and tyre clearances now providing much of the control and comfort endurance bikes once boasted uniquely. Gravel bikes are muscling in on the other, their frames now as lightweight and efficient as many endurance bikes but also offering the capacity to explore terrain that endurance bikes cannot.

With those two categories calling into question the need for endurance road bikes at all, several brands now find themselves relying on complicated devices to augment or differentiate the ride characteristics of their designs.

Call me a purist but I think double-decker handlebars and suspension cartridges in steerer tubes are a misstep in terms of both performance – they tend to come with a weight penalty – and serviceability.

By contrast, the Min.D relies on simple, logical features (indeed its name is a pseudo-acronym of the term ‘Minimal Design’) to create use case-appropriate attributes.

If that rationale sounds familiar it’s because the person behind the Open Min.D is responsible for the 3T Strada, which was my pick in our ‘best aero bikes’ feature (issue 105). That person is Gerard Vroomen.

‘If I come up with an idea and it is aero I go to the CEO of 3T, Rene Wiertz. If it isn’t I go to my Open co-founder, Andy Kessler,’ Vroomen says.

The idea was to take everything Open had learned from its innovative work in the gravel discipline and apply it to the road. As a result Open made well-educated choices in the geometry to achieve an endurance bike’s bread and butter attributes: an attainable ride position and stable handling.

That manifests chiefly as regular stack and reach figures, but married to a slightly slacker head angle. This lengthens the bike’s trail and front-centre to achieve stability, but by pairing that with super-short 405mm chainstays, Open ensured the bike doesn’t have the turning circle of a cruise ship.

For comfort the Min.D simply maximises the area with most potential for absorbing vibration – the tyres – by designing around 32mm tyres. Further cushioning is afforded by the continuous seat tube, which is a scant 25mm in diameter.

A normal seatpost is 27.2mm across, meaning the seat tube that houses it tends be at least 28.6mm. By building them as one Open cleverly swerves this limitation to get extra flex.

A happy by-product of the frameset’s simplicity is an uncommonly low overall weight. That isn’t a top priority in endurance bikes, yet I think it plays as much a part in the enjoyment of riding as comfort does, given how tangibly it affects ride feel.

Open claims a medium frameset comes in at around 1.2kg, making it easily possible to achieve builds near the UCI’s 6.8kg weight limit (not that this bike is intended for racing).

Falling into love

I’ll admit it, before my time aboard the Min.D my passion for road riding had dimmed. Charging down a busy road on a race bike staring at inevitably disappointing power numbers had begun to lose its appeal.

By contrast, the tranquility and safety of gravel riding had started to hold more sway over my riding agenda, but then along came the Min.D and a pleasing middle ground arose.

Its combination of characteristics made the bike a delight to ride around the narrow, technical lanes I’m lucky to live amongst.

The Min.D was light enough to make their 20% gradients manageable and stable enough to pilot down twisting, narrow descents with confidence. Plus the often broken road surface was no match for the bike’s big tyres.

In short the Min.D opened up new avenues and in so doing made riding a road bike a pleasure once again. To me, Open has proved that when done right the endurance genre still has plenty to offer. And considering the level of refinement and versatility in bike design nowadays, that’s no mean feat.

Giant Defy

As chosen by editor Pete Muir

Read our full review of the Giant Defy here

Any bike-buying decision is a battle between the heart and the head. The heart says you should go for an Italian brand with oodles of heritage. The heart says you need the same bike as ridden by that guy who won the Tour de France. The heart says you should go for a futuristic bike with blade-like tubes and hi-tech integrated thingamajigs, like Batman would ride. That cape though, hardly aero.

But your head? The Giant Defy is the bike your head would choose.

Like most riders I’m very susceptible to romantic notions of Grand Tours and the rich history of the sport, and a seductively curved stay or a covetable head badge can easily divert my attention. But, like most riders, I also need to take a hard look in the mirror and remind myself of the rider I actually am, not the one I’d like to be.

I have to accept I’m not going to win the Tour de France, or any other race for that matter, so I don’t really need a bike that will shave a fraction of a second off my 10km time. Nor am I likely to be bothering the upper echelons of the Strava leaderboard for classic climbs, so it doesn’t really matter if my bike isn’t as light as a helium balloon.

Of course, I don’t want a slow bike, or a heavy bike, it’s just that these things are no longer the absolute priority. When I ask my cold, analytical brain what I should be looking for in a bike, this is what it tells me.

First, the bike needs to be comfortable. Who wants to come back from a ride with bruises from wrestling a jackhammer and a back aching from trying to maintain a position designed for aerodynamically efficient 22-year-olds? Not me.

The Defy has got this nailed. Its geometry is more upright than Giant’s pure racer, the TCR, making it forgiving without actually turning the bike into a stately cruiser.

Add in 32mm tubeless tyres as standard, plus the shock-absorbing D-Fuse bars and seatpost, and you couldn’t ask for a more polished ride. And not a bouncy suspension gizmo in sight.

Secondly, the bike needs to handle beautifully. After all, even if it’s not a race I still want to feel in control and I want the ride to be fun. That means being able to fling the bike into corners with abandon and descend hills with a grin rather than a grimace.

Again the Defy delivers in spades. That massive head tube and tight frame shape help to keep the bike stiff in the right directions, making for responsive handling, while a relatively long wheelbase and trail ensure stability at speed.

Ruthless efficiency

On top of all this my robot brain wants the best possible bike for the cash at my disposal. My head loves a bargain.

Giant may be a faceless behemoth – the biggest bike brand in the world – but that comes with certain advantages. It makes bikes for other brands such as Trek, Scott and Colnago, so it has all the technology and experience that those brands have, and more. In a sense its understanding of materials and how to make those materials into bikes is those brands’ technology and experience.

Giant can command the best talent in composites; it can test and refine products in-house more easily than other brands; it makes every component bar groupsets – recently resurrecting its Cadex brand to create high-end wheels to go with its tyres – so it can design and build bikes as a unified whole. Then, too, it has the economy of scale.

It’s not the sexiest brand in the market but I’m pretty certain it would be impossible to find a better-constructed frame, or a more complete bike, for the money. The equivalent Sram Force-specced Specialized Roubaix costs an extra £2,000 on top of a Defy, and my head tells me that the money would be better spent on a complete set of fancy cycling kit and a long weekend in Mallorca.

The dispassionate me knows the Defy is the bike I need; the bike I will enjoy riding the most. It’s the sensible choice. It’s my head’s choice. But once I pull it from the box, run an eye over its elegant lines and drink in its sparkling blue paintwork like the Mediterranean in the moonlight, my heart will be pretty happy as well.

Read more about the Giant Defy

And the winner is…

Which bike deserves a ceremonial cobble? Step forward the Synapse

There was at least one thing we agreed on here, quite by accident, and that’s the existential question of endurance bikes. Do they exist? How are they different from – in Sam’s words – that encroaching threat of lightweight bikes and gravel bikes, which seem to be drifting inexorably towards each other, despite starting poles apart.

But there’s a difference, at least for now, because try as they might there is no bike from any other category that can match what these bikes do, and that’s to make fast comfortable. It’s to make robust lightweight.

It’s to make the classically highly strung racer truly hardy. And it’s the Cannondale Synapse that trumps them all, receiving one first place and two second-place votes in our proportional representation voting system. But before we delve into why, it’s interesting to note the joint second place finishers: the Trek Domane and Specialized Roubaix.

When the big reveal came, we were all astonished that the Specialized and Trek hadn’t been anyone’s top choice considering the brands’ endurance bike heritage and the quality of their offerings today.

But when brass tacks were examined, we each realised that while clever active suspension designs – Trek’s IsoSpeed and Specialized’s FurtureShock – looked so enticing a few years back, time and tyres have put them in the shade.

Yes, maybe if you lived in the Arenberg Trench you’d want those bikes, but for the rest of us – and for a bike that holds real-world versatility as a core value – those bikes’ design elements look overly complex and overweight.

Each of the four bikes here ticks all the endurance boxes with the minimum of fuss. But not only does the Cannondale Synapse possess the tyre clearance, the shock-absorbing layup, the skinny flexy seatpost and racer-style geometry, it was also the first to take these elements and blend them into a bike that is comfortable, versatile, easy to live with and fast. It does it with simplicity and efficiency. Oh, and it also does it at a pretty affordable price.

Type the words ‘largest winning margin at the Tour of Flanders’ into Google and you will discover the name Henri ‘Ritte’ Vanlerberghe.

In the early years of the 20th century the Belgian cyclist was renowned for his brazen riding style, often attacking from the start but almost as often unable to sustain his lead until the end.

The one time it did work, spectacularly so, was at the 1919 Ronde van Vlaanderen. Legend has it Vanlerberghe turned up to the race without a bike, having arrived directly from the front line of the First World War, but he managed to borrow one and, in typical fashion, attacked into a block headwind 120km from the finish.

This time he amassed a huge lead, reportedly aided by an incident involving a stationary train blocking a level crossing on the route. Vanlerberghe simply boarded the train, exited through the opposite door and continued on his way. The rest of the field lost significant time while they waited for the train to move away.

Vanlerberghe’s lead then continued to grow to the point where, knowing his triumph was assured, he pulled into a cafe near the finish and sank a few beers with fans.

It took his team manager to force him to remount and cross the line, still some 14 minutes clear of his nearest rival, declaring to the crowd, ‘You might as well go home, I’m half a day ahead.’

The tale has likely been embellished in the telling over the years, but Vanlerberghe’s winning margin remains a matter of race record – and one that will likely never be bettered. And it’s from the eccentric Belgian that Ritte Bicycles takes its name.

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The company’s founder, American Spencer Canon, wanted to echo the ethos embodied by Vanlerberghe and create a bike brand that was fun, flamboyant and which didn’t take itself too seriously.

Buy the Ritte Phantom now

New steel

In truth, Ritte hasn’t gained much traction on these shores since it launched in 2010. But it has a new UK distributor for 2020 in Dorset-based Rockets and Rascals, which aims to change that – and has every chance of doing so, if this steel Phantom is anything to go by. The Reynolds 725 frame is simply exquisite in its every detail.

Reynolds 725 is what you might call ‘new steel’. The tubes are made with a heat-treated cro-moly using a process that allows them to have extremely thin walls (flick the top tube with your fingernail and it will return a beautifully high-pitched ping), while also delivering stiffness and performance at a weight within sight of carbon frames.

Of course, it’s still heavier than carbon, but by less than you’d think. This size large Phantom, specced with Sram’s second-tier Force mechanical disc groupset, weighs in at a respectable 8.59kg.

Plus there’s no shortage of modernity in the details, including the latest T47 threaded bottom bracket, internal cabling, flat-mount disc brakes, thru-axles… it’s all here.

Ritte intends the Phantom to be a race bike, so don’t be fooled by its skinny frame. The geometry is near-identical to Cannondale’s race bike, the SuperSix Evo, and that translates to an appreciably spritely feel on the road.

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Image 3 of 7

It’s certainly not a laid-back ride, nor is it super-compliant and comfy as steel bikes are often assumed to be. During my test rides the Phantom offered a good balance of feedback from the road and adequate absorption of any sudden jolts, although I strongly suspect that without the 30mm Vittoria Corsa Control tyres I would have felt a lot more road buzz.

With my head dropped in full-attack mode, I’d often glimpse those thin tubes and wonder how they could so capably withstand everything I was throwing at them. Granted, I’m no Robert Förstemann, but I was still impressed at the lack of flex through the frame.

Despite all that, there’s no denying steel conveys a different sensation to carbon. No matter the quality of the materials and build (and the Phantom is right up there with the best), I can’t help feeling that steel race bikes are akin to watching a movie in standard definition rather than HD. It just feels I’m missing that extra degree of sharpness that a top-end carbon race rig can bring.

Buy the Ritte Phantom now

With a bike like the Phantom, however, comparing steel and carbon is missing the point. If you’re the sort of person who is immediately drawn in by its classically handsome, clean lines and elegant welds, then all this talk of frame materials becomes largely irrelevant.

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Pick of the kit

Castelli Active Cooling sleeveless base layer, £70, saddleback.co.uk

Whether you should wear a base layer on a hot day is still up for debate, but this new sleeveless number from Castelli is strong evidence for the defence.

The Polartec Delta fabric uses a combination of hydrophilic and hydrophobic yarns, holding some moisture next to your skin while allowing airflow through the fabric to create an evaporative cooling effect close to the body to reduce core temperature. That’s the theory anyway, and I reckon it works pretty well.

Buy the Castelli Active Cooling sleeveless base layer from Tredz

Alternatively…

Go gravel

Like the Phantom, Ritte’s Satyr (£1,999 frameset) is a collaboration with American framebuilding guru Tom Kellogg, so has the same classic look and feel of the Phantom, only this time aimed at gravel.

Buy the Ritte Satyr

Prefer carbon?

Built in a true monocoque construction, the Ritte Ace has lightweight performance as its core values. What’s more it will actually set you back less than the steel Phantom, costing £1,700 for the frameset.

Buy the Ritte Ace

Spec

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