- It's now time to check out some of the hottest bikes
of this year's Giro d'Italia
and well, I'll give you a clue,
one of them is going to be a De Rosa
but it's not one of these.
Let's go see what they are.
(mechanical sound)
Now undoubtedly, one of the hottest bikes
of this year's Giro, belongs to Conor Dunne,
the Irish Road Race Champion
who rides for the Israel Cycling Academy.
This is his De Rosa SK
which comes from the Pininfarina Design House,
which is really, really renowned
for making some of the coolest designs out there.
Some of the classiest bits of mechanical engineering,
there are going basically.
Just have a quick Google of that,
not until you've finished watching this video, of course.
Not only is it in the National Champs' colorway,
which looks great,
it's decked out with these Vision wheels
and it's got FSA finishing kit too,
including the K-Force light chainset,
which incorporates the Power2Max power box power meter here,
and we've also got ourselves some Maxxis tires.
And you could be mistaken at first glance
to be fooled that these tell-tale orange valves
are designed to match up, I guess
with the kind of orangey style here on the paintwork,
but in actual fact,
that is a standard bit of kit there too.
Now Conor, he's a big lad.
He's 6'8",
which is roughly thinking,
two meters and four in metric terms.
So hence the size of this bike out there,
and despite the size of it,
it does look absolutely spot on.
Check out that, carbon bit of engineering there
for his number holder.
That comes from Berk Composites,
a Slovenian company.
And then we're finished off here
with a nice Selle Italia saddle with carbon rails too.
One of my favorites, this one.
Right and I'm here with the owner
of that bike, too, Conor Dunne.
So Conor, so what do you reckon about that?
I've put your bike in one of the hottest bikes
of this year's Giro?
- Oh, that's mega.
I mean, the owner's pretty hot as well, but.
(laughing)
- He's got to say that.
- That's me by the way.
But, no, thanks guys.
It's a great bike, I love the De Rosa,
and they do all their own paint jobs,
and so, they can do something a bit extra special
and it's really nice to have like a special bike
when you're the National Champion
and flaunt it a bit in the Peloton.
- Why not?
If you've got it, flaunt it.
- Yeah, exactly.
You've got to make the most of it.
- Now tell me, are you in trouble at all?
Because, well, you've just become a dad
like days before the Giro
and you've gone off for a three week holiday.
- (laughs) In all seriousness,
it was a decision we took together
to come to the Giro and give it my best shot.
So, I wouldn't have done it without the support
of Stacey, my partner.
I'm missing them a lot,
but it's the mother-in-law I'm scared of the most.
- (laughing)
She says I can't come here for nothing,
so, I better come back with a bit of success.
- Well, wishing you all the best mate.
- [Conor] Thanks a lot, thank you, cheers, thank you.
- Now undoubtedly, one of the hottest bikes
at this year's Giro d'Italia
has to be to the Colnago V2-r
belonging to Valerio Conti, of UAE Team Emirates.
He's the current Maglia Rosa.
Fingers crossed, he's going to remain in it
by the end of the stage.
GCN curse and all that though.
So as you can see, it is pretty much standard
other than these pink details.
We've got the pink logos, the pink forks,
the pink bar tape,
and importantly, in my eyes,
the pink hoods on the brake levers.
Now, at first I thought, they've got to be
coming from the company Hoods, the American company.
Although I'm not sure if they're still around.
But a close look on them,
you can actually see they are,
in actual fact, from Campagnolo.
So Campagnolo, they've been doing a little bit
of behind the scenes manufacturing there
to make sure that if they were to go into pink jersey,
they'd get maximum exposure.
This bike as well, is one of the few, I reckon,
that comes from virtually
all Italian component manufacturers.
The exceptions on this bike being the Look pedals
and, well, the only other one I reckon,
is probably that K-Edge mount up front there for the GPS.
That's probably the only other part on there
that I think doesn't hail from Italy.
It's a great looking bike
and, well, it's deservedly going
in one of the hottest bikes of the Giro this year.
Let me know what you think of it down there
in the comments section.
A bike that's more than worthy of inclusion
into the hottest bikes of the Giro
has to be the Ridley Dean TT,
belonging to Victor Campenaerts,
the World Hour record holder.
Remember, because this bike is truly customized to him.
First up, the handlebars, just check them out.
They're 3D printed by a company in Belgium.
Their name slips my mind right now,
but they are in fact, UCI legal,
because they are available to buy,
and you can see, literally, where his thumbs
or his forefingers, and everything like that,
actually mold into the handlebars.
There's also a nice little cut-out there too,
where you can slot an SRM unit into place.
No detail has been missed here, whatsoever.
We've got 58 tooth chainring there.
He does also use a 60 tooth,
but it's paired up with a 46 inner ring
and then the rear tire on this bike,
mounted onto the Bora disc wheel,
is a, well I don't know.
All I know is, it's Vittoria
because it has no other branding on it,
just the Vittoria label.
So maybe it's something in development, I'm not sure.
The one on the front, I'm well aware what that one is.
Vittoria Corsa Speed.
That's a tubeless tire in a 25mm width
and it's married up to this Bora in 77mm depth rim.
Now, bottle cage and bottle, they come from Tacx
and it's got that, well, aerodynamic finish to it also
and then, I'm going to show you something also cool.
It's not the green bottom bracket,
that is nice and fancy though.
That comes from C-bear.
But it's the actual brake caliper.
What mechanics have to do there
is actually take part of it off
because, where it's mounted on
the other side of the chainstays,
it would actually catch the inside of the crank arm there,
so they've actually had to grind a little bit off.
The attention to detail, like this, is fantastic,
but I'm not finished just yet
because there's some special skewers on this bike,
anti-theft ones.
No, Victor doesn't think anyone's going to steal it,
but in fact, they're more aerodynamic.
There's no skewer that's poking out there at all,
but it does mean, if you puncture,
you're going to have to do a bike change
because you have to use a special spanner for that
and it only fits into one way of the notches.
So you can't go ahead and do it in a rush,
because you just have to line them up perfectly.
And finally, he's got a saddle specific to him.
So it's a split nose jobby
and that's going to allow his hips just to free up
a little bit more,
so he can unleash the power.
Undoubtedly for me, one of the hottest bikes
of this year's Giro has to be the Bianchi Ultra XR4,
belonging to Primož Roglič,
because well, there's only one of them.
Well actually, there's four of them,
being used in this year's Giro
because he's got two of these with this handlebar,
but he's also got two with the
Vision Metron Integrated handlebar on it.
Now the team, I think, have done a great job
of incorporating as many of the
Celeste color details as possible,
with the actual frame there.
And they've done a great job of doing that
because it's not an easy thing to do.
But enough about that,
one of the other great reasons is the integration here.
So they've integrated Di2 cables,
along with some heat shrink,
and then they've matched them up,
run it through internally into the frame,
run it out through the seatpost,
and that is where the junction box is fitted.
Other than that, it's relatively standard.
So it's got a Shimano Dura-Ace 91-50 groupset,
with the addition of sprint shifters here,
and also the rear cassette has had a little bit
of mechanic wizardry done there.
So they've changed the last couple of sprockets.
So that is now an 11-30 cassette
using a Shimano Dura-Ace lockring.
Although, initially, I was fooled
and I thought it was an 11-28,
and they've just changed around those last two
so he can ride in the high mountains
with relatively easier gears.
Now I said at the start,
there's only two of these kicking around at the Giro
and the reason being, this paintwork.
Just check out that eagle out there,
just going for a little cruise or a little fly,
looking for some prey.
Who knows, either way,
this one is one of the best I've seen.
Now undoubtedly, one of the hottest bikes
at this year's Giro d'Italia
is the Specialized S-Works Venge,
belonging to Pascal Ackermann
of the Bora-Hansgrohe squad.
Why?
Well, right now he's in the Maglia Ciclamino.
So, he's leading the points race competition there.
So, you can see, he's got some finishing touches so far,
such as the handlebar tape and the water bottle cages.
If he's goes all the way to Verona
and he's still in that jersey,
I reckon we can expect to see this bike
fully decked out in some really fancy color scheme too.
We've also got a 55-2 chainring on there,
paired up with a 42 inner.
So 55, that's probably among the biggest size
we're going to see actually with the sprinters.
54, pretty common, but 55, not so.
We've also got some Roval wheels on there too.
The rear hub of that has the DT Swiss internals.
It uses that star ratchet system.
I'm a big fan of this redesign
but that, for me, are great finishing touches.
Now undoubtedly, one of the hottest bikes
of the Giro d'Italia,
has to be the bike belonging to Vincenzo Nibali,
the Shark of Messina, of Bahrain-Merida.
This is his Merida Reacto and it's absolutely bling
because it doesn't have any paint on it.
It's been all striped back,
so, it's ultra-light.
We've also got this silver detailing.
We've also got red, pink and yellow there
to celebrate the victories
of all of his Grand Tours that he's taken.
This bike is definitely one of my favorites.
Last year, he even had some special silver wheels
or decals on his wheels too.
We've got a customized SRM head unit on there.
It's got little pictures of him,
it's done in blue.
That is really fancy.
Not to mention, the fact that he is so particular
about his kit.
Having checked out his time trial bikes,
in the past, I'm very impressed.
Look at that saddle.
That is certainly not a Prologo
from the team's sponsor.
In fact, that was a Fizik, but it's just been unbranded.
But done ever so well.
He's also got some grip tape here,
inside of the actual bottle cage there,
to stop any bottles from, well,
falling out over any rough road
and then he's even got a
very special SRM chainset on here, too.
Now, most of them have a little tri-lobe insert,
meaning that a rider can, ultimately,
adjust their crank length, if they need be,
from 170 to 172.5 and 175 but this is a standard one.
So, that is going to be lighter.
There were are, some of the hottest bikes
at this year's Giro d'Italia
but who did I leave out?
Who should I have put in?
For a start, I didn't put those brand new
Pinarello Dogma F12's in.
Let me know in the comments section down below.
I'm ready for all the grief that you're going to
give me for missing out some of your favorites,
I reckon.
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