(upbeat music)
- Now, there have been quite a lot of notable advances
in bike tech this year and GTN has been lucky enough
to get a first-hand glimpse at much of it.
So I thought, what would be a fun thing to do
would be to have a round up of a lot of those top pro bikes
and what in particular caught my eye.
(high-tech music)
Now, we're going to get things started with a bike
that isn't actually a triathlon bike,
but bare with me a second because you see,
at the end of October,
British Cycling launched their brand new collaboration
between Lotus and Hope,
and it is a track bike that they are going to launch
ahead of the Tokyo Olympics next year.
And, this bike turned an awful lot of heads,
in particular because of its cutting edge designs.
Mostly with the shapes regarding the seat stays
and of course the fork.
Now for those of you who follow
triathlon, this perhaps
wouldn't have been such a surprise. Because at the end
of last year, Specialized launched their
S-works Shiv Disc, which had some
incredibly different designs. Especially
with the shape of it's fork, it was a
complete game changer. We had a first look
at this bike at the beginning of the season
when Tim Don kindly talked us through his
steed, and he explained that once the move had
been made away from traditional rim brakes
over to disc brakes that obviously there was
no need for that traditional brake caliper
that you see on forks.
So, what that allowed Specialized to do with
the design of the fork was extend that all the
way up to the bottom of the base bar, and that
in Tim's opinion gives a much more stable
and responsive handling sensation of the bike.
- [Tim] When they took away the need for a
caliper, then they can re-design the fork
so they've just gone straight up.
It's obviously a lot wider but the way it's
designed it's more stable in the crosswinds
which at the front end is very important.
- And the biggest thing I can see as well
sitting right here in front of it is it comes
all the way up to the base bar.
- [Tim] And that's it, it doesn't taper in
and it can just go straight up so it's a massive
advantage there.
- And how does that affect the handling?
- You know what, in the arrow bars, not at all.
You know, it took a while to get used to when
I was on the base bar, but for me I think it
was going from a rim brake to a disc brake.
They're just so responsive and sharp and you
don't expect that on a time trial bike.
So, on the whole, I've ridden in Kona, I've ridden
in Lanzarote two of the windiest
places around, and touch word haven't fallen off.
- So since we're at the front end of the bike
I thought we should look at the cockpit now.
And what actually caught my eye here, well, I've
got a couple examples for you.
Now, when the athletes are looking to improve
their aerodynamics there's all sorts of extras
that they will go to, and the next level
in terms of customization, usually involves
their aerobars these days.
And what David has got here is called the
speed bar, and this is essentially custom
molded to fit his specific position and his
forearms in particular.
Now these things certainly don't come cheap
but when athletes at this level are looking to
find those extra percentages and gains this is
the sort of tech that they're willing
to invest in.
Now moving things on to another level yet again
is what we saw on Cameron Wurf's bike in Hawaii
back in October.
Now where as the speed bar that David has is
molded in a cast, similar to what you might have
had if you've broken a bone,
in a hospital perhaps.
Well these bars on Cameron's bike are 3D printed
by a company called MOST, and quite how to do
that I'm not entirely sure to fit the exact
position of the arms.
But, either way it looks incredibly sleek and it
certainly should with the rumored cost of these
being somewhere in the region of $12,000.
Now one final extreme version of the cockpit is
what we saw at the Norseman Xtri event this
summer where Mark was racing.
And we had a chat to multiple winner of that
event, Allan Hovda, and about his rather
bizarre Morph Tech aerobars.
- Yeah the Morph Tech aerobars they're
quite unique.
- Yeah
- In so that you don't have a base bar
the aero bars are both, aero bars,
and base bars.
- And you literally, what you've done there
is just pulled them out and there's no
mechanism or locking that just action with
you just moving your hands down, wasn't it?
- Yes and then they lock in this position.
So, to get them back as aerobars you have to
press both the levers.
- So you press both of those levers
at the same time?
- Yes, yes
- And hey presto we've got a really really aero
system again.
- Yes.
- Now sticking with the aerodynamcis theme
but now moving on to group sets,
because at Challenge Roth I was really interested
to look at the particular group set that German
powerhouse, Andy Boecherer was using on his Cube TT.
Because, at that time, it was the first time
I had come across 12 speed SRAM Axs
on a race bike.
Now, fast forward to Hawaii in October and yet
again I saw this setup on Tim Reed's Trek speed
concept, highlighting that more and more
athletes are willing to put this type of race
setup on their bikes.
Now we saw some impressive wheel sets at
the races on our travels this summer.
But, I'm not actually going to just talk about one
wheel set here, I'm going to be a little
bit greedy and talk about three different sets
of rims that stood out for me.
And first up is the wheel set that Cameron Wurf
had on his bike in Challenge Roth this Summer.
Now these Princeton Carbon works wheels were
largely unfamiliar to us here on the Channel
and in Roth he had a shallow front rim
coupled with a rear disc wheel.
But later in the season at Ironman Hawaii
he'd swapped his rear disc out for a similar
depth rear rim to match that front.
And Mark actually talked about these rims in
quite a bit more detail here.
- And down from that we've got the
Princeton Carbon Works wheels which I'm
going to be totally honest, it's not a brand I'm
all that familiar with. We've seen teams riding
on them for the past year, in fact Cameron's been
riding on them for the past season.
Fraser actually featured them upon Cameron's bike
earlier this year at Challenge Roth.
Now quite excitedly, it was actually set up
by two rows, which is a nice length there
between cam and and the brand.
But you've probably noticed they've got quite
a unique shape to them in profile.
And the idea behind this is that they're
continually offloading pressure that can
build up on wheels.
What we ordinarily see on a normal set of wheels
is that air passing over can build up in
pressure and then when that finally offloads it
can really jolt the rider.
So the idea is that it's continually offloading
that, which is absolutely perfect for a race
like this at the Ironman World Champions
where we can sometimes get
really strong crosswinds.
- And secondly it was the DT Swiss rear disc
choice of American rider Rudy Von Berg
that caught my eye.
And, truth be told it was actually the
recognizable design of a lightweight wheel
with the DT Swiss decals added on top that
I really noticed, because as Mark explains,
there isn't actually a rear disc made by
DT Swiss so we assumed that this must be some
sort of collaboration between these two brands.
- Now moving on to the wheels and Rudy
is a DT Swiss ambassador, so on the front we've
got the DT Swiss arc, 1100 di cut wheel
and then on the rear we have a DT Swiss disc
but I'm sure many of you know that DT Swiss
don't actually do they're own disc wheel.
You may also recognize the fairly obvious
design is a Lightweight disc only vinyled up
with DT Swiss on it.
Now, DT Swiss do supply a lot of bearings to
other wheel manufacturers, so I can only imagine
they've sourced it from Lightweight and put their
own decals on.
- And finally another sleek looking disc wheel
that I hadn't actually come across until we
were in Oceanside in April, is the Roval
disc that is on (brand name's) shiv disc tri bike
Now Roval are the subsidiary
brand to Specialized.
And until the season I hadn't seen any of their
athletes riding on these particular disc wheels.
And certainly coupled with the
turbo cotton tires Specialized has on these
I would say it's a very head turning set
of wheels for their top athletes
to be racing on.
Now it's taken me awhile but I'm finally getting
on to one of my favorite aspects of any
bike and that is the frame sets.
Now the top pros often get the perks of
getting their frames jazzed up for the
very biggest events.
And Ironman Hawaii generally throws up some
very unique paint jobs indeed.
And the Trek Project 1 option that Trek
offer anyone who's buying one of their
frame sets was particularly well highlighted
by Tim Reed's bike in Kona.
And you can see me struggling to find the
correct description rather of the
chrome decals here.
- So the Trek factory racing athletes here
in Kona are all going to be running this very
very swish black with, I guess I'm going to
call it metallic, shiny silver decals
which I just think look really poppy
and stand out.
So this one is going to be something that turns
some heads on race day.
- Now Argon took this too a whole other level
on the big island with their offering for their
rider Heather Jackson, because not only did
they provide thermal chromic paint job
that changed color with the temperature,
but it was also inlaid with some motivational
quotes that meant something to her
that became visible as that paintwork changed.
And I'd say that was pretty damn cool if
you ask me.
Now, this has been lots of fun getting to go
back through all of our videos to find out
what it was that really stood out
for me, and it's almost as if I was able to
create my own GTN super bike amalgamation.
So, hopefully you've enjoyed this as much as
I have so please hit that "thumb up" like
button, find the globe on screen to make sure
you get all the other videos on our channel.
And if you wana see that bike I talked about
that was camware vs. bockware well you can
find that here.
And the Tim Don pro bike that I mentioned in
this video too can be found here.