Pro bike specifications
siamon
Posts: 274
The is an article on BR discussing Peter Sagans Supersix's. They casually mention that his bikes have a different geometry to standard, in his case a proportionally (and significantly) longer top tube.
On Gerard Vroomens blog (highly recommended), he mentions that Thor's Paris Roubaix R3 was custom made with 1/2" added to the chain stays as per Thors requirements. It is mentioned in a "of course all pro bikes are custom made" manner.
If you are specially making frames for specific riders and/or specific races, then surely you may as well use the best materials as well?
We must have all heard the stories about how a certain (German) bike factory has a secure section that visitors are refused access to, which apparently contains frames with various team liveries? If you have the finance to spend £1m quid on a new bus every season, then surely a six figure sum on 30 or 40 custom frames that might be 0.5 km/h faster over the last 200m of a stage is a no brainer?
Manufacturers are also rather keen to claim that whilst their own tour bikes are exactly as used by "their" team ALL their competitors use specially made frames that bear no resemblance whatsoever to what you can buy in the shop.
On the other hand, we know that certain teams sell their bikes. Garmin Cervelo did, and SKY seem to be trying to hawk out last years stuff now. So what if someone bought one of these and measured it to find there were differences between the team bike 56 and Joe publics version? Or crashed it and discovered it was made from a completely different grade of composite?
The question is how similar are the bikes we see being ridden on TV to the bikes we can buy? Could Cancellara wreck his Trek, and pop into the LBS and get exactly the same thing? or are they more like touring cars? They look similar from a distance but actually only the dashboards (or bar tape) are interchangable?
On Gerard Vroomens blog (highly recommended), he mentions that Thor's Paris Roubaix R3 was custom made with 1/2" added to the chain stays as per Thors requirements. It is mentioned in a "of course all pro bikes are custom made" manner.
If you are specially making frames for specific riders and/or specific races, then surely you may as well use the best materials as well?
We must have all heard the stories about how a certain (German) bike factory has a secure section that visitors are refused access to, which apparently contains frames with various team liveries? If you have the finance to spend £1m quid on a new bus every season, then surely a six figure sum on 30 or 40 custom frames that might be 0.5 km/h faster over the last 200m of a stage is a no brainer?
Manufacturers are also rather keen to claim that whilst their own tour bikes are exactly as used by "their" team ALL their competitors use specially made frames that bear no resemblance whatsoever to what you can buy in the shop.
On the other hand, we know that certain teams sell their bikes. Garmin Cervelo did, and SKY seem to be trying to hawk out last years stuff now. So what if someone bought one of these and measured it to find there were differences between the team bike 56 and Joe publics version? Or crashed it and discovered it was made from a completely different grade of composite?
The question is how similar are the bikes we see being ridden on TV to the bikes we can buy? Could Cancellara wreck his Trek, and pop into the LBS and get exactly the same thing? or are they more like touring cars? They look similar from a distance but actually only the dashboards (or bar tape) are interchangable?
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