Up next in 10
Evolution Of Bike Technology Designed Around The Durability Of Riding Paris-Roubaix
1K views
Apr 1, 2025
Cycling Weekly explores the evolution of bike technology at the classics and most notably, at Paris-Roubaix, the most brutal race on the WorldTour calendar. With 55 km of cobbles in the men’s race, the race is the perfect testing ground for new bike tech. We take a look at the bike innovations that have succeeded, failed, and what we can expect for the future. Some of the successful innovations we cover were originally found on the Specialized Roubaix, a bike designed for cobbled classics with more upright geometry and better comfort, bigger tires, which are now the new normal for road bikes. Suspension which was first introduced with Specialized's Zertz inserts and later with Trek's IsoSpeed decoupler, and carbon-fiber frames, which were once regarded as exotic and expensive but now dominate the bike industry. We also cover innovations that failed to catch on, including full-suspension Classics bikes, and the outlandish ideas of the early 1990s. Finally, we look at what the future holds for bike technology, including new materials, new tire designs, and even smarter suspension.
View Video Transcript
0:00
Paris-Roubaix is the most brutal bike race on the World Tour calendar
0:04
The long sectors of jagged cobbles totalling 55 kilometers in the men's race are enough to
0:10
shatter any bike that's not up to the job. But those cobbles are also the perfect proving ground
0:16
for new bike tech. Basically, if it can survive Paris-Roubaix, then it can survive anything
0:22
In the 127 years since the bike race was first run, we've seen all sorts of modifications and
0:28
innovations from the biggest bike brands, some logical and some completely outlandish. But what
0:36
tech has survived and become commonplace on modern bikes and what has failed spectacularly
0:41
and then disappeared without a trace? And what can we expect from the future? Well
0:46
we're going to take a look at some of the hits, some of the misses, and then do a bit of crystal
0:51
ball-gazing. Let's go with the most obvious first, the specialised Roubaix. The Roubaix was invented
1:02
as an antidote to the race bikes of the 1990s that were wholly unsuited to the cobbled classics
1:09
Steep angles and short chainstays and very tight clearances made it virtually impossible to fit
1:14
decent sized tyres. So, the Roubaix unveiled in 2004 fixed all of that. The harshness was gone
1:21
and the handling was still sharp and the results were incredible. Tom Boonan won back-to-back on
1:28
the Roubaix in 2008 and 2009 and the bike has a total of seven wins in the hell of the north
1:35
Now, endurance bikes are a category all of their own, generally with more upright geometry and
1:41
better comfort to suit everyday riders. The Cannondale Synapse and the Trek de Mane are two
1:47
of the most prominent ones out there today, though the former has never won Paris-Roubaix
1:52
Pretty much every major manufacturer now has an endurance bike in its lineup
1:58
If you do try to ride the cobbles on 23mm road tyres, you won't get very far. That's why for
2:05
Paris-Roubaix, the teams would glue on fat tubulars, settling on 28mm as the preferred size
2:12
More recently tubeless and hookless tyres have been winning and now that disc brakes have freed up the extra space needed for oversized rubber they getting even fatter In 2021 the Continental GP5000 STR in a 30mm wide size
2:27
won Paris-Roubaix for the first time with Sonny Colbrelli. In 2022, winner Dylan Van
2:33
Baal gave the Contes their second win. The wheel brands and tyre manufacturers have spent a lot of
2:39
time and energy, proving that wider ties at lower pressures are faster in most scenarios
2:46
Better rolling resistance, grip and comfort, and puncture protection are all of the benefits
2:53
The tubeless versus tubular debate still rages on in the pro ranks, and interestingly
2:58
we're still seeing plenty of pros' bikes with tubs. But it's fair to say that the industry as a whole
3:04
has accepted that wider is better and 28mm wide rubber is the new normal for the road
3:11
After the doomed attempts at full suspension classics bikes in the early 1990s
3:16
it was a few years before any type of bounce dared stick its head above the cobbled parapet
3:21
The original specialised Roubaix had Zertz inserts. These were elastometer inserts, a bit like running shoe soles, that were supposed to dampen the vibrations of the chainstays
3:33
Trek also experimented with a dampener embedded into the rear wishbone of Discovery Channel's
3:38
bikes in 2005, but in 2012, Specialized introduced Future Shock, a spring underneath the stem
3:44
which provided 20mm of travel. The same year, Trek also introduced its isospeed decoupler
3:51
a system that allowed the seatpost to flex independently of the rest of the frame. Later
3:56
it evolved into front isospeed, which allowed the steerer tube to pivot a small amount
4:01
Pinarello's K8S with rear suspension was launched in 2015 and the later K10S even had electronically
4:10
controlled rear suspension. Whilst Specialized has developed a rear future shock for its Diverge
4:16
STR gravel bike in addition to the front suspension for the Group A, Trek has been
4:22
facing out iso speed. The new Madone doesn't feature it while the latest De Mane no longer
4:27
has it at the front end and has a simpler, lighter, non-adjustable version at the rear
4:33
And Dylan Van Baer won last year Paris on a standard Pinarello Dogma F So although we still seeing plenty of suspension around it starting to gravitate towards gravel bikes Road bikes are using the
4:47
cushioning of bigger tyres as their suspension. Clearly now, Paris-Roubaix can be won on an aero
4:53
bike, as long as it has the right rubber. It might sound strange to claim that carbon fibre
5:00
came from the classics, but if we're saying that Paris-Roubaix is the ultimate proving ground for
5:05
bikes, then Franco Ballerini's 1995 win on the Colnago C40 definitely gave carbon the cobbled
5:12
seal of approval. Before that, carbon had been regarded as exotic, expensive and so fragile that
5:20
it was only suitable for lightweight climbing bikes. It was some time before carbon wheels were
5:24
even considered safe and comfortable enough for Paris-Roubaix, but carbon frames had arrived
5:31
and we've never looked back. The early 1990s was the golden era for suspension innovation
5:38
at Paris-Roubaix and it all started when RockShox developed the Paris-Roubaix SL Fork
5:45
Offering 30mm of travel, Greg LeMond first used it in 1991. Although he was laughed out of the
5:52
Aarrenberg forest, pro road teams are notoriously conservative and remember, in 1992, 1993 and 1994
6:00
the Paru Bay was won with the RockShox fork, and the joke was on the teams that weren't using it
6:07
But this preceded the era of Mape's domination at Paru Bay, and Ernesto Carl Nago was one of those
6:14
who famously refused to fit a RockShox fork to one of his bikes. Although, by the beginning of
6:20
the noughties, the Classics Peloton had moved on. In 2021, RockShox, which now owned by SRAM
6:26
launched the Rudy Ultimate Explore, a lightweight suspension fork for gravel bikes
6:32
which provided 30 or 40mm of travel for 700c wheels. Sound familiar
6:42
In some ways, Canadian Steve Bauer was ahead of his time with the radical bike that he rode
6:48
at the 1993 Paris Roubaix. It's a fact that a longer wheelbase supplies extra stability
6:54
and superior handling over cobbles So to achieve this he had a bike designed for him that had a 60 degree seat tube angle giving a wheelbase of 109 centimetres and a comfortable yet bizarre armchair position
7:10
Up front, the bike was fitted with that famous RockShox Paris-Roubaix SL suspension fork. It
7:16
might have floated over the cobbles, but it wasn't quite so effective for the other 200 kilometres of
7:22
the race which isn't Parve and Bauer finished in 23rd place. Really? It's not too bad when you
7:29
think about it. The most famous fail at Paris-Roubaix has to be Johan Mizeo's full suspension Bianchi
7:37
Allegedly costing £1,500 to design and produce, equipped with a swingarm, rocker link and coil
7:44
shock with the now legendary RockShox Paris-Roubaix SL4 Cup front, the future superstar snapped his
7:51
chainstay with 24 kilometers to go, then changed to a standard bike and then finished in 13th
7:57
The Bianchi was the absolute high point of outrageous suspension designs. In 1995
8:04
Franco Ballerini won on the carbon Colnago C40 and the cycling world changed forever
8:10
And anyway, with the UCI now having much stricter rules on bike design
8:15
we'll never see anything like the Bianchi again. So what tech on the current crop of classics bikes are we likely to see on standard production road bikes in the future
8:29
Well, we're currently in an era where tyre choice and tyre size is absolutely everything and suspension is no longer really needed
8:37
But the most interesting and possibly influential bike to win Paris-Roubaix this decade is Lizzie Dignan's 2021 Trek de Mane
8:46
Yes, this was the old Domane that had the ISO speed front and rear
8:51
but Dignan used a 1x12 drivetrain. It's completely sensible to use one chain ring rather than risk dropping a chain
8:59
and there aren't really that many hills in Paris-Roubaix that require the little ring anyway
9:04
She also used the chain guide to make sure that the chain really wasn't going anywhere
9:09
The Bontrager Aeolus RSL37 TLR wheels she ran, which have an internal width of 21 millimeters
9:16
and an external width of 28 millimeters aren't the widest
#BMX Bikes
#Kids' Bikes
#Road Bikes
#Sports