Track events at the Tokyo Olympics are set to kick off next week with a full week of exciting racing around the 250-meter Izu velodrome. Felt is once again the official bike sponsor of the US team, and the company has supplied a brand-new bike — the TK FRD — for mass-start events that features a new aero shape and a new take on the frame geometry. But for the individual events, the American riders are on the same bike as they used in Rio five years ago. In an event where fractions of a second can have major impacts, and when several other federations have brought radically cutting-edge machines to Tokyo, how is it that the Americans are using bikes that are half a decade old? Then again, maybe all isn’t as it seems.

Nerd Alert Podcast

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something red, white, and blue

Oversized rear derailleur pulleys might be good for some marginal gains, but even the terrible watts-per-dollar ratio hasn’t stopped a growing number of brands from launching their own versions — and AbsoluteBlack’s HollowCage is now one of the most expensive ones out there (but also one of the blingiest). Speaking of looks, is a clean front end enough to justify all high-end road bikes going to fully internal routing in spite of the adjustability and serviceability headaches? And how much bigger are road tires going to get? We discuss all that and more in this week’s episode.

Oversized derailleur pulleys for everybody!

It’s not uncommon for custom frame builders to change direction from time to time: from lugged to TIG, steel to titanium, maybe different bike styles. But it’s far more unusual for an established builder who specializes in metal to make the wholesale switch to carbon fibre — and not just tube-to-tube construction, but moulded frames like the major brands. Yet that’s just what Carl Strong has done with his new venture, Pursuit Cycles. What’s involved in starting something from scratch? Why embark on something so challenging? And what would those frames offer to people that you couldn’t get already, anyway? Strap in for this deep-dive episode.

So you say you want to build your own carbon frame…

Gravel bikes were once the rebels of the drop-bar bike world, but now that they’ve gone increasingly mainstream, it’s perhaps inevitable that they’d adopt features from road racing: aero shapes, hidden cabling, similar claims about weight and stiffness, and so on. Is this a good thing? Also making a possible comeback are solid molded carbon fiber wheels — and they’re not just for fixies, kids. And what do we think you should bring with you on an unsupported 4,700 km ride? You’ll get all that and more in this week’s round of Ask a Mechanic.

On the roadification of gravel bikes and the return of molded carbon wheels

This week’s Nerd Alert episode takes a closer look at two recent events in this year’s Tour de France. In stage 1, Jumbo-Visma rider Steven Kruijswijk finished the stage missing an entire seatstay from his prototype Cervelo, and in stage 5, EF Education-Nippo riders tackled the stage 5 individual time trial on a new Cannondale TT bike. We chat with Cervelo to find out how that bike could have possibly survived — and apparently without Kruijswijk even knowing! — and get some tantalizing tech details from Cannondale on that new bike before its official release. Sorry, folks, this one’s pretty long, but we promise it’ll be worth your time.

The scoop on that crazy single-sided Cervelo, and digging for details on Cannondale’s new TT bike

The full crew is finally reunited for this week’s Nerd Alert podcast! Now that Shimano’s new 12-speed Dura-Ace Di2 groupset has made an appearance in the wild, we dive into what we can confirm (it’s black), what we think (wiredless?), and what we hope to see (a mechanical version in polished silver!!) in the company’s new flagship road components. We then debate the pros and cons of hookless road wheels, the idea of a flat-proof tube, and finish with an extended Ask a Mechanic segment with questions fielded exclusively from our Veloclub members — and Zach mostly kept his promise to not be too salty this time around.

Wireless 12-speed Shimano Dura-Ace is real!

This week’s CyclingTips Nerd Alert episode is a deep dive into preventing ride or race-ending mechanicals and how to deal with them when things do go wrong.    For this episode, tech editor Dave Rome rang up mechanic to the stars, Brad Copeland. As the personal mechanic for former cross country mountain bike world champion Kate Courtney, Brad is incredibly detailed in ensuring his riders are able to consistently get to the finish line. The lessons here are just as applicable to everyday road and gravel riders as they are to those racing mountain bike world cups. 

Preventing mechanicals with pro wrench Brad Copeland

It seems everything cycling-related is fetching inordinate amounts of money on the used market these days, and so we figured it was a good time to trade in Caley and Zach for a special guest host: Dan Cavallari, former tech editor for Velonews and now freelancer extraordinaire. Dan covered Unbound Gravel for CyclingTips this year, so it only seemed right for James and Dave to run through all the interesting gravel tech with him. Wondering about tire inserts? Tire sizes and pressure? Handlebar setups? Gearing? We go through it all, and bookend it with the usual round-up of tech news and Ask a Mechanic questions. And don’t worry, Caley and Zach will be back next week — probably. Maybe.

Digging through the tech at Unbound Gravel

We’ve chatted an awful lot lately about how tubeless and tube-type clinchers seem to be slowly replacing tubulars in pro road racing. Even though high-performance clinchers offer a big rolling efficiency advantage (as much as 12 W according to some figures), tubulars are still more popular for all the same reasons as usual: they’re lighter, they’re safer if you get a puncture, they handle impacts better, and they just have a distinctive feel that clinchers still can’t quite match. What if you could have a tubular that offered all of that, and yet was also just as fast as top-end clinchers? What might the landscape look like then? That’s just what Challenge claims to have developed with its latest experimental tubulars, and James gets the scoop from the company’s technical director, Morgan Nicol.

Tubulars aren’t dead yet

In this week’s episode, The Nerds chat about some cool parts and accessories Dave saw at the recent Handmade Bicycle Show Australia, including some hyper-expensive wheels from Partington that are trying to go head-to-head with Lightweight. Carbon wheels have gotten incredibly good at the opposite end of the price spectrum, and we make the argument that, unless you’re dripping with cash, it’s awfully tough to justify the price premium. Speaking of which, we also chat about Wahoo Fitness’s new Elemnt Bolt GPS cycling computer, which makes us wonder where the company might go from here. A new high-end model sort of makes sense, but a killer budget model even more so.

Expensive vs. budget carbon wheels, and why Wahoo should look down, not up

In this week’s Nerd Alert episode, tech editor Dave Rome has a chat with Australian custom builder extraordinaire Mark Hester of Prova Cycles. Hester was a very early adopter of MTB-style geometry on gravel bikes, incorporating things like long front centers and shorter stems when most other brands — especially mainstream labels — were still using dimensions mostly borrowed from road racing machines. Yet as with anything bike-related, if a little bit of something is good, lots more of it surely makes it even better, right? Hester has some interesting thoughts on the idea, and you won’t want to miss hearing where he thinks things are going from here.

How much mountain bike is too much when it comes to gravel bike geometry?

Australia’s entire population may only be roughly equivalent to Shanghai, but it has an outsized custom bike industry with astonishing levels of ingenuity and innovation. Tech editor Dave Rome recently visited the Handmade Bicycle Show Australia in Melbourne, where 3-D printing is playing a big part in setting a number of these builders apart from the rest of the world. Also in this week’s show, we chat about upcoming developments in gravel bike suspension, whether CeramicSpeed’s Driven shaft-drive drivetrain really will see the light of day now that the company has an extra million bucks on hand and the likelihood that Ineos-Grenadiers riders might race at the Tour de France on clinchers.

How 3-D printing is revolutionizing the Australian custom bike industry

Indoor training is not top of the list of things most of us look forward to in the summer, but should it be? When the summer sun consistently comes out, the turbo trainers usually go into hibernation. We investigate if maintaining some level of indoor milage might improve your fitness and if World Tour pros are moving indoors for sessions regardless of the weather. Ronan chats with David Bailey (head of performance at Bahrain Victorious), Stephen Barrett (coach and head of research and innovation at AG2R Citroen), and Jonathan Lee (TrainerRoad) about indoor training gains and losses.

Summer is coming, but don't put your trainer away yet...

Cycling apparel may look similar between various brands, but when you dig a little deeper, there are often seemingly small variations that can make a world of difference in terms of how well they work out on the road. In other words, that tag may say “polyester” on it, but that only tells one tiny part of the story — and it’s time to learn a little more about the rest of it. 

High fashion meets high tech: the science of cycling clothing

The Nerds have an awful lot of tech news to talk about this week, such as SRAM’s recent decision to seemingly go all-in on electronic shifting, the ins and outs of two big high-end wheel introductions, the unmentioned pitfalls of fully internal cable routing for everyday enthusiasts, and some big changes for DT Swiss’s workhorse hubs. There’s also been yet another push in the drivetrain friction front from Silca that uses... diamonds? Finally, we debate the ideal gravel bike in a What Bike Should I Buy segment for a new gravel rider on a “flexible budget.”

Electronic shifting is supposedly what people want — but is it what they should want?

The CyclingTips Nerd Alert Podcast dives deep into the bikes and tech we all love. Road, gravel, mountain bikes, we cover it all. Hosted by James Huang, Dave Rome, and Caley Fretz.

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Nerd Alert Podcast

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