THE FINAL FIVE
We’ve tested dozens of bikes over thousands of miles and whittled those down to just a handful
After miles of test riding, our final five hit the roads of Sanremo to decide our overall winner.
The bike is a seemingly simple device. A two-wheeled, oneperson-powered machine that translates your energy into forward motion, using pedals, chain and gears and based around a diamond-shaped frame. But those simple parameters can encompass a veritable gallimaufry of bicycle loveliness, and one that has changed a fair amount in the decade since we started our Bike Of The Year reviews.
Back then, our top five were generally cut from the same cloth, or, more accurately, fibre. Okay, so endurance/comfort/sportive bikes weren’t new – Specialized’s original Roubaix design is well over a decade old – but our top handful all had carbon frames and forks, oh, and rim brakes. Tubeless tyres were not in attendance, and threaded bottom brackets were still a thing. Tyres? A mere 23mm wide and not today’s 25 or 28mm rubber. And cassettes topped out at 28 or fewer teeth.
For 2018, a couple of our charttoppers have hydraulic disc brakes, one is totally tubeless out of the box, press-fit bottom brackets are king and bottom gears that much lower in a couple of cases. One of our five is even made from that high-tech material of the future… aluminium.
There are some very familiar names, including three companies – and two models – that have won Bike Of The Year in the past. Looks as if some things never change…
A giant leap for cycling kind?
Our two least expensive offerings are also those with the most heritage, Giant’s ground-breaking compact-framed TCR dates from 1995 and Cannondale first used the CAAD name – short for Cannondale Advanced Aluminium Design – in 1997. Here in Advanced 2 and CAAD12 guises respectively.
Giant has moved from an aluminium frame to carbon fibre and its 2018 TCR embraces tubeless tyres. Not just the more common ‘tubeless-ready’, but full-on tubeless complete with tubeless tyres and sealant. We can easily see others following Giant’s lead on this, just as the compact and semicompact frame have become widespread if not universal.
The advantages of tubeless tyres are many, taking in lower rolling resistance and an improved feel thanks to their suppleness. There’s usually a weight saving, too, and who doesn’t like that? They also make pinch punctures a thing of the past. Another change from the early TCRs is that you now have a choice of six sizes, compared with the original three. This should make it easier to get the size spot-on for you with fewer compromises when it comes to tweaking seatpost and stem lengths.
As with a lot of bikes costing around £1000, Shimano 105 does its stuff; accurate shifting, good braking and 11-speed means an 11-28 cassette is possible. The TCR also demonstrates another major shift over the last 10 years, the move towards bike companies making all their own kit – or at least designing kit to their own specification and emblazoning everything with their name. The TCR has Giant-badged stem, bar, headset, seatpost, saddle,
There are very familiar names, including three companies – and two models – that have won in the past
wheels and tyres, with the final two components the most significant.
Metal guru
So, aluminium, eh? What’s all that about? Surely carbon is king of the road in 2018? Well, with this metal you can get Cannondale’s lightweight frame with decades of manufacturing experience and excellence behind it, built up with Shimano Ultegra and Cannondale’s own HollowGram chainset and a BB30 bottom bracket – a press-fit design the brand helped to create. As with the Giant it has a dedicated seatpost: the TCR has a D-profile composite, the Cannondale a slimmed-down 25.4mm diameter post. The stiff 31.6mm diameter post seems to be going the way of the dinosaur these days.
But it’s the aluminium’s frame that stars. There’s a very determined look to the only bike here with a horizontal top-tube, and there’s a lot going on within that frame: a top-tube that narrows as it nears the seat-tube, which itself changes profile as it reaches the bottom bracket. The geometry is racy and the bike weighs just 7.6kg. Put those things together and you’ve got a bike that accelerates instantly, with climbing and sprinting equally kick-in-the-pants rapid. Want to beat your carbon fibre-riding bike buddies to the next village sign, then saddle up the aluminium Cannondale, crank up your legs and away you go.
And while a decade or two ago oversize aluminium meant a stiff ride you could feel in your eyeballs whenever you hit a bump, and in the rest of your body for a day or two after a challenging ride, Cannondale has created a frame that takes the edge off the biggest bumps, but you still feel connected to the surface. It’s not as smooth as Specialized’s suspension-featuring Roubaix or Trek’s elastomer-aided Madone or Domane, but this also has the sort of unbridled sense of power that only an aggressively angled, well-tuned aluminium frame has.
Is this a star Trek?
All of our three most expensive bikes – the Specialized Roubaix Comp, Cervélo R3D and Trek’s Émonda SL6 Pro – have pretty racy backgrounds, but the Trek is perhaps the most traditional of the three, the only one having rim brakes, even if they are pretty tricklooking Bontrager Speed Stops.
In spite of the Trek’s racy aspirations our test bike came in the company’s more endurancebiased H2 fit. The Émonda doesn’t have the ride-smoothing IsoSpeed elastomer of Trek’s Madones and Domanes, but still rides beautifully, even if it is the firmest of Trek’s three road bikes.
Power transfer is all that you’d expect, and the Trek offers a wonderfully balanced riding experience, even with an aluminium rather than carbon bar and 25mm – rather than 28mm – tyres. The tyres are tubeless-ready, and we’d consider going fully tubeless to add even more plushness. The carbon Bontrager wheels are a highlight on a bike at this price, and would retail for over a grand on their own.
You’re also able to bring this Émonda to a halt better than before. The Bontrager direct-mount brakes aren’t quite up to the level of Shimano’s equivalents, but we got the Bontrager Speed Stops to work better than in the past. This is down to a combination of the Bontragerbranded SwissStop Black Prince pads and more detailed instructions on how to set them up. So not only do these distinctive brakes look the part, they shave off a little weight and work well. A veritable win-win-win.
A sense of suspension
Road bike companies have experimented with suspension for as long as road bikes have been in existence, with varying degrees of success. So, we go from Cannondale’s firm, fast, flickable and flighty CAAD12 and Trek’s IsoSpeed-free Émonda to Specialized’s Roubaix Comp, complete with the company’s Future Shock front suspension.
We first rode the new Roubaix in 2016, it was our Bike Of The Year in 2017 and it’s back for more in 2018, but with a somewhat weightier price
Cannondale has created a frame that takes the edge o bumps, but you still feel connected to the surface