BIKE TEST
Race bikes may get all the glamour, but sportive bikes are the big sellers and the bikes that most of us should be riding
Comfort is key with sportive bikes – but they also need to be fast and exciting. We test six of this year’s best new releases.
Endurance, gran fondo, sportive… call them what you like but road bikes aimed at nonracers are by far the most popular, easily outselling race bikes, aero bikes and gravel bikes. Sportive bikes are primarily designed to help you cover big distances without leaving you feeling battered. But they should also be capable of delivering a sizeable dose of speed and a thrilling ride as well. In short, they have a lot of boxes to tick.
It’s asking a lot from a bike, possibly too much. But almost every manufacturer has a sportive bike in its line-up, and we wanted to see if any of the 2019 crop actually can tick all the boxes. To that end, we’ve chosen six bikes from some of the biggest names in cycling: Giant, Cannondale, Cervélo, Felt, Specialized and Trek.
From Giant, we have the Defy, a bike with handling chops to rival many a full-on race machine but that’s also more than capable of smoothing out rough roads.
Cannondale has supplied us with a Synapse SE, one of the models that’s been given something of an ‘all-road’ makeover for 2019, with wide rims and big volume WTB Exposure tyres.
Cervélo may be typically associated with expensive, race-bred aero machines but it has an endurance range in the form of its C-series, which starts with the 105-equipped C2.
A change of ownership has seen a fresh injection of ideas across the Felt range, some of which have found their way on to its VR sportive machines. Finally, we have the Roubaix from Specialized and Trek’s Domane, two sportive bikes that add suspension into the mix to take even more of the sting out of long days in the saddle.
So that’s our sportive bike test line-up. All that’s left is to find out how they fare.