Scott Bicycles 2016 Preview
A preview of the all-around bike, new wheels and saddles
Plus mountain bikes lead the fleet for the coming year
The road that my group was on started to get steeper. We had covered about 58 km in sun on the Spanish island of Mallorca. It’s a popular training destination for pros early in the year and in the early spring for Europeans looking to get a jump on their seasons. At the end of June, my group of fellow journalists didn’t find the road too busy with bike traffic. We were there to preview Giant’s redesigned tcr Advanced SL 0, the company’s flagship all-around general-classification bike. If you’re a GC rider, you need to be good on the long climbs. Giant had found us some long climbs in the Serra de Tramuntana, the line of mountains that runs along the island’s coast. That steep spot we had just come to was the 14-km Puig Major. It has an average grade of 6 per cent with parts that get into the high teens.
For the new tcr Advanced SL 0, the engineers and designers at Giant didn’t set out to create the lightest bike or the stiffest one for that matter. Their priority was to make sure the latest bike in their 18-year-old tcr line had the best balance of weight and stiffness, the highest stiffness-toweight ratio. Their thinking was that if you chase weight reductions too diligently, you’ll sacrifice stiffness and thus the frame’s ability to transfer power and track well in the corners. If you chase stiffness, you end up adding grams.
Giant is a company that does its homework. As with any good student, it then shows the findings of its research. An employee bought competitors’ bikes and testers subjected them to the same tests as the tcr. The testers found that the tcr wasn’t the lightest bike, the Scott Addict SL was. The tcr didn’t have the highest pedalling stiffness, the stiffness provided mainly by the bottom bracket area and chainstays. That distinction went to the Specialized Tarmac S-works. Giant did find that when you divided its bike’s pedalling stiffness (measured in newtons per millimetre) by its weight, the bike had the highest stiffness-to-weight ratio.
About halfway up the Puig, my group had mostly sorted itself out as groups do on long climbs. You find your place and work away. I thought I would simply meet the others at the the start of the tunnel, which came just before the climb levelled out. The ride leader, an Australian ex-pat who guided cyclists on the island, caught up to me. He was no stranger to the climb and pointed out the kilometre markers. There was about 6 km to go. I was glad to catch a draft for a bit.
The new tcr is a bit slimmer than the previous model. The designer trimmed the front fork, the underside of the top tube, seatstays and chainstays, and the rear-facing side of the seat tube. At the 1 ¼"–1 ½" head tube, the lower bearing has moved up 2.5 mm. This change aligns the forces that run from the head tube down the down tube and locks the fork in better. At the back, there’s now a yoke at the top of the seatstays, which uses less material than an A-type reinforcement. It’s a little touch that saves a little weight.
The bike was great on the climb, whether I was in the saddle spinning or standing up on the pedals. While my place on the route’s Strava segment was quite modest, nowhere near some of the riders in the top-10, such as Michał Kwiatkowski or Simon Yates, I felt like the tcr translated my energy excellently up the hill.
After a break, we had a short, about 5 km, descent. Throughout the ride, my main contact point rested on Giant’s new performance saddle, the Contact slr. The day before, each of us had been fit using the company’s new system. I had gotten on a bike that was outfitted with a special saddle set up on a trainer. The saddle took a temporary imprint of how my behind comes in contact with the surface. Giant has found that riders either sit in positions it calls forward, neutral or upright. It turned out I am a neutral, so I got the corresponding saddle. I found it quite comfortable on the flats and descents. It also worked well in conjunction with the frame’s new Variant seatpost. It takes from the D-fuse – the compliance-focused seatpost from the Defy, Giant’s endurance bike – and the Vector on the Propel aero road bike. The Variant strikes a good balance between comfort and efficiency.
The tcr has a new wheelset, slr 0.
Each wheel has composite rims with resin brake tracks that resist brake heat under load. The company says these tracks allow them to run softer brake pads to provide better feel and modulation. Giant has also changed the way it tensions the spokes. Instead of having all the spokes under equal tension on the rear wheel, the are imbalanced when the wheel is at rest. When a rider spins up the wheel, the tension actually balances out, all of which leads to a stiffer wheel that is able to transfer power better.
On the descent out of the mountains, along the Coll de sa Batalla, I got to put the whole system that is the tcr Advanced SL 0 to the test. I rode unfamiliar switchbacks that took me down and down. The braking by the Dura-ace calipers on the slr 0 wheels was comparable to what I’ve found on Zipp’s Showstopper brake track. Also, the bike’s overall frame stiffness made sure the bike was solid through the corners.
All three models of tcr Advanced SL will be coming to Canada. The top end SL 0 runs a Shimano Dura-ace Di2 system ($8,599). The SL 1 is Shimano Ultegra Di2 ($6,499), while the SL 2 uses mechanical Ultegra ($4,299). You’ll also be able to find models that use Giant’s second-tier composite, called Advanced, that range in price from $5,299 (tcr Advanced Pro 0, Dura-ace mechanical) to $1,999 (tcr Advanced 2, Shimano 105). The slr 0 wheels will come on the Advanced SL 0 and SL 1, as well as the Advanced Pro 0. The wheelset costs $2,300 on its own. You’ll find the Contact slr saddle on both the Advanced SL 0 and SL 1. If you want to outfit your bike with the Contact slr, it’s priced at $225.