My view

Confidence is going to be a big part of it. [Road riders] are going to be saying look, this is what I have on my current bike set-up, will 1x13 give me the same or better range or better distribution of gears? We are preparing comparison charts that will show people without getting too scientific or too heavy-going that it will, and we have four different cassettes and a range of chainrings so they can match 50/34 and 11-28 or whatever 2x set-up they’re used to.

Obviously Shimano have a huge amount invested in the front derailleur. They don’t want to take away the front derailleur because they want their customers to buy more of them. And they also want to have different groupsets for different disciplines — that’s their business model. As a smaller manufacturer we can be a bit more agile.

Professionals are very slow to adopt new technology, which is understandable… but having said that, Mario Mola, world triathlon champion, is going to test 1x13 on his training bike. So people are open to trying it. From a philosophical and technical point of view we believe the 1x13 should be adopted by roadies in general but we do one day in the near future hope it will go to the pro peloton.