MAVIC MYSTERY TOUR
Mavic has been one of the biggest names in cycling for over 125 years and is still trying to reinvent the wheel. Just don’t expect it to reveal its secrets easily…
Mavic is as much as part of the Tour de France as trident-wielding devils, indignant gendarmerie and Dutch fans on Alpe d’huez. Mavic’s Service des Courses – those blazing yellow motorbikes with mechanics and spare wheels hanging off the back – are very much the public face of a French company that celebrated its 125th anniversary last year.
In that time it has reshaped the cycling landscape, with highlights including creating the first complete wheel when tradition dictated rims, spokes and hubs were all manufactured and fitted separately (see issue 19). It was the first to use carbon in wheels; it produced the first aero wheel; the first electronic groupset; and its wheels were seen beneath the Garmin, Cofidis and Katusha teams in 2014.
Mavic couldn’t be more stereotypically French if it wore a beret and had a string of onions around its neck. Which makes it a bit of a letdown when I arrive at the French HQ to discover that the carbon wheel range is manufactured and built in… Romania.
‘Privacy is important. Our innovations aren’t marketing gimmicks’
‘But we make most of our aluminium rims in Saint-trivier-sur-moignans, while all the R&D and prototyping is done at our Annecy HQ,’ says Michel Lethenet, a former mountain bike journalist who is now Mavic’s global PR manager. ‘It’s where I’m taking you now…’
Inside headquarters
Mavic’s HQ is unlike any bike manufacturer’s facility I’ve ever visited, partly because most of the mannequins on show at the entrance are adorned in running gear. ‘We’re owned by Finnish-based Amer Sports,’ says Lethenet. ‘It also owns Salomon, as well as brands like Wilson [tennis] and Suunto [heart rate monitors].’
The building measures 17,000 square metres and houses around 900 staff, with 125 of those working for Mavic. Though one of the big players in cycling, Mavic is around a tenth of the size of Salomon. But whether you’re a runner or cyclist, this part of France is an endurance sport mecca
with the HQ sitting within the shadows of the Parc Naturel Régional du Massif des Bauges – a huge, mountainous nature reserve.
It’s an inspiring setting for Mavic’s team of engineers to design and test the next generation of wheels – or so I imagine. ‘ Non autorisé’ is a common response from Lethenet when I go nosing in rooms and down the many corridors that branch off from the main atrium in search of new products or futuristic testing procedures.
‘Privacy is important. Technology and patents are important,’ says Lethenet. ‘If we create new things and we patent them, it’s to preserve all the investment and effort to create that product. Our innovations aren’t marketing gimmicks.’
Mavic is far more open about its clothing and shoe range, created by an apparel department that harks back to this area’s milling heritage. It’s stacked high with technical fabrics, and Lethenet is keen to emphasise the advantage Mavic has in creating functional sportswear thanks to its close association with Salomon. But we haven’t come here to look at jerseys. To most riders the name Mavic means one thing: wheels.
‘OK, if you want history, let’s have a look at the Service des Courses area,’ says Lethenet. ‘And yes, you can take photos.’
Service des Courses
C’est formidable. Tucked away in Mavic HQ is a road cyclist’s fantasy. Here is where Mavic trains its team for the neutral mechanical service they’ve provided at Classics and stage races for over 40 years. In 1972, a team manager’s car broke down while following the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré. Mavic chairman Bruno Gormand lent his own car to the manager and
the idea was born. A year later, Mavic’s neutral service appeared officially at Paris-nice and has been supporting races and riders ever since.
‘In 2014 we covered 89 events – professional, amateur, sportives and mountain bike,’ says Lethenet. ‘The Tour is obviously very important but the most demanding is Paris-roubaix where we have 17 people involved. That’s on top of four cars, four motorbikes, one lorry and 120 pairs of wheels. Tony over there can change a wheel in under 15 seconds, no problem.’
I look through a window at Tony, who’s busy jet-washing a Skoda. The window is framed with route maps of previous Tours and posters of cycling legends. I’m half expecting Ned Boulting to walk into shot, but this is no parody – it’s Tony’s life. He’s been doing it for 30 years.
‘Things have changed,’ he says. ‘A race like Paris-roubaix, riders are using ever-wider rims – up to 27 and 28 now. That race is unique because we also deflate tyres to just five bar of pressure [72psi].’
In the corner of the Service des Courses is a lump of carbon that’s dusted with memories. It’s the Lotus Super Bike Chris Boardman rode to track pursuit gold at the 1992 Olympics and, in the process, awoke British cycling from a medal-less slumber that had lasted 72 years.
While design guru Mike Burrows and Lotus rightly received technological praise, Mavic’s contribution is less heralded but equally as progressive. On the rear was a Mavic disc, upfront the Mavic 3G – a carbon tri-spoke wheel – which encountered a unique problem.
‘We were heavily involved in the development of the bike because there was only one fork leg,’ says Lethenet. ‘We had to forge a bespoke hub to cope with the asymmetric torque.’
It also forged a relationship with British Cycling that continues to this day. Since Boardman’s exploits, Britain has bathed in track gold while French cycling has suffered a malaise. It all got too much for the then director of French cycling at the London Olympics. After Jason Kenny had demolished France’s great hope, Gregory Bauge, in the men’s sprint, Isabelle Gautheron complained that GB was using ‘magic
‘Tony over there can change a wheel in under 15 seconds, no problem’
wheels’. ‘They hide their wheels a lot,’ she said at the time. ‘Do they really use Mavic wheels?’
The British media had a field day – ‘ Quelle Horror’, reported the Daily Mail. Lethenet was more pragmatic: ‘We worked with British Cycling a lot during the build-up to London and continue that relationship today, in Manchester, here and in the wind-tunnel we use in Geneva. We offered the same service to the French guys but they never came. And then they yell.’
Ironically, the new €68million velodrome in the suburbs of Paris is a legacy of France’s failed bid to stage the 2012 Olympics. It’s also a sign that the French are shrugging off a culture of racing from the heart and beginning to embrace technology. ‘They have to,’ says Lethenet. ‘Cycling is only going to become more scientific.’
Leaving the Service des Courses, we head to the car for the 150km drive to the aluminium
rim factory in Saint-trivier. As we walk we pass numerous machines revolving Mavic prototypes at speed with mud and water flying everywhere. ‘We’re testing for corrosion and waterproofing,’ says Lethenet. ‘That’s as much as I can say.’
Cycling’s epicentre
Saint-trivier-sur-moignans is about 30 miles north of Lyon and is bathed in cycling heritage, having hosted some of the biggest races on the calendar. Stage five of the Dauphiné started here in 2012; Paris-nice visited in 1977, as did the Tour just a few months later. That day went to Dutchman Gerrie Knetemann, though Bernard Thevenet won the overall title, the second of his two Tour victories.
The factory is a glimpse back in time – not surprising as this factory has been producing rims since 1966. At one stage, it was reported that 65% of the world’s bike rims were produced here, before Mavic spread to Romania and Asia.
‘About 90% of our aluminium rims are made here,’ says Lethenet, ‘with 10% – mainly entry level rims – being made in the Far East.’
Around 70 staff work in this large warehouse full of huge shelving units that burst from the concrete floor right up to the corrugated roof. Look a little closer and you notice those industrial shelves hold six-metre lengths of aluminium, profiled as per Mavic’s particular rim design. Mavic can claim to have perfected the art of rim profiling, as back in 1975 in partnership with Michelin and its Elan tyre, it patented the hooked rim shape that’s now the norm to seat a clincher tyre.
There’s certainly an air of proficiency as the aluminium is placed into a machine that bends and cuts it into a circular shape. ‘Always cut in a group of three and always remembering that the diameter’s going to decrease when the rim is welded,’ says Lethenet.
The two ends are then welded together. While entry-level Mavics such as the Aksium Ones use a traditional pin join, the Soudé Usine Process (SUP) of higher-end models involves hammering a rim-profile shaped wedge into the rim’s end to ensure it keeps its shape when welded together at very high temperature. The excess material at the join is then ‘deburred’, ensuring a smooth ride and no shuddering when braking.
‘The next step is drilling [the spoke holes], and protocol depends on the level of the wheel,’ says Lethenet. Again, for entry-level wheels it’s more basic: the rim is clamped into a large drilling machine and the requisite holes drilled.
If it’s a higher-end model such as the Ksyrium SLS, it will feature Mavic’s FORE technology, developed back in 1999. Mavic worked with a robot specialist to design a tool that doesn’t so much drill the rim as push into it and create a thread so that the spoke can be screwed in.
‘By not drilling all the way through, not only do you not need rim tape, but you save weight because you don’t need as many spokes due to not losing rim strength,’ explains Lethenet. ‘Notice too that they’re not in a straight line. The rim is asymmetric to balance the tension of each spoke.’ It’s a fascinating process, albeit one we are not allowed to photograph. ‘ Non autorisé.’
The inter-spoke milling is pretty impressive, too. Within enclosed machines, precise drills and sanders shave curves into the rim walls in the spaces between the spoke holes to save weight without sacrificing rigidity. ‘You can reduce up to 10% of weight this way,’ says Lethenet. Mavic originally termed this process 2D, then advanced to 3D and, for 2015, you’ve guessed it: 4D.
‘With 4D, everything’s rounded, not just between spokes but the edges, too. It’ll be seen on the 2015 R-sys SLR. It reduces inertia so is great for climbing. It’s also better at braking than previous models because it features our Exalith 2 technology [which improves braking power].’
Things are finished off with the graphics – stamped if top-end, stickers if not – and then they’re boxed up for either building in Romania or sent to retail to do similar. ‘I counted once, and there are over 100 processes involved in constructing a Ksyrium,’ says Lethenet. ‘This company is founded not only on innovation but on precision, too.’
History makers
In 1889 brothers Léon and Laurent Vielle created a nickel-plating business under the brand name AVA. Soon, colleagues at AVA, Charles Idoux and Lucien Chanel, ventured into the manufacture and sales of spare parts for the brave new mobile world of cycling. Both companies had the same president, Henry Gormand, and he helped to create this new brand, and it was named Manufactory of Articles for Velocipedes Idoux & Chanel – or Mavic.
Their business took off on discovery of the cycling benefits of duralumin, an aluminium and copper alloy that proved popular in the 1920s and 30s, especially for constructing rigid airship frames. Pieces of fire-ravaged duralumin littered the Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey in 1937 when the Hindenburg met its fiery end. For Mavic,
‘We worked with British Cycling in the build-up to London 2012. We offered the same service to the French but they never came’
duralumin played a covert role in the Tour de France victory of Antonin Magne in 1934.
Ever since Maurice Garin won the inaugural Tour in 1903, cyclists had used heavy wooden wheels to carry them into Tour folklore. In 1934, Mavic created the first duralumin rims but, wary of the competition stealing its ideas, it painted them to look like wood. Mavic called them the Dura rims and they weighed 750g against the 1.2kg wooden versions.
A year later the rims were brought to public knowledge in somewhat tragic circumstances. Spanish cyclist Francisco Cepeda was killed on a downhill stretch of the Galibier using the Dura rims. Many blamed Mavic but an enquiry ruled that it was the poor gluing of the tubulars that caused the accident. Still, newspapers ran the
‘The road market is traditional. It’s hard to make people change their mind about technology’
story as headline news and, in terms of PR, it couldn’t have been much worse.
In fact, not all of Mavic’s innovations have met with widespread success. In 1992, 16 years before Shimano launched Di2, Mavic created the first electronic groupset, the wired Zap Mavic System (ZMS). Chris Boardman used it and was a fan (see issue 24).
‘The beauty of ZAP was that electricity wasn’t used to shift the gear,’ he told a US magazine. ‘The battery only had to send a signal to the rear mechanism where a solenoid engaged the jockey wheel and the rider’s pedalling action changed the gear. It meant the battery could be tiny.’
Unfortunately, you could only shift one sprocket at a time – not nearly enough for the sprinters – while reliability issues killed retailer and consumer confidence. Despite ONCE and RMO using it in the Tour, ZAP was taken off the market in 1994.
Mavic tried again in 1999 with the wireless Mektronic, but again issues such as limited gear range meant it failed to gain a foothold in the wider cycling community and the product was once again dropped.
‘Maybe we were too early on the market,’ says Lethenet. ‘Mind you, electric shifting still isn’t super-popular. The road market is traditional. It’s hard to make people change their mind about technology.’
No one can accuse Mavic of not trying. It is constantly pushing the envelope and will continue to do so. Like many in the industry, Lethenet suggests greater integration between components is the future. ‘It makes sense that there’s greater connection between wheel and fork,’ he says. ‘We’ve studied it in the past and have come up with some solutions. As usual the difficulty in the bike industry is that we have so many players on one bike, it’s tough to organise everyone around the same table. We’re also looking at different materials.’
What are those materials, we hear you ask? ‘I can’t tell you,’ says Lethenet. ‘It must remain private.’ Or ‘ non autorisé’ as they say at Mavic. James Witts is a freelance journalist who happily allows cameras into all his private areas