Festka One
Bespoke brilliance with incredible paintjobs (even if this one happens to be black)
How many famous Czech exports can you name? Staropramen? Skoda? Martina Navratilova? For cyclists, there might just be one more name to add to that list: Festka. At least, if the One is anything to go by.
Founded by friends Ondrej Novotny and ex-pro Michael Mourecek, Festka – Czech slang for fixie – began life less than five years ago when the pair decided they wanted to start a bike brand that offered bespoke, handmade frames made in their homeland.
‘In the beginning we thought we could make high-end steel fixies, so we approached some of the framebuilders here in the Czech Republic, but they turned us down, saying we were dreamers,’ says Novotny. ‘They said it couldn’t be done, there is no market to be selling 200 handmade frames a year. So we realised we needed to do it ourselves, and that’s when we created Festka.’
That was back in 2010, and since then Festka has added carbon and titanium to its original portfolio of steel bikes, raising quite a few eyebrows along the way with the likes of the all-chrome, double disc wheeled Motol (well worth Googling); the Projekt 200, a crowdfunded carbon frameset that later evolved into the Festka Zero, and lately the pledge to build the bike that Czech rider Ondrej Sosenka hopes will propel him back to being the Hour record holder. But it was the fully bespoke One that caught Cyclist’s attention when it surfaced late last summer in an array of eye-popping paintjobs, so we pestered Novotny to send us one to test. Somewhat sadly, the particular One that arrived at the Cyclist office was much more understated than the acid-tripping-cubist look I’d been hoping for. But any disappointment was short-lived. For the One, in any guise, is superb.
Seek professional help
Festka has set out to become Europe’s answer to the likes of Alchemy or Parlee. That is, Festka aims to produce the highest-quality framesets, by hand and from locally
sourced materials. So while Parlee works with Utahbased Enve to develop its tubesets, Festka has looked 130km down the road from its Prague workshop to team up with Czech carbon fibre specialists Compotech.
The upshot is Festka uses what Novotny describes as ‘professional framebuilders’ who are able to exploit Compotech’s background in lightweight motorsport components and carbon fibre yacht masts. It’s an obvious way of doing things – sometimes overlooked by start-ups – and in terms of craftsmanship alone, it’s an approach that has come to fruition in the One’s frameset.
We’ll get to the ride quality in a moment, but first let’s examine the paint. Despite being mainly black, the One manages to transcend black by being, um, even blacker. There’s a deep lustre to the glossy finish, which is accentuated by the pin-sharp fluorescence of the logo. Novotny says a given paintjob can increase the One’s frame weight by anything up to 150g (although Festka offers a raw carbon finish too), however the payback, he says, is durability – which after some pretty dirty, flintriddled country miles I’d agree with. The paint still looks as good as new. Plus, at 6.8kg on the nose, such things are trivial to all but the weeniest of weight watchers.
That weight owes a fair amount to the Campagnolo Super Record EPS groupset, which tips the scales at a hair over 2kg with a mid-model year update. Likewise, the latest versions of Campagnolo’s enduring classic, the Shamal wheel, adds a ‘Mille’ to its title and contributes a claimed 1,426g to the One’s overall weight – 70g more than a comparable pair of Mavic Ksyrium SLRS, but roughly £100 cheaper at £940 a pair.
Like the Ksyriums’ Exalith treatment, the Shamals have a special braking surface where a spiral groove is milled into the brake track to improve stopping performance without creating the whirring noise associated with the Ksyrium (whose Exalith surface runs perpendicular to the rim, the effect being a bit like running your finger along a file). In practice, while there was no squealing there was a bit of a ‘fizz’ when applying brakes, but if it’s an issue at all (I rather like a robotic timbre to my rims) it’s offset by improved braking, that's most noticeably in the wet.
However, for me the stars of the component show weren’t these higher-ticket items, but, surprisingly, a pair of tyres from a brand I vaguely recognise from the mid-90s mountain bike scene but had long since thought perished like a pair of forgotten tubs. That brand is Tufo, another Czech outfit, and the tyres are the incredibly light Calibra Lites, which weigh less than 150g each (23c), making them the lightest clinchers I’ve come across.
The One feels planted when cornering but ever so deft when skipping through potholed minefields
I can’t vouch for their longevity – they don’t look as though they would survive months of punishment – but if you’re looking for a tyre to transform the feel of your bike, the Calibras are like rocket fuel. But of course all that would be useless without a decent frame to hang from.
And what a frame it is
The One is class. It feels planted when cornering but ever so deft when skipping through potholed minefields, reacting sharply but proportionately to rider inputs. Climbing could only have been bettered by somehow shedding more weight, with the bottom bracket and chainstays and front assembly coping easily with big outof-saddle efforts. This stiffness gives the One a brilliant turn of pace on the flat, especially given that it’s a very traditional frame shape with no aero pretensions.
However, as it seems is so often the case with highend bespoke bikes, it’s the combination of all these factors that stands out. Or in other words, it’s the ride quality and hence the riding experience that marks out the One from a sea of competitors.
It’s not so much that the One is overtly plush, because it isn’t – the trend-bucking 31.6mm seatpost (Festka says
The more you push, the more you get back from the One; the more you back off, the more placid it becomes
it could offer the One as 27.2mm by way of a permanent shim insert) provides a sturdy seated position, which while never uncomfortable is still on the firm side. Rather, it’s because the One displays a powerful, highly tuned race bike character when pushed, but easily sinks back into a relaxed state when cruising. Moreover, it flits between the two with modulated ease – the more you push, the more you get back from the One; the more you back off, the more placid it becomes.
The One’s quality is made even more impressive by the fact that this bike wasn’t designed for me. As mentioned, each Festka One is made to measure. Tubes come in from Compotech, are measured, cut, mitred and wrapped to form the finished product. Thus, tubes can be selected for their different properties and each junction wrapped just-so to create a frame with ride characteristics to suit the style and expectations of the customer. So if this ‘stock’ One is this good, I can’t begin to imagine how a One created explicitly for me might have performed. I do know it would have some seriously crazy paint, though. Trust me, Festka can do that too.