Seeing The Light
Cyclist tests the climbing credentials of three featherweight bikes on the slopes of the mythical Mont Ventoux
RIDER 1 Lazer Z1 helmet, £149.99 madison.co.uk Lazer Walter sunglasses, £109.99 madison.co.uk Etxeondo Ligero gilet, £105 etxeondo.com Etxeondo Mendi jersey, £115 etxeondo.com Etxeondo Mendi mitts, £40 etxeondo.com Etxeondo Orhi bibshorts, £145 etxeondo.com Etxeondo Argi socks, £13 etxeondo.com Northwave Flash Carbon shoes, £179.99 I-ride.co.uk
RIDER 2
Kask Protone helmet, £195 velobrands.co.uk Oakley Jawbreaker sunglasses, £175 uk.oakley.com Pearl Izumi Pro Barrier Lite gilet, £69.99 madison.co.uk Shimano S-phyre jersey, £189.99 madison.co.uk Rapha Pro Team Shadow armwarmers, £70 rapha.cc Shimano S-phyre bibshorts, £219.99 madison.co.uk Shimano S-phyre socks, £19.99 madison.co.uk Specialized S-works 6 shoes, £310 specialized.com
RIDER 3
Giro Synthe helmet, £224.99 zyrofisher.co.uk Oakley Radar EV sunglasses, £160 uk.oakley.com Katusha Wind Vest gilet, €110 (approx £99) katusha-sports.com Katusha Superlight jersey, €140 (approx £125) katusha-sports.com Castelli dm:chpt.iii 1.81 baselayer, £75 saddleback.co.uk Assos Armwarmer_evo7 armwarmers, £35 assos.com Katusha Superlight bibshorts, €180 (approx £160) katusha-sports.com Katusha Race Long socks, €22 (approx £20) katusha-sports.com Giro Prolight Techlace shoes, £349.99 zyrofisher.co.uk
I’m feeling a bit unwell. Perhaps it’s a fever – that unmistakeable feeling of being hot and cold all at once. It’s strange, because I was feeling perfectly fine just a couple of hours ago. Then again, climbing to the top of Mont Ventoux might have something to do with it.
Could it be the fatigue of riding 22km uphill, much of it over 10%? Or could it be the dizzying view south that runs uninterrupted down to the Côte d’azur some 150km distant? Could it even be the emotion of completing the ascent of one of cycling’s most celebrated and feared climbs?
‘It’s the altitude, combined with the Mistral wind and the fact that you’ve been climbing for two hours. You’ve generated a lot of heat, but the temperature has dropped 20°C, the air is thin and that wind is famous for cutting right through you,’ says Angus Parker, founder of tour company La Vie en Velo and our guide for the day.
It is this combination of factors, and the unusual discomfort they cause, that makes Mont Ventoux a climb like no other and one that should be at the top of every serious cyclist’s bucket list. The mountain is unique. Unlike its crowded Alpine cousins to the northeast, it stands alone, providing incomparable views as it towers over the almost Mediterranean Provençal landscape.
Ventoux is also steeped in history. All the best climbers down the generations have done battle with the ‘Giant of Provence’, and some haven’t lived to tell the tale. What’s more, it can be climbed three ways, and each route is just as challenging yet different to the last. That makes it a rather appropriate proving ground to test the mettle of three bikes with climbing pretensions.
Aero isn’t everything
Unless you ride on pan-flat roads every day, how much mass you have to move around will play a big part in determining your speed. On the flat, the biggest force acting against you is air resistance, but the more you point uphill, the more that weight becomes the main impediment. It follows that the lighter you and your bike are, the faster you can ride uphill for the same effort.
There isn’t much a bike company can do about making you lighter, which is why brands pour millions into designing bikes that push the lower limits of weight despite the arbitrary 6.8kg weight limit currently imposed by the UCI for pro racing. As we’re not pros, that doesn’t apply to us, so the three bikes we are testing today dip below this figure by some degree.
Trek’s 5.97kg Émonda can lay claim to being the lightest mass production bike currently on
All the best climbers down the generations have done battle with the ‘Giant of Provence’, and some haven’t lived to tell the tale
offer, while Fuji’s 6.52kg SL1.1 is actually heavier than its predecessor (we’ll find out why later). Cannondale’s Supersix Evo is the heaviest of the bunch at 6.7kg, but can lay claim to having the most heritage at Worldtour level.
An even tougher question is: who’s going to ride which bike? With me today are Matt, a cat-2 racer from Dorset, and Ewan, a hill-climb specialist from Kent. We’re similar sizes, and as we stand in the well-appointed bike workshop of our charming Provençal farmhouse-cumhotel, La Ferme des Bélugues, each of us is unwilling to make the first move toward the gleaming superbikes lined up in front of us.
Eventually Matt pulls rank as the ‘oldest, wisest and most in need of help’ to take the Émonda, which prompts Ewan to make a dive for the Fuji. That leaves me with the Cannondale, which I’m secretly pleased about as I think it’s the most elegant of the three and comes with an excellent pedigree.
After a bit of fiddling and fettling, we start our ride with a rolling 10km from La Ferme
to Bédoin, the town at the base of Mont Ventoux’s most famous ascent, giving us an opportunity to familiarise ourselves with our chosen partners before the real ‘fun’ begins.
Matt and Ewan immediately put their bikes to work up the Col de la Madeleine (luckily it’s not that Col de la Madeleine – it’s a far gentler hill that merely shares the same name), both praising the acceleration of their bikes. Wary of the effort to come once we pass Bédoin, I’m content to tap up the rise and soak in the views of olive groves in the early morning sunshine.
Even though I’ve yet to go full throttle, I’m already getting excited about the Supersix, which feels eager and responsive to even the slightest of inputs, no doubt thanks to having been refined by constant exposure and feedback at the top of the sport with Worldtour team Cannondale-drapac. At the top I stamp on the pedals and the bike leaps forward down the twisting road. In no time I’ve caught Matt and Ewan and we roll into Bédoin together.
And so it begins
The red and white striped mast of the weather station atop Ventoux looks impossibly distant on this clear day, and as we leave Bédoin the road rises immediately, albeit at a sociable gradient. We slip into single file with Ewan on the front.
His SL1.1 is Fuji’s top-flight race machine, which uses a host of technologies in an attempt to keep things stiff and snappy at a frame weight
I note that at around this point on the climb in the 2016 Tour Chris Froome was probably running faster than I am currently riding
of just 695g. Chief among them is Fuji’s ‘High Compaction’ moulding, which the brand claims eliminates wrinkled bits of carbon and leftover gobs of resin that would otherwise increase weight. Yet the SL1.1’S predecessor was just 5.11kg – so Fuji apparently added weight to improve stiffness and ride quality, as well as speccing slightly less exotic finishing kit to make the bike’s price more competitive (the previous SL1.1 had a Reynolds RZR 46 wheelset, which retails at £4,000 on its own).
Fuji’s design decisions have certainly paid off, according to Ewan, who remarks on how responsive the bike feels as he punches forward from out of the saddle.
Matt is still singing the Émonda’s praises for how impressively it goes downhill as well as up, and taking a look at the geometry chart of Trek’s bike it’s not hard to see why – a BB drop of 70mm and chainstays of 410mm suggest a low, stable back end while the stiffness of the front end delivers snappy steering.
The ascent of Ventoux from Bédoin is the one used most often by the Tour de France, so there’s no shortage of detailed documentation exposing every inch of the climb. And all the literature speaks in reverential tones about the left-hand bend at St Esteve. This is where the ascent really bares its teeth – the bend that caused the big Italian domestique Eros Poli to say, ‘I thought I was dying,’ and the bend that served as the catalyst for Ferdi Kübler’s total implosion further up the climb and subsequent race abandonment. The French describe it as un petit enfer, a little hell. As the gradient doubles and the road disappears into Ventoux’s forested lower slopes, I’m inclined to agree.
Despite Matt’s age-related protestations he’s a gifted climber so it quickly becomes clear that he and Ewan (to hear him tell it, riding uphill is all that he does) will be ascending at a different pace to me. I ‘allow’ them to drift into the distance and my attention becomes more introspective as I begin to assess the attributes of the Cannondale properly.
Making a frame more compact by designing the top tube to slope down from the head tube is a favoured ploy by manufacturers searching for a light frame, as evidenced by the designs of the Émonda and Fuji, because the effective horizontal length of the top tube remains the
same but the tube itself can be slightly shorter. Less material for less weight. Yet Cannondale resolutely eschews that thinking and with the Supersix proves a climber’s bike can be created from a more regular geometry.
Cannondale puts it down to its ‘System Integration’ concept, where the frame, fork and components are designed to work together. It allows a number of features such as the fork’s crown race-less design to be incorporated, which Cannondale says saves a lot of weight while keeping the famed ride characteristics, subtle aerodynamics and stiffness required for the bike to compete on the Worldtour.
I praise the ingenuity of Cannondale’s engineers as the gradient starts to take its toll. I have to alternate between sitting and standing to keep my momentum, and note that around this point on the climb in the 2016 Tour Chris Froome was probably running faster than I am currently riding. I take heart in the fact that regardless of whether I’m standing or seated, flex remains undetectable at the bottom bracket or head tube, so very little of my effort seems to be going to waste.
Not over yet
The Bédoin ascent has only one true hairpin, the Virage du Bois, so I can often glimpse Matt and Ewan up ahead. I notice that Matt has barely sat down at any point, which is in stark comparison to the way he tells me he usually climbs.
‘It’s this bike,’ he says when we regroup at Chalet Reynard. We’re at that point on the ascent where we know the worst is over, but also that there is plenty still to be done. Now we’re out of the forest we’ll be at the mercy of the mercurial Mistral wind and the viciously temperamental weather conditions it causes.
‘I tried riding in my normal style, yet that just made the bike feel as if it was straining at a leash. I had to get up and push a bigger gear because I kept finding that the more I put in, the more I got out.’
I’m sure Trek would be happy to hear that, especially as the company put this latest
‘The bike feels as if it’s straining at a leash. I had to get up and push a bigger gear because I kept finding the more I put in, the more I got out’
Émonda through tens of thousands of iterations in computer modelling software to refine the carbon layup schedule in search of the perfect balance of stiffness, comfort and weight. The finishing kit from its components brand, Bontrager, is also pretty accomplished, making for a highly desirable overall package.
In fact all three bikes have been finished with a generous smattering of in-house products, and none are the worse for it. The Supersix’s Save 25.4mm seatpost is a brilliant bit of engineering, adding a level of comfort to an otherwise rigid frame; the SL1.1’S Oval Concepts 928 wheels are stiff, light and offer good braking; and a highlight on the Émonda has to be the Speed Stop Pro brakes, which offer clearance for 28mm tyres and great modulation for their meagre 95g weight.
It isn’t long before we spin past Tom Simpson’s memorial, nestled in the scree of the Ventoux’s upper reaches. It’s the 50th anniversary of his death this year, and the memorial is well stocked with offerings of bidons and rocks that have been carried up the mountain in remembrance of one of Britain’s greatest Tour de France riders. Seeing the spot where he fell is unexpectedly powerful. If his heart could have lasted just five minutes more he might have crested the summit and been able to recover on the descent.
In an effort to shake off the melancholy, we take one last opportunity to make our bikes earn their keep by riding an Armstrong/pantani-like duel up to the summit. I end up taking the role of Armstrong, claiming to lose the battle to win the war, and let Matt and Ewan know as much when I catch them at the base of the weather station. At least their scoffs are gentler than Pantani’s rebukes were to his US Postal rival.
Those feverish symptoms convince us not to linger up here. In an attempt to avoid fisticuffs in our debate back at La Ferme I’d suggested we could swap rides during the day, but as each bike has served us so well we’re unwilling to trade, despite each promising a different experience. It goes to show that regardless of design, geometry or technology there is more than one way to skin a lightweight cat.
With our minds made up, there’s only one way to go.
We take one last opportunity to make our bikes earn their keep by riding an Armstrong/pantani-like duel up to the summit