THIS WEEK IN PRO CYCLING
Tech Report: A few final goodies from Interbike
Today’s report will be a short one, describing a few final items from this year’s Interbike trade show that you might not hear about any other way.
Spiuk-Kuips
Kuips is a Basque Country bicycle brand being imported into the USA by DPM Sports. Joanne Somarriba, multiple winner of the women’s Tour de France and the 2003 world time trial champion, races on Kuips road bikes; Spain’s professional cyclo-cross champ rides a Kuips, too.
The pictured frame is the top cyclo-cross model. The company has a full line of accessories and clothing under the Spiuk name. Altogether, it is an extensive and impressive line of high-end hard goods and great clothing. For more, see www.dpmsports.com.
Dugast tubular MTB tires
Thomas Frischknecht's bike from the Athens Olympics is an incredibly light carbon Scott. But particularly unique are the Dugast tubular MTB tires with Ritchey tread patterns. These tubulars are glued onto deep-section, all-carbon, Ritchey-labeled 650C (26-inch) triathlon rims laced to disc-brake hubs.
These Dugasts are one-offs, but Tufo is now offering the CXC-1, a fast-rolling 610g mountain bike tubular clincher with a file center tread and side knobs as well as deep-section carbon MTB wheels. Suggested retail is $98. For more, see www.tufonorthamerica.com.
Vittoria tubular MTB tires came and went once despite having Gary Fisher behind them, but that was before disc brakes. Maybe things will be different this time!
RockShox display
RockShox's display demonstrated to participating viewers how different damping adjustments affect fork performance and illustrated its “Motion Control” inertial damping valve.
Six Reba forks were set with compression and rebound damping fully open, rebound adjusted properly and compression damping wide open, heavily damped, and properly damped as well as set with variations in "floodgate" breakaway threshold – passers-by could compress each with a long lever to get a feel for the differences.
RockShox particularly wanted to illustrate that the compression damping adjustment is separate from the floodgate breakaway adjustment (which adjusts the magnitude of the bump required to open the Motion Control damper valve so that the fork is free to move within its pre-set damping adjustments; until this bump threshold is encountered, the fork is heavily damped, almost locked out). For more, see www.rockshox.com.
Nokian studded tires
Nokian sells 15,000 studded mountain bike tires per year in the United States – and the company’s three models sell for $80, $120 and $175 apiece! That's a lot of serious snow and ice riders.
According to Nokian, one big market is riders who race on frozen lakes. For more, see www.nokiantyres.com.
Feedback Sports scale
You may want to weigh your bike accurately and don’t want to buy a Topeak bike stand with the digital scale built into the arm or deal with the uncertainty of a milk scale. In that case, this cool digital scale designed specifically for weighing bikes by Feedback Sports of Golden, Colorado, is for you.
It weighs items up to 55 pounds (25kg), which is enough even for most downhill bikes, and is precise to plus or minus 10 grams – 50 times more accurate than a bathroom scale. The scale shaft clamps in a bike stand, and the unit is built to take abuse. Suggested retail price is $50. For more, see www.feedbacksports.com.
