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2006 Pro Team bikes
This year's models
By the Cyclingnews technical team
Welcome to Cyclingnews' 2006 look at the bikes the pros will be riding in this season. During the course of this year, we'll bring you a selection of images and specifications of this year's latest and hottest; in other words, a feast of veritable bike porn!
Saul Raisin's Crédit Agricole Look 585When Saul Raisin arrived on the shores of Malaysia at the beginning of February, the 23 year-old says it was he who had undergone the biggest change since he was last here year; almost everything else - his team, bike, equipment and sponsors - had remained unchanged. Explained Raisin, "Compared to last year, I'm stronger; I'm older, I've got a year of racing in Europe - so I think I'm coming here better than I was last year, but how much better, that's a good question. I haven't tested myself on any climbs, so we'll have to find out," he said a day before the race began. |
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Ryan Cox's Team Barloworld Cannondale Six13The change in management at Team Barloworld in 2006 not only brought about a new team manager in Claudio Corti, but also a change in bike from the De Rosa to Cannondale. For those of you who don't know, Corti used to be the team manager of Lampre-Cafitta and before that Saeco, which first saw the American mark on a first division team in Europe, so it's quite obvious his continued good relations with Cannondale has seen their bikes back in the fold with Barloworld. We took a close look at Ryan Cox's De Rosa King X-Light around this time last year, which he used to great effect at the Tour de Langkawi, claiming the overall classification ahead of Venezuelan revelation Jose Rujano and team-mate Tiaan Kannemeyer, with his squad also taking out the teams classification. So it was only apt that Cyclingnews sneaked a peek at the defending champ's machine when we came back for the '06 race. |
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Xavier Tondo Volpini's Relax-Gam Gios Carbon V-107That unmistakable Gios blue was hard to miss in Malaysia, where Spanish cyclist Xavier Tondo Volpini chose to kick off his season at the TM Le Tour de Langkawi. Despite being only 27 years of age, 'Tondo', as his friends call him, is in fact the fourth eldest member of the 15-man Relax-Gam outfit. Last year, the lanky rider from Olot, a hillside town not too far away from Barcelona, enjoyed his best season to date after stage wins in the Vuelta Asturias and Volta ao Alentejo as well as overall victory in the latter. And with such a young team, team managers Augusto de Castañeda and Jesus Suarez Cueva will be counting on him for some big results in '06. |
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Gene Bates' Team LPR Guerciotti KhaybarTaking ownership of a new team bike one day before the start of the Jacob's Creek Tour Down Under is less than desirable - especially for 24 year-old Gene Bates, who had just began his neo-professional year with Team LPR and was looking to impress. But as the results showed in Adelaide, the former under 23 Australian champion wasn't impeded in the slightest by a lack of familiarity with his new Guerciotti machine, finishing fifth overall behind tour winner Simon Gerrans, who happened to be Bates' predecessor to national title he won in 2003. |
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Luca Paolini's Liquigas Bianchi FG LiteIn its second year as a ProTour outfit, the reborn Liquigas team has recruited Italian Luca Paolini from Quickstep-Innergetic. Once again, the team is riding bikes from Italy's oldest - and arguably most famous - marque, Bianchi. Like team leader Danilo Di Luca and his other team-mates, Paolini is riding the FG Lite, Bianchi's featherweight aluminium answer to the superlight carbon fiber bikes being offered by so many manufacturers. Team manager Dario Mariuzzo tells us that the 29-year-old Italian trained and raced on this bike right through the week-long Jacob's Creek Tour Down Under. Although it's the 2005 model, Paolini is happy with both the weight and the stiffness the frame has to offer, and appreciates the qualities offered by the alloy frame as opposed to a carbon machine. |
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Thor Hushovd's Credit Agricole Look 585You'd expect one of the world's top sprinters aboard his bike sponsor's top frame, and that's exactly what we find when we look (sorry) at the bike of 2006 Tour de France green jersey winner Thor Hushovd. The big Norwegian's Credit Agricole team has a long-standing relationship with French bike maker Look. The team has been riding Look bikes since its inception in 1999, and Look's support of pro racing has clearly fed back into its bikes. Click here for the full details of Thor Hushovd's bike. |
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Allan Davis' Liberty Seguros - Würth BH Global ConceptAsk "the best bike mechanic in the world" (according to his peers) Faustino Muñoz what's been the biggest changes since the Liberty Seguros - Würth team took on the BH brand two years ago, and the reply one receives is "Everything." And when you ask if there's any connection between the BH bikes and the rather similar Giant machines T-Mobile is using (and that Liberty Seguros was aboard a couple of years ago), you get a "How dare you?" stare, followed by a terse response: "No, nothing to do with each other." Click here for the full details of Allan Davis' bike. |
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Daniel Becke's Team Milram Colnago CristalloGeert Rombauts began as a pro team mechanic 15 years ago, and virtually everything on this bicycle before him, Daniel Becke's Team Milram Colnago Cristallo, is the product of dramatic technological improvement. "I started when shifters were on the downtube, then Campagnolo and Shimano came out with [integrated] brake levers - that's probably the biggest [innovation]. They're also been a lot of development in wheels and Shimano's new [one-piece crankarm and] bottom bracket is good," Rombauts says. Click here for the full details of Becke's bike. |
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Chris Sutton's Cofidis Wilier TeamChris "CJ" Sutton admits that the Wilier he wheels into the Cyclingnews offices isn't really his own personal bike. The 21-year-old Cofidis neo-pro is rolling around on a bike donated by a team-mate; but when he does get his own quiver of bikes, one of them will be virtually identical to this Wilier Cofidis Team with Campagnolo record components. Sutton comes from a cycling family. His dad, Gary, is a top Australian coach with responsibility for the junior national team, while his uncle Shane is British track team coach. Gary Sutton was points race world champion while Shane had a successful pro career in the UK in the 1980s racing the televised criterium circuit, and winning Britain's top stage race, the pro-am Milk Race. Now Chris is following in their tracks. Click here for the full details of Chris Sutton's bike |
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Gordon Fraser's Health net Cannondale SystemSix protoBack at the Tour de Georgia Health Net sprinter Gord Fraser was spotted on what we now know was a proto of Cannondale's recently announced System Six frame. Fraser's team-mate Mike Sayers was also aboard the new ride, indicating, as Cannondale later said, that stiffness was a priority for the new design: who better to trial the protos than two of the fastest guys in the US domestic peloton? Sprinters tend to like stiff bikes. Fraser put together a respectable mid-pack finish in the race's hardest stage, that climbed to the top of Brasstown Bald Mountain and afterwards had nothing but praise for his new preproduction ride. "It's definitely the best bike I've ever had, and everything I wanted in a frame: super stiff, really light, what more do you want?" Click here for the full details |
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Liam Killeen's Specialized S-Works EpicAt the Sea Otter Classic in Monterey, California, Specialized Factory team racers Christoph Sauser, Alban Lakata, Sabine Spitz and Liam Killeen rolled out to the time trial start on pink S-Works Epic frames. Identical to their team-issue bikes, the frames were coloured to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first mass-produced mountain-bike; the Specialized Stumpjumper. “The very first [team-issue] Stumpjumper was pink,” said Kevin Franks of Specialized. “We're using them here at Sea Otter and then at the Garda Festival in Italy later this month. After that, they're going into the Specialized museum.” Click here for the full details |
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Ben Jacques-Maynes' Kodakgallery.com/Sierra Nevada Eddy Merckx PremiumKodakgallery.com/Sierra Nevada Pro Cycling Team front man Ben Jacques-Maynes has evolved into one of more versatile riders on the continental US racing scene and his Merckx Premium is apparently up to the challenge. Jacques-Maynes says it "handles my racing needs with attitude to spare. It likes to be cornered aggressively, climbs well, and sprints like a cheetah." In a virtual snub to the current market trend, there isn't a thread of carbon to be found in the frame itself. Easton's Flare Scandium tubing is used throughout and is paired with a high-modulus carbon fiber fork developed by Merckx in conjunction with Easton. Click here for the full details |
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Antonio Cruz's United Team IssueThe Toyota-United Pro Cycling Team is special in that a wholly new bicycle brand was created from scratch in order to act as the bike sponsor for the team. Team director Harm Jansen openly admits that creating an entirely new brand of bicycle was "a lot of work", but it was a decision that was born out of necessity. According to Jansen, "it was hard for the organization to find a good sponsorship. Part of the idea behind starting our own brand was also to help further develop name recognition for the team," so it's easier to market the United bikes. Eventually, we'd like to earn a small piece of market share as we're also trying to sell these bikes on the web to help generate revenue for the team." Click here for the full details |
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Mark McCormack's Felt F1C
In homage to Mark McCormack's New England roots, it says Maaahk on a strip of label tape on the top tube of his Felt F1C. It should say Maaahk the Shaaahk after his performance in the CSC Invitational in Arlington, Virginia last Saturday Like a shark prowling shallow waters for the leg of an unwary surfer, The former U.S. professional road and cyclo-cross National Champion patiently and skillfully maneuvered through a churning sea of racers and into the final group - one of only 24 riders to remain of the more than 120 starters. The reason he was able to take tricky turn number five at high speed, a turn that sent riders to the hospital and crashed breakaway rider Brent Bookwalter (Priority Health) out of the lead? The unique cornering characteristics of his Felt F1C, says McCormack. Click here for more details. |
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Ina Teutenberg's T-Mobile Giant TCR Advanced ISPIna Teutenberg is very happy with her new bike. A contender for the title of the world's fastest-finishing female road racer, though the modest Teutenberg would never claim it, the German sprinter is in town for two World Cups and two stage races in Australia and New Zealand that have seen her based in Sydney. And it's been a successful trip Down Under for the T-mobile rider, who landed the Geelong World Cup, two stages of the New Zealand Trust House Tour, a stage of the Geelong Tour and third in the Wellingtonm World Cup, making her T-Mobile's most successful rider of the year to date, and puttingher in the lead in the World Cup series. Click here for the full details |
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Trent Wilson's Jittery Joe's-Zero Gravity Louis Garneau Sonix 6.4For 2006, Louis Garneau once again has covered the Jittery Joe's-Zero Gravity team from head-to-toe, including the very bikes they ride. And like 2005, most of the team are aboard the Pro-Team 6.2 frame, a carbon lugged, sloping carbon frame, while others are on the new Sonix 6.4 full monocoque frame. Cyclingnews got up close and personal with this year's version, specifically with Aussie Trent Wilson's Sonix 6.4, complete with the new Zero Gravity crankset. Jittery Joe's-Zero Gravity mechanic Brian Malloy explained to Cyclingnews the set-up for the team bikes. "Last year they rode the 6.2. This year some are still riding that bike which has not changed. Some are also riding the Sonix 6.4. This is a full monocoque frame where the 6.2 is lugged and the tubes are glued. The 6.4 also used less aluminum in the head tube and bottom bracket areas so it is a lighter frame. The 6.4 weighs 1020 grams (frame only) and the 6.2 is 1336g. They both use the HM Monocoque fork which is 376 grams." Click here for the full details. |
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Georgia Gould's Orbea AlmaOn July 14th in Sonoma, California, Georgia Gould (Luna Chix) rode her Orbea Alma carbon hardtail to her first-ever elite cross-country national championship. The win was somewhat of an upset. Her teammate, Shonny Vanlandingham, had been almost unbeatable in cross-country in the domestic 2006 season. But a fast, exposed racecourse with plenty of long, hard-surfaced sections, opened the door for a rider with a huge engine and the power to drive a strong tempo to take the Stars and Stripes jersey for herself. Two morning's later, an hour before Gould would ride the short-track cross-country race, we cornered Luna Chix team mechanic, Chris Mathis (who lives down the California coast in San Luis Obispo), for a run-through of Gould's team-issued Alma. Click here for the full details. |
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Steve Peat's Santa Cruz V-10Nathan Rennie posted the fasted time in qualifying for the world Downhill championships and picked up the bronze medal on his machine on Saturday. Steve Peat finished narrowly out of the medals on his V-10, but was second on Thursday's seeding run. Even if the V-10 bike doesn't win the World Championship, Peat is poised nicely to take the World Cup Series with an almost unassailable lead as the riders head off to the last round after the World Championships down under. We talked to the Santa Cruz mechanics Ed Chavez and Matthiu Dupelle about the setups on both Rennie and Peat's bikes after the seeding runs. "The two greatest differences between the two bikes is the suspension setup, Rennie's is harder. Tyres also is a big area of difference. Peaty always goes with a little harder compound and a narrower tyre (a 2.2" on the back). Click here for the full details. |
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Richard Groenendaal's Team Rabobank Colnago C50 CrossAt 35, Richard Marinus Anthonius Groenendaal is one of the most experienced professional cyclo-cross riders around. Always a mainstay of the Rabobank team, Groenendaal has a World Championship ('99-'00) three World Cup titles ('97-'98, '00-'01, '03-'04) and two Superprestige overall titles in his palmares during a career spanning twelve years. In his home country of the Netherlands, Groenendaal has won an impressive total of 14 national cyclo-cross championships |
