|
Laurent Dufaux's Alessio De Rosa King
50 Years of innovation
Since turning professional in 1991, Laurent Dufaux has ridden a number of bikes for a number of teams. With Alessio, his trusty machine is the compact De Rosa King, a full carbon frame with a sloping top tube and lugged construction. Carbon is the name of the game for Dufaux and the Alessio team's setup. In addition to the all carbon frame, Dufaux's bike features Campagnolo's carbon Record crankset, as well as a Bora rear wheel and carbon seat post. As Cristiano De Rosa mentioned in our De Rosa factory visit, "This downtube has a unique shape that was the result of over a year of development here in Italy, and in cooperation with Mizuno in Japan, the world's number one company for development of carbon fibre for sporting goods applications."
De Rosa's carbon is a proprietary material, with a much finer weave than most manufacturers. De Rosa also takes pride in doing all of the work for its carbon frames rather than using subcontractors for certain components. "Before we launched the King frame, we did a lot of testing to understand just how to derive the best combination of carbon fibre composition and shape. Not only do we have our crew of road testers, but this custom built test bed machine really enabled us to refine the King." A unique feature of Dufaux's King (which is in fact a Cinquanta frame) is the construction around the seat tube cluster. Rather than using a traditional lug to join the top tube, seat tube, and rear stays, De Rosa featuers a top tube which extends to the rear past the seat tube, through which the seat tube is inserted. This is designed to strengthen the critical junction and place the bond to the rear stays behind the joint. Alessio uses Fi'zi:k saddles. The handlebar and stem combination is Dedaccai, with the Newton combo as Alessio's choice.
For the Zurich World Cup race, Dufaux chose a mixed wheelset, with a Campagnolo Hyperon front wheel coupled with a deep carbon Bora rim in the back using seven sets of three spokes grouped together. New for 2004With De Rosa gearing up to celebrate its 50th anniversary, a new edition of the King will be on offer, along with a standard (non-compact) frame to compliment the current geometry. De Rosa also released a special 50th anniversary bike; the De Rosa Cinquanta. PhotosImages by Chris Henry/Cyclingnews
| ||||||||
Full specificationFrame: De Rosa King carbon fibre (1,050g) Cranks: Campagnolo Record Chain: Campagnolo Record |
Wheels: Campagnolo Hyperon (front) and Bora (rear) Stem: Deda Newton Pedals: LOOK | |||||||
