151. UCI rules, design evolution, and why bikes are so expensive, with Pieter Potters

0:00I've been riding with the Hammerhead Karoo for a fair bit now, and beyond the slick screen and the 35-hour battery life, I'm really getting into the Karoo's Climber function. Now, what Climber does is show you any upcoming climb on a ride, whether it's a pre-planned route or not, and then when that climb comes up, this data page pops up on screen and you get this little climb profile with gradients and color-coded sections for steepness and the distance to the top in length and elevation. so it's amazing for places I've never ridden like on a sportive where you've never ridden the course before but the crew guide you up a climb in this predictive way so you can pace out your effort it's like having a little team ds on your handlebars you can also look ahead at a route and see all the climbs on it so a bit like having a profile sticker on your stem like you see the pros have in races only this way it's way more detailed as you can pick out a climb and look at its specific details as you go.

0:59So check out our full review of the Hammerhead crew at cyclist.co.uk and see why we gave it our cyclist recommended award. Then head to hammerhead.io and use the code cyclist to get a free heart rate strap with every purchase. Just be sure to add the strap to your cart then apply the code at checkout.

1:23Do you always wear that fleece? do you know what it's the size of the fleece means that i can wear it with so i've got another jumper on underneath no way and then fleece on if my other fleece slash other jumpers it makes it a lot more obvious that i'm double jumpering okay well um for anyone that can't see will which is basically anyone listening to this welcome back to the cyclist magazine podcast i'm your host jane spender and will is wearing his his hallmark trademark columbia fleece which looks It's very warm and, as described, it's quite large. Is that because you're not putting your heating on or do you have your heating on as well?

1:59You're a cold man. The heating was turned off over the weekend. Over the weekend? Do you sort of operate some weekend ban on your heating? No, we analysed our debts to whoever we're paying for gas and electricity and decided let's just, you know, turn off. Let's just not have the heating on. Well, do you know what? it's not very efficient. It's better off just to have your heating on mostly kind of low and keep the heat in the bricks, as my old dad used to say, than to let your house get really cold and then have to heat it up again. Anyway, this is not what we're here for. We're here to talk about cycling.

2:35So go on, tell me about cycling, Will. Cycling, it basically involves bicycles and people, whatever kind of person they may be, they sit on a saddle, put their feet or not feet. If they don't have feet you can cycle without feet you can attach them to the pedals or sit them on the pedals and go revolutionize the pedals revolutionize the pedals but of course the original bicycles didn't have pedals the dandy horse the velocity as invented by baron carl von dreising anyway moving on you wanted to talk about the most famous of all pedal revolutionizers i would say even in this world of Tadej Pogacar and of Eddie Merckx.

3:17And that is a man by the name of Whisper It. Sword. No, Lance Legwig Armstrong. Lance Armstrong. And why is Lance Armstrong in the news, Will? Well, it sort of came out that there is potentially going to be a biopic, biopic, how would you say that word, about said Armstrong, starring Austin Butler, who has been in many films, including he played Elvis in the kind of wishy-washy Elvis film. And the film is supposedly being made by one of the guys that made Conclave, the Pope one, if you saw that. No, I've only seen the one with Jonathan Price and Anthony Hopkins. Yeah, well, I didn't see Conclave either, but I heard it was quite good.

4:02Did well in awards. But anyway, they're supposedly doing an approved, So Lance Armstrong has agreed that this is the approved biopic of Lance Armstrong. And apparently, from what I read, is that the maker said, we can't do this unless we're allowed to do it properly and tell everything. And that's Lance Armstrong on the phone. Yeah, exactly. Shut it down.

4:31Yeah, no, that was Lance. Yeah, no, we're shutting it down. End it there. Yeah, well, I don't really understand. Well, I suppose I do understand the kind of furore. I can never say that word around, you know, should Lance Armstrong have a film made about him? But yeah, just from like, I don't know, from a filmic point of view, these people aren't cycling fans, particularly. These are people that want to make films to make money. And the people that are going to kind of watch this, I don't know, probably will be cycling fans. Also might not be. I kind of feel like, whatever. You just got to make a film.

5:02You can make a film about some stuff and you don't have to go and see it. And it's not kind of, I don't know, is it glorifying him? Probably might be, but David Beckham's documentary glorified him. Yeah, I'm sure the new Michael Jackson biopic is going to glorify him as well. Yeah, I don't know, really. But on the other hand, like there's all sorts of films get made about bad things, bad people. As long as, you know, it's not going to deny that he was cheating. That's probably the whole point. I think he's more than happy this far in to admit that he was massively cheating. And also, ultimately, I bet he's going to make loads of money out of it because apparently the script was moving around Hollywood with lots of people bidding on it.

5:45Yeah, that's the thing. It's like, you know, he's going to make loads more money and he'll further rectify his, you know, image that is being constantly, you know, bringing back pictures laughing with Wiggins and Cavendish and people listening to his podcasts and all the kind of American mindset for a lot of people these days will probably be like, this guy's an American hero, everyone was cheating, blah, blah, blah. But a lot of people, especially Americans, probably will be like, no, this guy has ruined it for a lot of people. But it's film to film. That's just true. If people watch it and be like, okay, cycling, let's watch Tour de France.

6:22Is that a good thing, ultimately? Well, I mean, in this day and age, yes, it is. We need more, all the people we can get to watch cycling, being as though you can't watch cycling anywhere. You pay an all the amount of money to TNT. One of the things that I think, one day, when somebody, some financier, looks back at Lance Armstrong's life, does he go, do you know what, it turned out he's more wealthy from having been caught and then being made notable? Or would he have been better off if he had just managed to, you know, not be caught and slunk off into the sunset, having not had to pay back loads of money to US Post or whatever.

6:59All the things we shouldn't talk about, but settling all these things. Because I guess he had his big sponsorships with Nike and everything. And that, I guess, would have probably continued. Probably, yeah. But he retired at the end of the day. How much bigger would he have got as a star? Would he have just been a pundit? Would he, you know, probably still would have done his weird reality TV shows, still done his podcast. George Hinkopee would still start his new team, which are first year they're in Pari-Rubais and some of the big races you know what really would have changed not sure but I guess him getting caught was probably a good precedent that you know no matter how big you are how important to the sport you are that the catch you are going to take down hopefully there we go and maybe that will be why the film has merit because ultimately it will show the kids don't do it because look you're going to get caught and it's going to be a shit when you get caught So how about you try and be honest and be on the straight and narrow?

7:58That's a good message. That's a good message. I think I put that really unsuccinctly. Anyway, shall we move on with our guest? Yes, please. Shall I tell you? Because this is another one. Yeah, tell me. Who is it? I did on my own. Our guest today, Will, is Peter Potters, and he is the R &D manager at Belgian Cycling Factory, who you may well know better as the brand or the group behind Eddie Merck's Cycles and Ridley bikes. So for nearly six years, Peter's been at the hub of designing cutting-edge road and gravel bikes. And one of them, I've just connected the dots in this intro thinking about it.

8:37This isn't why he's on the podcast, was the Ridley Noah 3, Ridley Noah Fast 3, 3.0, which we've just put in Cyclist. We've just tested that in our latest issue of Cyclist Magazine. So go and buy Cyclist Magazine. We sound better in print, trust me. Now, if you haven't seen, it's a crazy looking bike. It's one of those. It's got huge tubes. It takes advantage of all of the changes in the tiny, they sound like minuscule changes, but they add up to quite a lot of UCI rule changes, which has created bikes with much deeper tubes because they've relaxed the ratios. It's changed geometry. So the whole thing just looks kind of crazy in the mode of the Factor 1, which we talked to David Miller about a couple of weeks ago, where the seat tube is much steeper, like a TT bike, the rider is much more forward, the whole bike looks like it's kind of lurching forward from its position previously.

9:26So everything around the fork and the bars and the stem kind of look like they're, you know, promoted forward, but it all fits and it's faster, apparently. So I talk to Peter about that. So it is pretty, you know, it's a detailed, it's a detailed chat because talking about bike geometry is not for the faint hearted, but it's some really interesting stuff, which I think is applicable whatever bike you ride, and particularly if you're thinking about buying a new bike anytime soon. Anyway, I digress. Pete is also in charge of Eddie Merck's cycles, kind of rejuvenating their bike line, which I think is fair to say, despite having had some really great bikes in it over the last, I don't know, since I've been doing this job, 10, 15 years, like the Eddie Merck's 525.

10:08And anyone that knows about this podcast has heard me bang on about it. I've got a soft spot for Eddie Merckx bikes. There have been some really good ones. However, I would say it's fair to say the brand has suffered, you know, as other brands have overtaken it in recent years. And it isn't the marquee, one of the greatest cycling brands on earth, like it used to be in the 80s and early 90s when they're making steel bikes and Eddie Merckx was in charge. And loads of people rode them to France victories and everything else. they were fantastic bikes considered some of the best in the world so Peter is hoping to bring some of that magic or all of that magic back to the brand and that's something else we chat about that'll be those bikes or a whole new line of bikes will be coming out this year we also talk about aerodynamics because Belgian bicycle cycling Belgian cycling factory easy for me to say has its own wind tunnel which is fun and then the perennial question why are bikes so expensive I'm not going to tell you the answer, and I'm not going to tell you whether or not you...

11:10I don't know how you're going to feel about the answer, but that's in there too. So without further ado, let's welcome to the show, Peter Potters.

11:23You just mentioned then your office and where you are. Is that the factory in Zellig? Is that right?

11:29Pieter Potters: No, no, no. It's in Behringer nowadays. So Belgian Cycling Factory, which is now the mother company or the holding above Edimetics and other brands as well. So we have Edimetics in our portfolio, Ridley Bikes, which today is our biggest brand. Recently acquired Nukeproof, the heritage or the legacy brand for mountain bikes. And then we also launched a new e-bike brand earlier this year, which is Ares. really focusing on urban and city mobility e-bikes. And that facility is located in Beringen in Limburg, which is a 40 minute drive from where Eddy Medix used to be. So we're in Flanders, in the east of Flanders, not in East Flanders, which is a region itself, but we're close to, We're somewhere in between Liège and Antwerp, if you want to situate our factory in Belgium.

12:33And you've also got the Aero Performance Lab. Is that part of the Belgian Cycling Factory kind of bundle? Yeah.

12:40Pieter Potters: So we have our little bike valley here, where we have the Performance Lab and then the Factory of Dreams, as we like to call it, which is where we make dreams come true, where we build our custom bikes for the different brands. Nice. So do you work across Merckx and Ridley plus others or are you primarily concerned with one or the other? No, I work for the four brands. So I'm head of product for all of our brands. So it covers quite a big range from whatever people used to get about in the city all the way to downhill riding in the Alps. So now with the four brands, we cover the whole range from track riding on the velodromes up to alpine exploring and anything in between.

13:27So there's a lot of bike knowledge in that head of yours. You can explain things like, I don't know, horse linkages and suspension sag, as well as Newton meters torque in an e-bike motor, as well as why the NOAA fast is so fast.

13:42Pieter Potters: Yeah, or at least I try to. I do have experts in all those domains in our team, which is good to have that kind of expertise in-house. So for Nukeproof, for example, mountain bikes, I'm a mountain biker by heart maybe, or at least that's where I started off doing a lot of mountain biking. But like suspension kinematics, and really if you want to dive into the details, you need experts for that. And we have Dale on our team who is a kinematics geek as much as I am maybe a geometry geek on the drop bar side. We have an aero engineer in our team. And then we have a couple of more general engineers in the team.

14:25Pieter Potters: So we cover all bases. We have a very small team. We're less than 10 in the product development team for those four brands. But because of our very deep passion for the bike, we always managed to hit the nail on its head and to really make the right products for the right application. Great. So that's interesting. So geometry, I've just finished writing a bike review this morning for, I won't mention the name of the bike, but basically it's a Swiss bike. you may have heard of it they haven't changed their geometry for an awfully long time and there are other bike manufacturers who will have not even changed it for even longer i think colnago is a good example i think the the bike that pogaccia races on predominantly now the y1 rs does have quite kind of non colnago geometry but a bike like the c68 and other bikes in the range are very very typical and they'll say we haven't done much to this since 1994 24.

15:23So when you get people talking about geometry, and I put myself in this bracket, because I want to say I'm a bike reviewer, and I understand it. Is there really any new ways of doing it? Or is it just being we've established what works for a road bike a long time ago. And B, if somebody says, Hey, yeah, I look at this geometry chart, and I can see it's got 55 millimeter trail and the 991 millimeter wheelbase. And therefore, I can tell you this bike will handle in this way is that just slightly arrogant and you know above somebody's station to be able to say i can read some numbers and tell you how bike handles you know is there much difference really i want there to be because obviously i need something to write about is there really

16:05Pieter Potters: that much difference i think for the first part of your question like should it be should there be some advancement or is there a possibility to advance geometry we we are in the yes there is camp. We typically here in-house refer to that the geometry you described that hasn't changed very much to a typical Italian geometry, hence Colnago probably still using it. What we have seen is that this geometry, this traditional style of geometry has suited riders for a very, very long time. But as everything evolves, we see a need for also for the geometry to evolve. And And for us, we are very close to this evolution because we sponsor racing teams.

16:51Pieter Potters: And we have been doing so for a long, long time. It was one of the objectives of our founder and owner Joachim to go racing, as he says, very early on with the brand. And so with Ridley, I'm talking about Ridley now. But this also carry over to Edimedics because we are still in the pro peloton with Edimedics. And we are actually now with Edimatics working also on the next generation of road racing geometry. Based on all the information we gather from pro riders, we have our aero performance lab here where we see a lot of aero bike fits happening. So where we get information, we also have our own bike fitting lab in the aero performance lab.

17:31Pieter Potters: So it's more like a performance center, not only focusing on aero, but also on physiology, bike fitting and aero. So when we bring those things together, we see that there's today a clear need for geometry to advance to the next stage, so to speak. So what does that look like? For us, that looks like steeper seat tube angles, for sure. Getting the rider more forward, more above the BB instead of behind the BB. And these traditional geometries are really putting the rider behind the BB. we now see that we need to put the rider above the bb so much steeper head seat angles when doing so you also need to make sure you still provide enough room in the geometry for the body to to fit on the bike and so when doing so also the top tube length we we have chosen to keep similar top tube lengths and move the whole thing forward so the whole system we move the whole system forward So this will automatically also increase the reach.

18:37Pieter Potters: What we have seen then is that it's claimed, ah, but this bike is a very long reach. It's so different than other bikes. But if you look at the horizontal top tube length of such a bike, it's actually quite similar to what it used to be. It's more like moving the whole system forward, opening the hip angle, making power delivery easier when opening the hip angle. And that also allows for the rider to take on a more aggressive aerodynamic position without introducing fatigue because of it being very hard to sustain such a position. So, yeah, for us, that's a very clear, yes, there is room for geometry and room is the right word.

19:17Pieter Potters: There's room for geometry to advance and room. And we need to make sure there is also room for the rider on the bike when we do so. So this is something we have now put in a lot of work and there is something new coming for Eddie Medics, which we will show at the Velo Feliz bike show in January. Some of our racers will be using that bike soon as well, where we are really applying all these findings to a modern geometry. So that's really interesting because you saying that and mentioning Eddie Merckx makes me think of the Steve Bauer bike. So he was a Canadian rider in, I'm going to say this would have been the 80s or early 90s, and it was a Paris-Roubaix bike, and it was the complete opposite.

20:00If you think a seat tube is slack now, it was almost like riding a recumbent bicycle, right?

20:06Pieter Potters: This picture is really far behind the bottom bracket. That's obviously an extreme, and that was a, I don't know, Roubaix back in those days particularly launched all these kind of crazy bikes, and you have Bianchi doing full suspension bikes with Museo, and people putting expanding foam inside of titanium tubes, all this sort of stuff. But was that born of people misunderstanding biomechanics? Have we changed our approach to geometry because we now understand how bodies work better? Or is it because components are different? So, for example, I've heard more recently more people talk about, oh, we can do this and this and this with bikes now because of shorter cranks.

20:45So we can have a lower BB and we can put the rider further forward with less toe overlap because of shorter cranks. So what is it? Is it we've misunderstood ourselves before and now we've really understood the human body? Or is it just components and there's two different, you know, there's always two ways of looking at something and both ways can work.

21:04Pieter Potters: Yeah, there's always different schools of thought as well. So you can approach a problem from different angles. sometimes it's not even only one correct angle to approach a problem so but I think back in those days I think there was also maybe a drive to do something a bit more a bit different and I think it must have been at that time the current state of technology back in those days that and I'm thinking now what they may have thought at the time like putting more weight on the back wheel having more traction, having more control over the cobbles. Maybe then forgetting that the front end might get lighter and might get a bit more skittish.

21:46Pieter Potters: But that bike, I think, did have the RockShox suspension fork. So it does show that there was a lot of thinking put into those bikes on, okay, how can we unlock potential where we are not unlocking it today? But yeah, in hindsight, we know that that was not the right way of doing it because of biomechanics. And actually, like the Museo bike, the ladies bike, as it was called in the Belgian press, yeah, that thing failed dramatically during the race. And I don't think that Steve Bauer did all too well either on that very specific bike. So I think it shows that today, of course, we are now 20 plus years further down the road.

22:31Pieter Potters: I mean, it would have been a very bad sign if we wouldn't have progressed from there in all those years with biomechanics being studied with teams hiring performance coaches instead of somebody who was seen as a reference telling them how things should be done because it was always done that way which was more like the traditional road racing approach was very strict in its thinking often like this is how it's done and this is the way and this is how it should be done and we're not going to do too much different things or then maybe somebody had a breakthrough idea and was allowed to do it. And I think it's a testament to Eddie Maddox that he did allow these experiments to happen.

23:13And I think it's also a bit of the legacy we are now

23:17Pieter Potters: continuing with what we are doing with the next generation of road racing bike for Eddie Maddox is that we are moving to the more progressive end of how we see a road bike being done. Eddie Maddox was also known for tinkering with his own bikes, even adjusting his bike fits and saddle heights and all these things in a race and during a race while riding. For us, it's this constant tinkering with bikes, constantly looking for unlocking the next performance feature on a bike that we want to continue with the Aetimatics brand now and with the new Aetimatics road bike. So I'm sure today we have much more data than we ever had and data is king.

24:02Pieter Potters: And then it's a matter of using that data in the right way and to make sure it's applied correctly. And for us, there's also a bit of a challenge here in finding the right balance between what an amateur rider is looking for and what a pro rider is looking for. Because there's always some tension between those two aspects. Yeah. I mean, just on that tension note, how much influence do pro riders genuinely have on the design process? So Ridley, Inno X Mobility sponsor, you've got riders in there. I mean, you've not been sponsoring them for ages, but you've got riders in there who you can talk to and say, how do you feel about this bike?

24:42And they can give you their feedback. But how much of that really does actually come through in the bike? Because at the end of the day, the riders are there to win races. You need to provide them with a bike that can win races. But the reason you sponsor a team at all, beyond the fact that, you know, I'm not saying that you guys don't, any bike maker doesn't love cycling. So of course they want to be a part of it. But you do that historically to sell bicycles and you sell bicycles, not to the team. You sell bicycles to real people, you know, well, normal people. So is there a sort of fallacy that this bike had this bit of feedback from this pro rider and he wanted this thing just so, and that's why it is the case?

25:21Or is it more that you guys design the bikes based on real world fit data, make a bike, give it to a professional and they just go, well, I'll just get on with it then.

25:31Pieter Potters: for us in in belson cycling factory we do take into account what the pro riders are looking for what they feel and with unix we are actually very lucky to have a team that is very outspoken in what they want and they're they have a very clear mission and that is to provide their team both the female and the male riders with the best equipment possible their ask to us is okay we need the best bike possible within reason you need to deliver for us and these are the things we are looking for and and if you look at the current Noah Faust which is our third generation Noah Faust that bike was of course UNOX was the first racing team to ride that bike and because we launched it January this year and we started working with UNOX as of this season so that bike was already in development prior to us signing Unix.

26:26Pieter Potters: But at that time, when we started development of that bike, we were still with Lotto Destiny, also a World Tour team. And we had access to their riders and we had access to their bike fits. So we had the Lotto staff come over and brainstorm with us about this bike. We had access to the bike fit data from the Lotto riders to look at geometry. We went to team camps, spoke to the riders what they like about the current bike, what they don't like about their current bike. What other riders coming in from other teams that have been on other brands, what did they like about those bikes? So that feedback was already taken into account with the Noah Fast third generation.

27:08Pieter Potters: And now, for example, with UNOX, we are now looking at our product development pipeline for the coming years in road cycling. And we are now already, we've already done a lot of work with them, figuring out where we will take the product for the next generation. So we have now started working on fourth generation NOAA already. So what would be the kind of typical thing that a pro rider says to you? Is it standardly just, I want it to be lighter and I want it to be stiffer? Lighter always. Yeah, but what other sort of feedback are you getting? And could you give me an example of how a piece of feedback, specifically what it is, and how that's then changed an element of the design?

27:51So Lotto Destiny feeding back on the NOAA Fast 3. What can you see in that bike that came from the pro?

27:59Pieter Potters: For example, on that bike, feedback we got was from taller riders, so size medium and up, that they were unable to get the right bike fit. So they were unable to get the right fit on the bike. So that's something we adjusted for by steepening the seat angle on the NOAAF 3.5. And then they were, when they on the old bike tried to get the fit right, then they had to move their saddle forward. But then they had to revert to really long stems. And then they were coming back to us. Yeah, this messes up the handling too much. It doesn't corner really well anymore. It gets a bit twitchy or a bit scary in certain situations.

28:37Pieter Potters: So now we knew, okay, it's not just about steepening the seat tube angle. We also need to make sure we extend the front end, make the front end longer so they can go back to a more normal stem length to have a more balanced right feel. That's something that was very clear. Also from testing different bikes with Caleb Ewan, for example, we did also find out that stiffness is also a thing and that these sprinters can really put a lot of strain on a bike. that other pros and mere mortals just cannot put on a bike. So something that we also needed to take into account. And we have our very clear idea and we have very clear stiffness numbers of what we want stiffness-wise in the different areas of bike, head tube, BB area mostly.

29:24Pieter Potters: And we kind of like revalidated those numbers knowing the feedback and sample bikes that Caleb had been on and bikes that he loved and bikes that he didn't really like. so that's it's not only about reimagining the product but also about validating what we are doing and having them test and provide feedback to not to see are we on the right track yes or no so that's that's how it works with with with lotto with unix for example we are now working on on time trial as a first project and there for example it's also quite interesting to see that what the pro riders want and what the UCI allows us to do.

30:06Pieter Potters: There's also quite some tension there. And so we are, as a matter of fact, today not able to make the bike required for really tall riders. We just hit the maximum dimensions that we are allowed to by the UCI and that's not even enough. Really? So what are those dimensions? Can you kind of, on that's a bit abstracting? So for a really tall rider, we would need to be able to make an even longer bike. And the UCI has a restriction on the front center. So that's the distance from the DB to the front axle. That's limited by the UCI. We want to be longer than that. And it's not just a couple of millimeters.

30:45Pieter Potters: We're talking centimeters. Right. So which is really massive. That's one of the challenges we then also have. Yeah. Okay, then it's a matter of just trying to go to the maximum. And then that's it. So how does a conversation like that go with UCI? Because presumably bike brands yourselves have got a connection to people at the UCI and you'll be feeding back and they'll be talking to you. And you say to them, we just want this bike to fit somebody. There's no danger here in making it a bit longer. And there's no specific advantage that we're getting that another team can't. And what's there? Because it seems crazy that you just can't make a bike that's sort of big enough to fit a big rider.

31:30I get it if you wanted to make a bike that's five kilos and then someone says, well, that's just too light and that could snap and that would be dangerous. But how does that conversation go? Because surely that is something you would need to change because it's just arbitrary and doesn't benefit anybody.

31:45Pieter Potters: There's actually very little conversation. And that's going to be the issue. So the only conversation we have with the UCI is getting our bikes approved. And that's making sure that whatever the rulebook dictates, that our bikes conform to those rules. And sometimes there's a bit of discussion on how to look at some of those rules. But that's about as far as it goes, unfortunately for us. I can imagine that some of the bigger brands may have different access to the UCI. But for us as Belgian Cycling Factory, that's as far as it goes. So it's more a one-way communication of us sending in our approval request with all the supporting documents we have to provide.

32:30Pieter Potters: And then sometimes hoping for the best almost so that we hope that the rules are interpreted by the UCI the way we have read them and that the design will pass and that we get this illustrious UCI sticker that we can put on the frame and the fork. So I was going to say you guys, both Ridley and also historically Merckx at times, for a smaller, medium-sized brand, not like a massive multinational giant or something, you've pushed the design boundaries a lot. So I'm thinking the original Noah had all kinds of crazy stuff like holes in the fork, trip strips up the side, so kind of a rough leading edge to be able to change the turbulent airflow, so things to make them more aero.

33:14I remember there was an Eddie Merckx time trial bike, perhaps, that never really came to much, but was designed with Lexus and had a split down tube. So you're doing things like that. Have you done stuff and then you found out from the UCI and you've gone, shit, we've put all this money into this thing and it turns out it doesn't fit their criteria?

33:36Pieter Potters: No. So far we haven't. Okay. Because one of our design inputs when we start a project is we, up front, we determine, does this need to be UCI compliant? Yes or no. For example, if it's a gravel bike, it's less of a worry. If it's a cyclocross bike, it needs to be UCI compliant. If it's a track bike, time trial, road bike, they need to be UCI compliant. So that's for us a very clear design input where we say, okay, this will need to pass UCI certification at a certain point. So then we know that is the design constraint we are working with. And we are very diligent in across the whole design process and at the different stages checking if we are still compliant.

34:22Pieter Potters: So that's for us, that's maybe a bit of my background. We're having worked in medical devices before this, where you do your due diligence on the design at different stages in the project, bringing that methodology to our bike designs. That has stopped us from having any of these foobars where you say, now we need to go back to the drawing board and redo a whole design and maybe you would have opened molds or anything like that. Now, the closest we have gotten was about the handlebar width rules with the latest revision of the handlebar widths where the first proposals were pretty strict and were quite a big departure of what was allowed previously.

35:09Pieter Potters: And those rules were also not that old yet. So that was a moment where we were like, oh, no, if this passes, then we have an issue because then we would have maybe had only two of our integrated cockpit sizes that would be allowed in use in racing. So what were the dimensions that changed? This was about the minimum width. And back in the day, there was a minimum width at the tops, which you need to adhere to. But then everybody started turning their shifters in. And then it was the width between or the dimension between the shifters that was going to be measured. And we were, at that time, we started developing narrower handlebars.

35:55Pieter Potters: so I think first was 320 millimeters at the tops would be allowed and then we designed handlebars that were 360 and so we were like okay we were comfortable we still have some margin left and then it moved to okay we're now going to measure within between the shifters and then it was 360 I already forgot because it was a bit of a traumatic experience and a bit of a roller coaster But it's virtually by summer this year, it looked like we were going to be without any UCI approved cockpits January 1st. And then luckily in September, the final revision of the rulebook came. And then we, even on our standard 360 handlebar, we just managed to hit the right dimensions when the shifters are in a more straightforward position than we are compliant.

36:55Pieter Potters: So it's these kind of things that can sometimes throw a range in the works where you have been developing products that to the at that time existing rulebook. And then there's a rule change, which can sometimes then be very dramatic and then can have big consequences. Yeah. So this was really one of these moments where it was a bit scary for us. like okay with this one single-sided communication from the uci like okay this is going to be it then yeah it makes it very hard to to survive as a small business yeah because presumably that means yeah you're you're not only sitting on a load of stock that you can't potentially do anything with you also can't supply the team that you just signed the contract with any handlebars and then you maybe have to source some i don't know the headache goes on and on and on but i was just thinking if you took the UCI part of it out of the equation what is what's the kind of hardest part of a bike to design what are you pushing against if you like that you're you wish I don't know wish wasn't a constraint for example would it be even better to have much wider tire clearance because then you can make your frames even stiffer because you could compensate for that with tires or are you limited because the big component groups all just or drivetrain groups they only make front rear derailleurs in the classic style and if you didn't have to put a sprocket here or a mech hanger there then a frame would look different like what are those elements where you're like if i could change how things are i get rid of that thing and the bike would be this much better for this reason i think in road riding it's actually not too bad with the UCI rulebook.

38:46Pieter Potters: It's really more like dimensions like this front center thing for larger sizes, which is also now today we're looking at time trial bikes with Unowix, but also on regular road bikes. This would be an issue. Certainly if we steepen seat tube angles, this pushes the front center forward as well. So you immediately get a longer front center if you go to a steeper seat angle. So in terms of those geometry restrictions, dimensional restrictions that the UCI imposes, that's certainly not making the bike better. And so especially taller riders would benefit from a different UCI rulebook. For example, our gravel bikes, most of them are exceeding the UCI limits in terms of front center.

39:32Pieter Potters: And if you put like a 40 millimeter slick tire on such a bike, you have a very cool road bike. can so i think that's the main constraint now aerodynamics wise we could probably push the envelope more if we were allowed to go wilder and didn't have to conform to the uci boxes that's also a given i mean look at what can be done in triathlon where there are no uci rules no uci boxes and the uci boxes are basically you put a set of boxes together overlay on the frame and you have to stay within those constraints. So if you can go beyond those, you can make a much more aerodynamic bike. So there's gains to be had there.

40:17Pieter Potters: Of course, we are then talking about aerodynamics that come into play at 50 kilometer per hour and higher speeds. So which is something that myself as an amateur rider, I will only attain in a downhill. But when I'm riding on a flat, I don't get up to those speeds. So it wouldn't really benefit me. So yeah, overall, the UCI rulebook isn't too bad. There's also something to say about them wanting to preserve the way a bike looks, that a bike should still look to what they see as a bike, which is more like a classic double diamond shape. And I think there's something to be said for that as well.

40:55Pieter Potters: Doesn't always need to be a spaceship and the next generation of the bike. That's why we will do titanium bikes again with Etymetics because we also like these classic looking bikes. So yeah, All in all, you could go, of course, you can always go very well, but then we need to make sure we don't end up with a Steve Bauer, Paris du Bais style bike, which is different for the sake of looking different, maybe more than for having an actual real world benefit to the rider, to the consumer. It does feel like there is, despite the fact that UCI do cling desperately to wanting bikes to be traditional and rightly so for the sport to be about the riders as opposed to the bikes that they're riding.

41:37So less like Formula One, more like a classic sport where it's about human endeavor. Nonetheless, the latest slew of bikes have gone super aero. The ratio of three to one tube dimensions has been relaxed to eight to one. so tubes can now be kind of narrower, deeper. So if you look at your Noah Fast, that looks wildly different, much more like it could be at home doing Ironman Kona than ever before. And then, yeah, the Colnago Y1 RS, the Cervelo S5 with its crazy kind of bayonet handlebar, which has been around for a while now, Trek Madone. The new Factor. And then, yeah, and I was going to say, and then the new Factor 1, which looks like nothing else.

42:19So is the UCI maybe losing a grip? And our bikes actually finally, for this sort of little epoch, they're actually making some steps forward. Because it did kind of feel like a while ago when Specialized brought out the Tarmac SL8, which looked very much like Tarmac SL7 and SL6. And every other bike in the Pro Peloton looked very, very similar. It almost looked like, where have we got to go now? Oh, right, great. Someone's made their tire clearance two mil wider. but everything other than that seemed the same but are we now moving into a new era for bikes or is it just yeah okay great i want that's a great answer i'm glad you said yes i didn't

43:00Pieter Potters: no no for sure and for me maybe for me the current noah is already an old bike because we've been working on it for for for two years at this moment in time three years so when you are so deep into designing new bikes all the time you sometimes lose track of where are we in the general scheme of things and what people outside of our little world in product development see. But for sure, the latest relaxation of the rules of which our NOAA fast is a result, of which the Factor, the Y1RS, the Trek Madone with the split C-tube, those are results of that relaxation of the rules. And they wouldn't have been here if those rules didn't change back in 22, if I recall correctly.

43:50Pieter Potters: So yes, it has triggered a new era of bikes. I think it also triggered the resurgence of true aero bikes. Whereas before that, we saw a trend of going to the one bike, does it all approach. But for now, with this new rules, it opens up new aerodynamic profiles, which are really suited to the speeds that the pro peloton is hitting today. And the average every year Paris-Roubaix gets faster and faster and faster and the cobbles don't get smoother but the riders get faster and so the bikes need to be more aerodynamic to cope with the majority of the race is still on tarmac yeah so that's why we need those aero bikes also to be able to survive a Roubaix situation these days and whereas in the past they would break out the Roubaix specific bikes just for that one race and then they would go back to service couche and wait for the next year to come so yeah for sure it has changed and i think we will see more dedicated aero bikes coming or being used if you look at recent tour de france yeah you could really see now that the the aero bike is the tool of choice of the of the pro rider and no longer this this one bike to rule them all approach.

45:12Which is interesting, because as you say, I think Pogaccia rode his Colnago as well on RS for every road stage. I think the same is true of Vinigard on his Cervelo S5. So they have bikes in the Colnago or the Cervelo range that would be classed as like the lightweight climber's mountain bike, but yet they still went for the aero bike. So in a way, it feels like not only is the aero bike back, but actually the aero bike will eventually be the one bike to rule them all. Because now aero bikes can hit 6.8 kilos. Now aero bikes can climb like a lightweight bike and they can perform not dissimilarly to a specific Cobbles Roubaix bike, but they're way faster.

45:57So do you think in one day you might only have a Noah Fast in your range and you might say let go of like a Helium or you might see Cervelo lose the R series their climbers bike because hey you just don't need it and Specialized will go back to the Venge as opposed to having shelved the Venge they'll shelve the tarmac because that's not fast enough anymore the Venge is the aero bike but it's also the all-rounder good question

46:22Pieter Potters: but I don't think it will go that far at least not for us we we still see room for a more traditional lightweight bike because that is a bike that a lot of enthusiasts like to ride. That bike will always, even with the exact same geometry, and this comes back to your second question you had on geometry, even with the exact same geometry, such a bike will always ride different because it will have a different stiffness profile than an aero bike. And it's easier to tune the stiffness profile of a more traditional looking or a more traditional tubed bike than on an aero bike. On an aero bike sometimes there will be some compromises in the ride feel because of how the aerodynamic tube shapes behave under load.

47:13Pieter Potters: So there will always be a very clear difference in the way these bikes ride. We'll always be able to make those lighter than an aero bike and lighter than the UCI limit allows, which isn't a problem for an enthusiast rider that doesn't do UCI regulated races. So for me, there's always this room. I mean, Specialized has the ATOS in the range, which isn't an all-out race bike, but still sells pretty well from what we hear in terms of numbers, because it speaks to a different audience. now for all out racing it may well be that the aero bike will be the one bike to rule them all and we we see in unix we had some riders still use our falcon rs lightweight bike in in specific stages during the the tour and that was a very fought through choice a deliberate choice from the team because those riders during the the flatter sections of the race they are in a protected position so they are shielded away from the wind so they don't need the aero bike and then they prefer to have this the snappier lightweight bike and they will all they know that they will be also hanging on and being in the wheel where aero is less of a factor than Bogajá are riding away solo he will he can use all the aero he can get because he's solo and then the aero matters.

48:41Pieter Potters: That's the current state. But for us, it's very clear that next generation's NOAA today, aerodynamic-wise, we are, again, restrained by what UCI allows us to do with current rule books. So for us, the next chapter on that bike will be geometry improvements. So even we did something already with NOAA 3. And then we'll just work on the weight. Because what you said in Austin in the beginning is, what's the feedback pros want everything is always too heavy so whenever it can be lighter it's better yeah so lightweight is all will always matter also aero is very hard to gauge by feeling you need to do some some work to to really see or to make aerodynamic improvements tangible but weight is something you immediately notice when you when you get a bike you pick it up you feel, oh, this is light.

49:36Pieter Potters: When you push on a pedal and it's nice and light, you immediately feel this instant acceleration feeling of a lightweight bike. So weight is always there. It's always a consideration, even though that the amount of weight saving we are talking about is in the region of grams, a couple of, 100 grams, 150 grams maybe, which is nowhere near relevant if you look at what the aero will bring in terms of benefits. I've been riding with the Hammerhead Karoo for a fair bit now and beyond the slick screen and the 35 hour battery life I'm really getting into the Karoo's climber function. Now what climber does is show you any upcoming climb on a ride whether it's a pre-planned route or not and then when that climb comes up this data page pops up on screen and you get this little climb profile with gradients and color-coded sections for steepness and the distance to the top in length and elevation.

50:38So it's amazing for places I've never ridden like on a sportive where you've never ridden the course before but the crew guides you up a climb in this predictive way so you can pace out your effort. It's like having a little team DS on your handlebars. You can also look ahead at a route and see all the climbs on it. So a bit like having a profile sticker on your stem like you see the pros have in races. Only this way it's way more detailed as you can pick out a climb and look at its specific details as you go. So check out our full review of the Hammerhead crew at cyclist.co.uk and see why we gave it our cyclist recommended award.

51:16Then head to hammerhead.io and use the code cyclist to get a free heart rate strap with every purchase. Just be sure to add the strap to your cart then apply the code at checkout.

51:33It's interesting thinking about your guys top tier bikes so Noah Fast and on the Merck side at the moment it's still the Eddie Merckx 525. I think the base price for a Merckx 525 is In the UK, it's about£4 ,500, and you can spec it right up to Dura-Ace zip wheels, and it still comes in under£8 ,000. And a Noah Fast, because I believe it's only offered in a SRAM 4 spec, is...

52:01Pieter Potters: You can go all out. If you go to the configurator, you can go... Okay, interesting. Yeah, okay, I strike that. I was having a play around on the website beforehand, but I've obviously missed something. But the price of bikes is a lot, right? I think your bikes are slightly cheaper than others. But do you think, well, I guess two-part question. Do you think bikes are too expensive? And if the answer to that is no, why are they so expensive? Because they are expensive. There's no getting away from the fact that a 14 and a half, yeah, a thousand-pound bike is a lot of money for a push bike. but is it a fair reflection of what a bike costs to make to see a brand like you know i think a trek madone in the most expensive paint top spec they offer is 16 350 pounds or is it that it's just that is actually too much i'm not i'm not gonna talk about whatever a trek should cost or But if I take our Ridley Noah Fast, indeed, it's an expensive bike.

53:07Pieter Potters: I also want to point out it doesn't need to be the Noah Fast. It can also be the normal Noah, which doesn't have the wild cockpit cut out, but has the same aerodynamic frame shape, the same geometry as the range topper, which starts at a more sensible price point around€4 ,000. euros so there's there's this gap between where you can get into road racing with a noah and where where it ends with with a dura is or a sram red bike that is 10 10k plus is this justified i think it is and i'll tell you why um we we often hear like yeah but you can buy a motorbike for that money yeah and that's something we hear a lot because it's also has two wheels it's about the same size and there's even there's even much more to a motorbike than there is to a race bike but what you what we need to consider is that when you buy a noah fast you buy the exact same bike that is being used in the world tour peloton this exact same frame it's the group set is the same the handlebar then the saddle everything is the same you are riding something that the absolute best in the world are also riding.

54:21Pieter Potters: If you want to buy a MotoGP bike, it's not the same price tag as the motorbike you can buy in a shop. So you're buying into something that is absolutely at the pinnacle of what's being used in racing. That's one thing to consider. Next to that, the amount, the number game, it's a much different numbers game. We are not making that many NOAA FOS. It's a pretty small volume of bikes that we are bringing to the market. But nevertheless, we still have to do all the R &D work to get that bike to market. And it takes roughly two years of work to get a NOAA fast to market. And that's really our aero engineer, for example.

55:04Pieter Potters: He's been really doing one year of work on NOAA fast aerodynamics. together with an industrial designer that is translating those tube shapes to something that looks like a bike. And then engineers that start working on, okay, can we make this stiff enough, but not too heavy? Can we make it right nice? Designing all the components that go with it, the handlebar, seat post, a lot of small parts. So there's a lot of work being put into something that is produced in very small numbers. To do the production of such a bike, we need a carbon fiber bike. We need to invest in the molds. And we're talking here also very quickly multiple hundred thousands of euros or US dollars to get the molds made to make the bike.

55:52Pieter Potters: And also a bike frame itself. These high-end bike frames are not cheap. Also, even though they come out of, in our case, Chinese production, it's not a cheap thing. It's not something you buy on Alibaba or AliExpress. We are working with reputable frame vendors that also put a lot of R &D into making sure that these bikes are made in a reproducible way with the correct quality time and time again for, again, small batches. So a lot of specialist work goes into making this bike. Then there's, of course, the marketing side. But why do I need to pay for the marketing as a consumer? But again, you do see that bike being ridden in world tour races and you are on the exact same bike as those world tour races.

56:43Pieter Potters: So for us, we know we need to spend a lot of time, money, effort going to world tour racing as well. And then the last point is, and then I come back to the analogy of the motorbike. On a motorbike, a lot of those parts are developed and manufactured by the motorbike brand. But for us, for example, we don't make our own drivetrains. We use Shimano, SRAM, Campagnolo drivetrains. And we have to buy those from those manufacturers. So there's also there a margin split between all the parties involved. So that means that the cost for the road bike for us is also relatively high because we are buying parts from third parties and not making those parts ourselves.

57:28Pieter Potters: Of course, if we would need to make those ourselves today, that would be a huge investment because then we would need to get all the engineering firepower that a SRAM and a Shimano have in-house. So they also need to recover their engineering costs, their development costs, their production costs when they sell the group sets to us. So that's why the more high-end you go, also the higher the price tag is also for us as a bike brand to get those parts. So yes, it is a lot of money. Also for myself, I also am very conscious of the fact that this is a lot of money. And that's why we feel that for that money, you should indeed also get the exact same bike as the pro team is getting.

58:14Pieter Potters: So we don't have like a pro specific carbon fiber layup here or there. No, it is really exactly the same bike coming out of the exact same molds with the exact same layup that go to the race team. So you are really buying something very unique. You are getting Formula One performance that is attainable for a consumer if you have the right amount of disposable income, so to speak, to buy into such a bike. But there's always the little brother, so to speak. In this case, the Nola, which has a lot of the same features that is at a cheaper price point. I'm not going to say cheap because it's still a lot of money even to get into those kind of bikes.

58:57Pieter Potters: So yeah, it is a lot of money, but there's also a lot behind it. Yeah. And presumably, not to just keep going over the kind of pandemic and COVID thing, but that will have changed how expensive it is to get a product from materials into a factory, into being made by people, into being shipped back over. And the supply chain kind of halted. And is it fair to say that everyone is still trying to recover from that in a way? And so there is a desire to spend less and sell more expensive bikes. The industry as a whole has to kind of make up for a bit of a gap in its order book that happened a while ago.

59:40And there's a knock-on effect as everyone's trying to do that, whether that's Shimano, whether that's somebody that makes the batteries for SRAM, whether it's a bearing company. Everyone's in the same boat. So that cost is ultimately passed on to a consumer.

59:52Pieter Potters: Yeah, but again, here, there's a lot of angles to the post-pandemic situation. And for us today, we only recently launched our e-bike brand. So we didn't have an e-bike brand or e-bike product during the COVID pandemic. But it's really in the COVID pandemic, there was a lot of excess production of e-bikes. That is still now still a problem in the market. So there are some mind-blowing numbers of how many more e-bikes were made relative to the actual demand. And that excess is still not being sold off. So that's still lingering about. For us in the markets we are in, the pushback markets, and then mostly drop-ar for now, since we only recently restarted New Proof, looking at gravel, road, those are markets that are still growing.

1:00:46Pieter Potters: So if you look at the European sales numbers, those markets are growing. So we have been kind of like lucky to be on that side of the industry. But for other brands that have this wider portfolio already, it will be much more challenging still having this pressure of excess inventory of e-bikes still kicking about and not really moving yet. or will taking quite some time to move out of the inventory. So for us, we are a bit in a lucky situation. I don't know how big this pressure is for other brands or other parties in the industry. Great. And just to close on, I'm a massive Eddie Merckx fan. Just behind me is a shirt, a jersey, I often point this out on the podcast, which is a cyclist jersey from Cyclist Magazine, but Eddie signed for me when I visited the old Eddie Merckx factory and he was around.

1:01:43I've kept a careful eye on Eddie Merckx bikes over the years. I've owned a couple here and there. I still have an old aluminium one from the early 2000s. I've noticed that the range hasn't really moved all that much. A 525, still the same bike that I tested for cyclists, I don't even know how many years ago. Still the same bike that AG2R racing on when you sponsored them in 2019. So that's a flagship bike that hasn't been updated you've hinted that there's some new stuff coming to change that what direction is mercs going to go in is it going to go back up into competing with flagship bikes from you know from its sister brand from ridley or also from specialized what's what's on the horizon what's the kind of brand ethos now is it just a heritage brand or Is it a race brand?

1:02:32Pieter Potters: It's still very much a race brand, yeah. And we still want to be a performance brand. So for the future, this is the card we will be playing. And actually, this is our COVID knock-on effect, is the fact that we still have these relatively old bikes in the lineup. BCF acquired Edymedics in 2017. then 2020, the pandemic really hit us. So by the time we wanted to reinvigorate Edimatic, so to speak, is when the pandemic hit. At that time, it was very hard for us to get all the parts together to build bikes. And given that Ridley was our main brand, we had to focus our resources on getting Ridley bikes.

1:03:25Pieter Potters: out and this is part of the reason why we still have this some of these older models in the eddy medics lineup now we are now really looking forward to to bringing new performance bikes to the market with eddy medics so first up will be something in the in the road segment later we'll move to other segments as well and next to that which will be a really all-out performance road bike, which in a certain way will be outperforming some of our Ridley models in some aspects. Because we always want to progress and we don't want to bring out a new product for the sake of bringing out a new model. We want that new model to be an improvement over the old model and over what is current stage.

1:04:12Pieter Potters: So we always look to, we strive to bring a performance benefit to the rider, to the consumer, to the, putting that hard earned cash on the table to buy such a bike. We want there to be something real in return and a real performance benefit. So yes, that bike will be a true performance road bike that can go head to head with the best in class bikes. And next to that, we are pulling the legacy card or the heritage card as well by bringing titanium bikes as of January 2026. So we already teased something at Eurobike. So we will be bringing a line of titanium bikes next year as well, in addition to a revamped line of steel bikes.

1:04:57Pieter Potters: So that's more akin to what Edimatics used to be in the past, the traditional craftsmanship of frame building. Those frames will be made in Italy, so they will not be coming out of Asia, but they will be handmade in Italy with Italian tubing. and actually Eddie Merix learned the trade of frame fabrication from De Rosa in the north of Italy. So it's also there a bit of going full circle again with having this Italian connection in those frames, harking back to what Eddie learned from De Rosa back in the day. Will it be Team Telecom colors or Motorola colors or 7-Eleven colors on those steel bikes?

1:05:38Pieter Potters: Yeah, so we've done a Panasonic reinterpretation last year. White and blue. Yeah, white and blue. We called it Retrosonic because of trademark considerations. We've done a Capri-son collaboration this year, which was also one of the teams riding on Eddy Merris. And we kind of like want to do these retro specials from time and time again and bring back these iconic paint shops. And of course, a steel bike is really suited to do that, but also on a carbon fiber bike, it can really look really wild. So yeah, that's something definitely on the horizon for the future with either the new carbon fiber bike or with the steel and the titanium bikes.

1:06:29how high up a list is it for you guys when you're designing a bike the idea it's got to look good

1:06:36Pieter Potters: pretty high yeah it always i mean the first thing it has to be appealing that's the first thing people will see it's very hard to see aerodynamics very hard to see geometry so yeah it needs to look And the new 525 road bike, the new race bike, in my opinion, is the best looking bike in our portfolio. So I'm very excited for it to come to the market. And those who have seen it, all but one have confirmed that it's the best looking bike we have in our range over the brands. So give me a ballpark when that might come out. Yeah, should keep your eyes out around Velofolies. Okay, so that's Velofolies, which is January.

1:07:21Pieter Potters: Yeah, January. Also very clear for us that Eddie Medics as a brand is alive and that we have put effort in it and we will continue to put effort into that brand. Fantastic. Well, Peter, thank you so much for coming on the Cyclist Magazine podcast. It's been an absolute pleasure to chat. And yeah, I think as we said at the top of the show, you've got to get out of there, man. There's some holidays to be had. This is beyond the call of duty to still be sat here. So just this close to Christmas. So thank you. And yeah, I look forward to keeping the light for those Merckx bikes and hopefully getting a test on the Noah fast at some point.

1:08:00So yeah, I see if I can prize that out of our tech editor's hands. But Peter, thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye. Welcome back, ladies and gents. Peter Potters, everybody. Thank you very much, Peter, for coming on the show. And also, just to say, that was done just before Christmas. and I think it was Peter's last day and he was just about to, you know, he wanted to get out of there really to go and hang out with his buddies and, you know, drink some high strength Belgian beers and toast Christmas. So the fact that he hung around in the office when everyone else I think was going home to talk to me is very much appreciated.

1:08:35And yeah, like I said at the top of the show, do check out Cyclist Magazine because we do have the Ridley in it, which is a bike we chat about quite a lot there. And it's a bike that I think is really cool in a way where I'm not entirely sure if I would want to, I'd want to have one, but I'm not sure if I would want to necessarily have it as my only bike because something about bikes and me, I'm very shallow basically. And I like a bike that looks like a weapon and it looks fast, but I also kind of, if I'm just going to have one bike, I just want a bike that looks like a kind of nice felt road bike, which is probably a bit like the old Eddie Merckx's.

1:09:14the steel-tubed ones. But anyway, there I am showing you what a Luddite I really am. So, Will, tell me, tell me, tell me, what bike have you seen in Cyclus recently or just in the Pro Peloton where you're like, yeah, that's the bike I want to own? It's a difficult question because I feel like pro bikes just get quite ugly now, aren't they? And I feel like an important part, as someone that's not looking for aerodynamic gains, why would I want to be out on my bike for less time? why don't we make the bike rides as long as possible by riding really slow bikes true, but you could also go further that's a good point but I would say something like, so this week we had or would be last week now the news of the new Basso Palter gravel bike so I went on the press trip and did a review of the previous version and I very much enjoyed it and the new one looks really nice and like I was saying about the pro bikes nice looking bike gravel bike though yeah but these days as I'm sure you've said many times just get a couple of sets of wheels you've been fine yeah but you've also ridden you rode the first edition Pelter and very much compared it to a road road leaning gravel bike it was a road leaning yes a road leaning gravel bike no I mean yeah all true and yeah classically shaped and I like Basso's for the reasons for the following reasons which I'll tell you whether you like them or not.

1:10:43Number one, it is a family-run business with Alcidi Basso, who started the brand and still makes the bikes and sort of kicked it off in his shed once upon a time and now has a successful bike brand. Number two, they make, I'm not going to definitely vouch for the Poulter, but they used to make all of their high-end above a certain kind of, I don't know, Ultegra spec and above, say, bikes, all made in Italy. So carbon bikes made in Italy that aren't actually insanely expensive because normally if you get a carbon bike made in Italy, then it's like, I don't know, what's a good example? Yeah, Colnavo C68, and it's just exorbitantly expensive because it's all heritage, heritage, artisans, da-da-da.

1:11:23Whereas Basso, don't really shout about it, but they're made there by a factory called Stardieu, which does other carbon stuff for motorsport, I think. Or maybe that's the parent company of Basso. They do, yeah, it's the parent company. They have Lee Coogan mountain bikes. Lee Coogan mountain bikes? they do and there's some connection with a it's a brand of body armor for um motorsport anyway um that won't come to me and you don't need to know what that is complete red herring point yeah no so that's that's something else i like about basso and then also there was a point where they were just unapologetically italian about the whole thing and everyone else was beginning to do wide tires and stuff like that and bikes are more comfy and they had a bike called it's the original diamante which is stood in their range but it was like pretty fat tubes compact frame the most ridiculously tight clearances you could just about squeeze a 25 million there if you were lucky and then the whole thing was really really short as well it had like 402 mil chainstays which is very very short and it was absolute weapons ride and it was really quite uncomfortable and it made zero it just gave zero f's about anything else going on in road cycling at the time and was just like um a road road bike of yore so i rated them for that so there we go those are my basso pronouncements whether you like them or not but what i would say is a really fun experiment is you know you see all these pro bikes can you ride them most of the time probably not do you know if you want to own them might not have the money to buy them however from this is from personal experience and i'm not being paid extra to say this are you not no um unsurprisingly but if you go to one of cyclists track days either this year or another year you can try out a lot of really expensive nice bikes and it's very interesting and very fun and we've got a gravel one this year and road ones there we go i will put the dates in the show notes but they're coming up over the summer aren't they?

1:13:29The gravel ones on Father's Day that's why I remember. We're even going to be at some of them aren't we Will? Yeah. I mean not all of them and maybe hopefully maybe not together but it'd be nice to see you in the flesh but yeah our cyclist team will be at cyclist track days and they are good crack. I've got to say I went last year to the one at Odd Down in Bath which sadly I don't think we're doing this year and there was a couple there from I want to say Philadelphia they come from the states and i was like oh that's cool what else are you doing here in the uk and they're like no just this we just saw this advertised and we thought we'd come i mean we've been to wells and we've been to see the cathedral and we've done some sightseeing but this is our the reason for our trip like that's mental and i didn't sort of i sort of wanted to ask them the question and i danced around it like have you felt it's been worth it and they were like yeah and i was like cool because i think it sort of should be but equally it's a hell of a long way to go so there you go people do genuinely love it they had a wicked time well luckily they have been repaid by the return of the Philadelphia Cycling Classic race this year so they're going to get some stuff in their town is it sponsored by Philadelphia Cheese?

1:14:42I hope so but I doubt it it would be good though wouldn't it there's a great tie in there I don't know if Philadelphia is an American company it's probably a craft over there yeah I reckon it's something like that something like that well I've got my last recommendation I've banged on about this before but I've finished it finally my TV recommendation for everybody out there is Shifty which is the Adam Curtis documentary which is like a five parter on BBC iPlayer and Adam Curtis makes his documentaries he's like a kind of very old he's got he sort of smacks of Etonian but I don't think he actually is but he's like kind of clipped English presenter type guy and he makes all of his documentaries out of archive footage of sort of Britain through the ages.

1:15:26So not only is it a kind of portal back to a strange time where people wore brown suits and had avocado bathroom sweets and everyone in Britain was like thoroughly racist and Thatcher was on the rise, but it tracks the changing of power from Thatcher through to the Blair years. I'm making this sound really dry, but it's not through to the internet and finance or financing the internet and it's really bleak but it was i found it thoroughly arresting which is what i'm talking about now but it's basically really sold it it's basically all about how we've lost faith in our institutions and the problem isn't the people in charge it's that collectively everyone has given up hope wow well i've just started but three series into slow horses on apple tv with i love slow horses brilliant it's brilliant totally carried by Gary Oldman.

1:16:16Yeah. Who, isn't it crazy to think that Gary Oldman in Slow Horses is lamb, right? And anyone hasn't seen Slow Horses. He's like this kind of cartoon. He's like a disgusting man. He's cartoon disgusting bad. He's constantly like farting. He's got horrendous like feet and I don't know, he's smelt, whatever. But he's a brilliant, he's a genius MI5, MI6, whatever he is, investigator, detective dude. But anyway, couldn't be further away from the man that married Uma Thurman when she was 19. Isn't that mad? He married Uma Thurman. Bananas. That is bananas, yeah. Yeah. So there we go. He was a thoroughly good-looking man back in the day in that sort of like, he's going to play the villain in stuff kind of way.

1:16:58A bit, you know, Kevin Bacon. I would say he still is good-looking, but he's deliberately not as good-looking for Slow Horses. Yes, that is true. And also like when he played Winston Churchill, obviously a lot of make fun and that. He was good as that, wasn't he? Yeah, Gary Oldman. Maybe we should get him on the show. Yeah, I think so. I wanted to get Daniel Day-Lewis because he's into cycling. So is Harrison Ford? Is he? Yeah. Really? Okay. And didn't Bono break his hand on a bike and he couldn't play a U2 gig? Or was that The Edge? Now The Edge fell off the stage, didn't he? But Bono did something.

1:17:30Yeah, I'm not sure. Maybe, you know, inspired by Stephen Roach and friends? Yeah, I think, yeah. I mean, obviously, why not? Big U2 fans. Let's get Bono on. Yeah, okay. Excellent. Okay, so next week's guests will include your... Bono, Gary Oldman and Daniel Day-Lewis or and you know I don't want to cast aspersions it could be Steve Smith from Costelli I don't know I don't know so tune in next week to find out anyway Will it's been a rambling pleasure and I'll let you go now yeah appreciate it see you next time see you next time

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