Happy New Year! The new year means new teams and new contracts kicking in and a few teams changed their bike suppliers and thus their bikes, obviously. There were three main changes, you can find photos of the new bikes below!
Zdenek Stybar's new Specialized bike has a striking and quite unusual paintjob. Allegedly, Mike Sinyard wanted to have these bikes in this pink as it's the same colour as the very first mountain bikes they produced. It is definitely stands out from the crowd of colour schemes. And no, before you asked it, the bike isn't a repainted Ridley, it's actually been manufactured by Specialized.
The Avid brakes remained but the new bike means new wheels - Stybar will be riding on Zipp wheels - 404s were on the two bikes on display.
As the bikes only arrived on Thursday, Stybar's mechanics didn't have much time to prepare the bikes for today's race - they finished 9:30pm last night, on New Years Eve! That's what I call dedication.
In terms of the groupset, he's back to SRAM Red which must be familiar to him from the Telenet-Fidea times.
The only exception is the Specialized carbon crankset.
Zipp seatpost with a Specialized saddle on it.
A nice little touch on the left chainstay.
I could only catch some Landbouwkrediet junior's and beloften's Scotts, but there seems to be two types - the first one is on this photo.
BKCP switched to Colnago - in this case, only the frame seems to be different, all the other componentry (Shimano Dura Ace Di2) seems to be the same as it used to be, so it's only the new frames they need to get used to.
As the bikes has only been delivered in a couple of days ago, this will be the first time the riders will have a chance to ride them properly.
Andreas 1 Jan ’12
Nice pics
Alu frame for Stybar?