Last week saw the London Bike show at the Excel Centre. I went along to have a chat to a few industry types and since we had spent the whole of the Cycle 2011 show manning our own stand, we thought this would be a good opportunity to be able to just relax and check out all the new innovations, updated products and generally ogle at some bike ‘porn’ for a few hours. The following is a short round-up of some of the highlights, the stuff I thought was interesting and just plain gorgeous….
A very neat solution for the current move towards getting your Cyclocross bike equipped with hydraulic disc brakes. You can always rely on Hope to make something mundane look much more ‘shiney’ than its purpose would suggest.
Fizik have been making great saddles for years, and their recent products have also put a lot of thought into how the riders body interacts with the saddle and how flexibility and posture need to be taken into account when both designing and buying a saddle. With their Bull/Chameleon/Snake concept they have made it easier for people to select the right saddle for their flexibility level (although it still relies on someone who knows what they’re talking about to see exactly where a rider gets their flexibility from so mistakes are still easy to make). This new triathlon saddle goes further still by taking a long standing problem of time trials, when the rider cannot help but slip forward on the saddle when trying to get extra power down, and has got the addition of some tacky spots on the padded nose of the saddle to help stop you slipping, simple but effective! http://www.fizik.it/
A new take on Energy gels. This product takes natural fruit ingredients to create what I have decided to call ‘turbo jam’. On tasting it (there’s just one flavour at the moment although others are in development), it is like someone has taken the flavour from a whole jar of Tiptree preserve and rammed it all into a small sachet. I can imagine it will make a nice change in flavour during a long endurance race.
The other innovative feature of the QimmiQ gels is the unique way in which you get them from pocket to mouth. To start with, they are packed into a sort of credit card shaped pouch with a softer back, this means you’d easily be able to store a whole stack of them in one jersey pocket. Then, when you want to eat one, the credit card section has a scored line across is which you then snap in half revealing a hole to suck out all the jammy goodness, genius! They’re not yet being commercially sold but you can register your interest and find out more about them before they hit the shelves on their website here: http://qimmiq.co.uk/
Have always been a fan of Ergon grips and the way they really do alleviate some of the pressure placed on the nerves of the hand when riding, especially during long and/or rocky mountain bike rides. These new white GS series grip/ba-rend combos look great and will no doubt be as popular as their predecessors. http://www.ergon-bike.com/gb/en/home
And finally, my nomination for the best looking bike in show, a truly beautiful piece of machinery, from independant fabrications ( http://www.ifbikes.com/ ), it takes a classic frame design and geometry and couples it with some cutting edge componentry, but in general, just looks amazing:
