Tom Pidcock fought to victory within the Olympic mens XC MTB title yesterday, following within the footsteps of Pauline Ferrand-Prévot who demolished the ladies’s race in an aesthetic show the day prior to this.
Pidcock and Ferrand-Prévot trip for the Ineos Grenadiers skilled crew and because of this had been each utilizing Pinarello mountain bikes however with some differing gear selections. Ferrand-Prévot selected to make use of a hardtail machine with solely a entrance suspension fork, while Pidcock went for a full suspension mannequin.
Both riders nonetheless used precisely the identical wheelset, which caught our eyes because of the uncommon and attention-grabbing white spokes. The wheels are a customized construct and use Berd spokes, P1 Race Tech carbon fibre rims, and NonPlus hubs. We thought we might dig into the tech, specs and prices behind these white spokes and wheels which have simply been ridden to back-to-back Olympic MTB Titles, which is not a nasty monitor file actually.
The world’s lightest spokes
The wheelsets spokes are from Berd and are manufactured from Dyneema which is a kind of polyethylene. Dyneema is alleged to have a far stronger strength-to-weight ratio in comparison with metal, while additionally being so much lighter than typical spokes. Berd PolyLight spokes have been available on the market for some time now, however aren’t utilized in WorldTour highway racing. You’ll probably see them on tremendous light-weight hill climb bike wheelsets because of their sub-3-gram weight per spoke.
The Dyneema Berd ‘string’ spokes have a threaded connection to satisfy the spoke nipples that’s the similar gauge as an everyday steel spoke on one finish, so the spokes will be tensioned and constructed right into a wheel. Until then they don’t seem to be inflexible and seem like shoelaces or string. The different finish of the spoke makes use of an eyelet that’s threaded by way of j-bend or straight pull hub flanges.
The spokes themselves are priced at an RRP of £7 / $8 every on Berd’s web site. More costly than most common, decent-quality spokes which normally are available at £1-3.
We counted Pidcock’s and Ferrand-Prévot’s wheels to have 28 spokes entrance and rear. That makes for a complete of £392 / $448 in spokes alone for the entrance and rear wheelsets.
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We’re certain each riders examined a variety of wheels and spoke tensions forward of the video games and we assume selected this setup for the weight-saving and trip traits.
Cost per pair of wheels: £392 / $448
NonPlus hubs
Hubs for the wheels are from NonPlus Components, a German wheel and hub producer. Both riders had been utilizing the NonPlus MTB Boost hub set which retails at €700 per pair.
According to the model’s web site, the aluminium hub set makes use of a ‘conical gear’ freehub physique design which is alleged to offer ‘400% extra floor contact’. In plain communicate, we expect this implies an angled freehub physique drive ring system that ought to present higher drive below load, absolutely nicely suited to the calls for of MTB racing.
The hubs bearings apparently include a particular lubricant, maybe thinner than common grease, that’s stated to ‘considerably cut back friction’. A rear hub weighs in at a claimed 177 grams. The entrance weight is not listed however it will likely be even lighter.
Cost per wheelset: €700 / £589 / $758
The P1 rims
Completing the construct are wheel rims from P1 race tech. Which we perceive to be an offshoot or subsidiary of Princeton Carbonworks. Ineos Grenadiers, the commerce crew of each riders, use Princeton wheels in time trials largely as of late however they’ve used the model’s highway wheels too previously regardless of being sponsored by Shimano. There is a transparent hyperlink with the highway world right here, and the P1 web site states it is an official associate of the Ineos Grenadiers highway crew.
The rim utilized by each riders is the Singularis M30 carbon fibre wheel rim, which has a claimed weight of 419 grams and makes use of a 30mm inside, hookless rim. It additionally options the identical ‘wave’ rim profile seen on different Princeton wheels. The wheels have a listed worth of $1,800 – $2,200. Adding the identical spec wheel to the web site purchasing basket ends in a $2,800 complete and appears to be for the rear wheel solely. The model additionally mentions an M26 mannequin additionally being accessible to the riders, however this is not at the moment listed on the web site.
We obtained in contact with P1 and obtained some further data on the wheels. This confirmed our suspicion that the wheels or a minimum of the rim, had been just about designed completely for Ferrand-Prévot and Pidcock to make use of. It additionally instructed us it was the primary wheelset the riders had been ‘unable to interrupt’.
“The objective of the P1 Singularis M30 and M26 was to create the quickest, hardest, race-ready wheelset, particularly to win the Olympic video games. We went by way of a extremely iterative design course of beginning in 2022 and labored straight with INEOS, Pinarello, Pauline, Tom, and their coaches and mechanics.”
As you would possibly count on forward of an occasion just like the Olympic MTB race, a programme of testing and improvement went on to assist the riders decide on their optimum setup for the races.
“We did a number of on-site testing weeks, in 2023 and 2024, with Tom and Pauline testing completely different spoke sorts, spoke tensions, tyre widths, rim widths, and tyre pressures, to decide on the optimum configuration for every rider and each situation. Team mechanic Rune Christensen was key to this improvement as we had fixed communication over the past 20 months to assist speed up the iterative course of.”
Cost per wheelset: $2,800 (NonPlus / Berd rear wheel)
* There are at the moment no rim / entrance wheel costs listed on-line.