The UCI Gravel World Championships is quick changing into a brand new hotbed for technical innovation for high-end bikes, encouraging new expertise throughout tyre and suspension techniques.
Lapierre was one model testing the water with new tech on the ladies’s race as a brand new gravel bike was noticed within the pits.
Its origin, use or proprietor stays a thriller to us, because it was solely briefly whisked beside the FDJ-Suez staff automobile. However, even a cursory look revealed this an altogether new and unseen bike for the model.
The current gravel choice within the model’s steady, the Pulsium ALLROAD is a significantly much less adventure-orientated providing, with this mannequin being outfitted with entrance suspension, floating seatstays and a dramatic splayed handlebar setup.
(Image credit score: Future/ Peter Stuart)
The unnamed gravel bike has some notable similarities to Lapierre’s hardtail Prorace CF, which has the same straight toptube-cum-seatstay design, in addition to a equally formed headtube.
The refined variations in tube shapes and junctions mark it as a separate bike, although.
(Image credit score: Future/ Peter Stuart)
The integration of the headset and stem, together with the aero profile of the handlebar verify racey aerodynamic pretensions, whereas the dramatic splay of the handlebar drops reveals that is very a lot a motorbike destined for dramatic off-road challenges.
The bike seems to be constructed across the SRAM XPLR vary, with a Rudy Ultimate XPLR suspension fork system, with a probable 40mm of journey.
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(Image credit score: Future/ Peter Stuart)
The dropper submit seems to be a RockShox Reverb AXS XPLR dropper – a part of the XPLR suite of elements.
The presence of a timing chip on the fork means that the bike was certainly utilized in both the elite ladies’s or age-group World Championships, with the bottles suggesting an FDJ-Suez rider on the helm. A trawl by way of the race photos did not shed any gentle on the bike’s proprietor or efficiency within the race, although.
For now, the bike stood out alongside Marianne Vos’ self-inflating tyres as one of many extra hanging technical revelations from the Gravel World Championships, and we’ll eagerly look out for extra data on the bike’s launch.
