Rockin' one of my favorite fronts.

The top beam must be pretty stout. Any head tube torsion and bottom bracket "sway" is channeled through there. Essentially the front and back half of the bike.

The basic bike frame design is how old?? Like a lot of parts as well, it's stood the test of a TON time. Has to be like billions of hours of field usage.

With new (ie "radical") designs there aren't the hours/ seasons of testing to verify how the frame & parts will stand up.

We are seeing that with the recent recalls for just the parts that deviated from the standard configuration for some manufacturers. Tri-bikes tend to be toss-away after a few years so it's not a huge problem, but safety is.

Nobody really talks much about safety here.

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There's plenty of time on that design between the Lotus and Hotta frames. But as you rightly point out, there's a lot of additional testing to be done to ensure that stresses are not too high.

However, mistakes can happen even with traditional frame designs. Look at the R2.5 recall. Gerard, on this very forum, said that the failures being reported were impossible. But clearly they weren't. Dan tells a story about his days at QR when they kept getting frames warrantied because of a crack at the seatstay-seat tube junction. They could NEVER recreate this on the test bench. On the test bench, the frames always failed at the BB. But on the road, always at the seatstay weld.

Yes, you can draw on a wealth of experience when designing a double diamond frame. But anytime you introduce composites, you have to do a lot of testing. I'm encouraged by the fact that you can't buy the Ventum yet. To me, that makes it seem likely they are using this time to do that sort of testing, both in a lab and in the field.

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I have ridden a few times with her so far and the bike looks great. Personally I'd prefer a matte black frame and matching bottle color, but design-wise looks very cool ! I mostly see her back wheel ha but it looks fast

Not sure about the aerodynamics, but I would prefer a white bike with same color or translucent bottle.

Do I like water or gatorade from a black bottle in the hot sun?
Uh, not so much ...

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Advanced Aero TopTube Storage for Road, Gravel, & Tri...ZeroSlip & Direct-mount, made in the USA.
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....as opposed to having your gels/bars melting in a black DarkSpeedWorks pouch ;-) but yeah white would look nice too

Good point, but ...

Our packs have insulated sides plus an HDPE insert which really reduces heat transfer to the insides. We tried some white nylon, but it doesn't do super well cosmetically over time. And I kinda like my nutrition on the warmer side (ever try a cold power bar? It's hard as a rock). But fluids? Those are always better cooler. That's probably why that ventum has a white fluid chamber.

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Advanced Aero TopTube Storage for Road, Gravel, & Tri...ZeroSlip & Direct-mount, made in the USA.
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It's a bit of a double standard but I'd want to see the pedigree of the engineers, some of the details on destructive testing, and some of the details on what they do for QC before I bought a bike from a company like Ventum (nothing against them, just saying not a Trek/Specialized/Scott/etc). I have similar reservations about the Dimond though I know some of the guys there have legitimate engineering backgrounds. Still, short of seeing destructive testing of the Dimond, I'm letting some time go by to see how they hold up in the field.

With all of that said, I kind of hope Ventum says "screw it" to the weight thing and builds their bike like a tank and advertises it as such. It's time people got over the weight thing for tris.

Only yanking your chain.... but yeah perhaps the bottle could be black but have an inner liner of some sort like a Polar bottle. Or perhaps a removeable shroud that goes in that spot with a separate inner bladder

No worries.

But that is a good idea, for a dedicated integrated frame reservoir as in the ventum, whether it be white or black, insulated would be a great way to go. It's not like you will be tossing the reservoir. You might as well make it top-notch and durable and nice and cool.

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maybe if you bled some juice off your Gruber Assist you could use it to power a cooled drink bottle.

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maybe if you bled some juice off your Gruber Assist you could use it to power a cooled drink bottle.

Bingo !

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Ventum is a great looking bike!

It was. I wish I had taken more pictures (thought I did but only found two on my phone). Pictures really don't do it a justice. Part of that is the paint/graphics. In pictures the bike looks like it might be a Chinese open-mold bike. In person it's lines look very nice. I'm not sure *what* they should do with the paint/graphics but they should do *something* before they go to market if they want to maximize sales.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how this bike performs in the tunnel.

I'm still seeing some areas where they can make that bike uglier.

Agreed, they can make it look like a double diamond that everyone else rides. I will take aero over aesthetics any day!

Hey Everyone,

This is Jimmy Seear from Ventum. I just registered for an account to say hello and address some of your questions. First of all, GreenPlease thank you for posting the photos. This is in fact Alicia Kaye's bike that she used to win St. Anthony's this past weekend. Alicia's an amazing person and we consider ourselves lucky to have her onboard. Alicia, along with our other pros, is very involved in our bike development process. So, the bike you see here was built specifically for Alicia and while very fast, it is not the 'final product' that we will start selling later this year.

I can't give away all of our secrets just yet, but I can say that:
- The fork you see on Alicia's bike is one of several we've been testing, but not the fork that we will sell with the bike (it will be even faster).
- We have already designed a gel holder that fills the gap in between the integrated hydration and the bars, but it's not on Alicia's bike yet.
- The "full of logos and covered in super shiny gloss" look is just for our demo/pro bikes. Our production bike will be available in matte, and we will offer different bottle colors (more to come on this�)


In terms of engineering -- we have performed a ton of structural/strength testing , both formal (machine) and informal (rider feedback). We also elected to perform voluntary EU safety/structural testing on our frame. After we passed the standard EU testing, we then extended the test an additional 25% (more cycles) and still found no evidence of strain/stress/cracks. We have also conducted strain gauge testing on our bikes (to the best of my knowledge Cervelo is the only other bike brand that does this). Long story short � the bike is stiff. Very, very stiff.

Thanks again to everyone for your interest in the bike and the great questions. I'm sorry I don't have time to check-in here every day for additional questions, replies, etc. but I will try to stop by again to say hi

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JImmy Seear
Co-Founder Ventum
http://www.ventumracing.com

Glad to see you've addressed the area between the stem and the frame bottle and the stiffness/safety of the bike. One other thing I might suggest is a partnership with a paint shop so that people can have their bikes custom painted while keeping their warranty (Cervelo does this with... someone).

I know you guys are going for outright fast but I'd strongly encourage you to consider an external straight-pull brake for the front. I have a Speed Concept and the integrated brake makes traveling a bit of a pain. IMO TriRig nailed the design of the new Omega: just pop the cover, pull out the wedge, undo the stem, and lay your bars down however you like in your case.

While I'm putting a wish-list out there you guys also might consider partnering with Renn or someone else to make a purpose-built disc for your bike and go very wide with it (stick with standard road hub spacing though). It's just a theory but I suspect a bit wider than the current norm might actually be more aero in the rear plus being able to accommodate wider tires would help rider comfort which is a very real consideration IMO. I'm thinking a rim optimized for 28mm tires would be ideal. I might get flamed but that's just my $0.02.

Spotted another random Ventum but this time it's in a factory. Background: I'm browsing Aliexpress because I was thinking about getting a cheap aluminum hard tail mtb frame and I about near the bottom of this page where they show what appear to be fatigue testing machines I noticed an unpainted Ventum. Just thought it was interesting.