What a momentous day in the world of high end triath-gear! Omni? What's Omni -- just an orthodontist-level expensive, poorly wrought, bastardized road bike with water bottles strapped all over it, including one on the top tube, right in front of the seat post. With repulsive orange paint. And rim brakes! The future is here now -- I am moving up my TriRig bankruptcy projection to 15 months.
Let's start with looks...I mean, talk about polarizing. When I first woke up this morning, I thought it was awful. Not quite Omni bad, but still, hall of fame hideous. But in just a couple hours, it has grown on me measurably. The videos with a rider on board make it appear like a combination of a motorcycle and a rocket ship. And I love love love the red and black color scheme -- my wardrobe will match perfectly right out of the box. Rolling around with matchy matchy kit is critical for anal retentive, vain, narcissistic triathletes, of course. Aside from that, I don't love the massive logo.
They did a decent job on fit. It will fit me and it will fit me quite well. At my size, it's 1cm longer than Omni for the same stack. Sits right on top of the small Shiv TT for me. Not P4 or Canyon good, but fine nonetheless.
The integration is outstanding. I love the the Barfly mount for the Garmin -- a small need that Salazar has long pretended does not exist. If I don't have that Ventum reservoir with one of these new bikes, I do need a bottle on the down tube, at least for training, and Andean provides that. I like all the room under the bottom bracket. Could totally hide a motor in there, and Weiss probably will. /pink ?
I am a fan of many of the other small but important forward-leaning decisions they made. I love 1x. I like the thru axles...I have them on all my non-road bikes -- the stiffness provided by them is palpable. And so many places to store my Silca wrenches. Shit, might as well carry along the whole set, as well as the new torque wrench jawn from Kickstarter.
But still, I refuse to believe that it's fast...yet. Does anyone actually buy the aero data that Diamondback released the first time around with the Serios? I sure as shit don't. 30 grams slower than a P5? Haha. Okay. They issued one of the less believable charts published by any manufacturer in recent history:
They also sounded like complete morons playing up that 15 degrees of yaw thing, which of course they now acknowledge is not at all important. So my default assumption, right now, is that this bike is very slow. And I won't assume otherwise until I see reputable third party data.
Aside from that, the fact that they designed the frame around a specific set of wheels is genius. Why hasn't anyone done this before? Somebody should work with Flo so those guys don't end up in Chapter 11 with Nick. Flo wheels are exceptional aside from the completely unusable, China carbon brake tracks. But rim braking is so 2015.
Moving on to price...oh wow is this embarrassing for TriRig, Dimond, and Ventum -- the other direct-to-consumer peddlers in this space. I'm all for it, because there are very few bikes on the market that can compete at Andean's price thresholds, especially for those spec lists. I wish they were offering just the frame module, or frame module sans bar, because I like to spec my own builds, but probably I'm a minority here...triathletes are sheep. Regardless, for around the cost of a Dimond or Ventum One frameset, and just a touch more than an Omni, I can get an Ultegra Di2 build with HED Jet wheels (~$6k). That is outstanding, like better than Felt outstanding. Couple this with the fact that I can secure this for a solid discount through a personal association, and I'll be picking one up to test, and, if slow, to dump in the classifieds onto some unsuspecting lemming at a small profit for my troubles. Surely this bicycle is a big loss leader -- what kind of financial resources do these guys have? I'm too lazy to research it. But I hope those grad students were working pro bono.
I don't agree with BryanD that it will be a nightmare in crosswinds. It doesn't look all that much worse to me than an IA. Besides that, I've never ridden a bike I didn't simply get used to in crosswinds, even adapting to deep dish wheels that totally suck. I don't understand the wind weenie thing. Nobody who rides a race setup outdoors all the time is getting blown into the lava rocks.
Unfortunately, I will have to add a bar...probably my Alpha C (*shudder*). I dislike this HED one. I hate how companies come out with these groundbreaking UCI illegal designs and then slap a UCI legal bar on there. Maybe it's just not good bang for buck aerodynamically, or they are just really hard to design, or both -- but holy hell if that Speed Concept base bar isn't one beautiful and sturdy piece of kit.
One major negative for the Andean is ease of travel. This is going to be a huge pain in the ass to fly around with. You for sure have to take the rotors off the wheels (a problem for all disc brake wheels, of course). Will it fit in my hen house? A small probably will since it looks to be a standard fork under there, but if not, that might be a deal breaker. Or I might just have to pull a slowman and have two bicycles -- one not-so-super one for air travel, and one exceptionally super/integrated one for travel by car. But that makes no sense, because nearly every race that matters, I need to fly to. But it ships with a layer of safety foam! Sounds legit.
Anyways, I have to agree with rappstar, I don't get the association with Weiss. A doper once a doper always, at least in the mind of the (non-doping) athletes who will be considering this bicycle. Diamondback is already a bizarre brand in this space, and to me it's an exceptionally odd choice to try to make inroads with this niche through the face of one of more hated athletes in the sport. Why couldn't they have just gone with Matt Russell? Sure, that guy is super boring, but at least he seems squeaky clean. Weiss is a asshole and a cheat -- though I repeat myself.
Speaking of the brand, that might be one of the biggest uphill battles this bike faces. The thing is sold at Dick's for crying out loud -- it's a bit of a laughing stock. Novara probably has as much legitimacy in this space. They need to get a grad school team on the consumer branding research, because they neglected that entire piece. Why not release this thing as a fighter brand? Or try for a rebrand of some sort.
Also agree with Jordan...surely they ran this by WTC? The rules very clearly state that new or prototype equipment must get some sort of special approval.
Anyways, looking forward to my testing. When can we order?
