Not just some of the CSC riders are on Speedplay, they all are. It was kinda funny when the riders showed up the first day of training camp, they were all supposed to come into the equipment room to pick up their bikes for their first training ride. So they walk in, and see a Cervelo bike and fork, Easton bars, Speedplay pedals, Zipp wheels, FSA cranks, all stuff they have barely heard of or not at all.

I wish I could have read their minds at that point, but the riders really have a lot of confidence in Riis' choices, so they all got their cleats fit and tried out the bikes. Most came back for a few adjustments on the cleats, but they were all impressed with how logically the adjustment of the float works.

The funniest was Carlos Sastre, who is known for never making any fuss. He came in, handed over his shoes to get the new cleats installed, put on the shoes, took a bike (not his own), rode around the room slaloming around some chairs, got off, said "thanks, that's perfect" and was done.

And after the training ride, not a single complaint. Which especially for the pedals is very surprising, since they are a very personal choice and most of them were very convinced before trying the Speedplays that their old pedals were the way to go for them.

Anyway, to get back to the Speedplay pedals, they are red just to match the bike. So they are normal Speedplay pedals, but they normally aren't red. I think the type of pedal that CSC rides is normally yellow, but then they switched the colored bits. And I think the yellow pedals are track pedals, but the only difference with the road pedal is the higher tension needed to disengage. The pros seem to like that. I hope that makes sense.

Finally, regarding taking the Ultegra stuff off the Soloist, you can also just get the frameset and build it up from there, but I guess you know that.

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Gerard Vroomen
3T.bike
OPEN cycle

I could be wrong here but I think all the Zeros are the same regardless of the color.The Track special just has no float in adjustment the cleat

Tom, I believe the red bodied Zero is normally the Track model, which has a shorter and stouter(?) spindle for better clearance and strength for the tree-trunk sprinters. I suppose it would be nothing for Speedplay to just slap the red body on a Ti or Stainless normal length spindle as special equipment for a sponsored team. For you and I, we'd have to order the track version to get the red. Not a bad thing unless you really need a wider overall Q. If I'm not mistaken, the normal Zero Ti body is yellow. I personally own two sets of the Zero Stainless with blue body, and I sure wish I had the red to match my bikes. Strangely, there just isn't a lot of call for track bikes and equipment here in the Norfolk, VA area making the track model a spec order item

click the link to the cycling news tech section CSC / Speeplay press release

http://www.cyclingnews.com/tech/?id=2003/news/jan10

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"on your Left"

That's straight from the Speedplay site. BUT the weight for the track vs stainless is 220g vs 198, leading me to guess that the spindle is slightly beefier also. All the same, it still would be easy to put the red body on a standard spindle/pedal if they wanted to. For that matter, the float is still free, but the extra tension of a track model would give an added level of assurance that things will go as planned for CSC when Dean or someone else stomps on a sprint.

OK, I was talking to Speedplay this morning so I also asked about this. The scoop is, most pros are riding the track pedal due to the higher release tension that they prefer. The standard track pedal is red, but for the pro road teams they make the same pedal in yellow to make them recognizable as pro pedals. For CSC, they did not make them yellow but left them red to match the CSC color scheme.

As for axle spindles, there are various widths available but most pros (and I think all CSC pros) prefer the shortest spindle in order to get the lowest Q factor.

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Gerard Vroomen
3T.bike
OPEN cycle

The more I thought about it the more my conjecture that pros used the track model due to the extra release tension made sense, but until now thats all it was: conjecture. Thanks for the info, Gerard. Like I said some time ago, its good to have someone to pass on tidbits from inside the pro scene.

The higher release tension is actually not to prevent pull-outs, those won't happen with either type of Speedplay pedal, road or track. The higher tension is because the pros have been riding with Looks or Times for so long and are used to putting in some effort to release, so it feels more familiar to them. When you look closely at the Speedplay pedal you will see that the spring related to the release tension is not involved at all with keeping the foot from releasing by pulling up. Both action are completely independent, which is also why you can't pull out of a Speedplay pedal the way you can (if you try hard enough) out of a Look or Time with worn-out cleats.

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Gerard Vroomen
3T.bike
OPEN cycle

So let me get this straight.All Zeros are the same expect for the spindles.The difference is in the cleat??

No, maybe I was imprecise in my wording. The higher tension in the spring is not created by the spring, but by the shape of the pedal. So the pedal is slightly different between track and road. At least if I understand it correctly. Now if you next question is whether or not the cleats are identical, the answer is I don't know.

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Gerard Vroomen
3T.bike
OPEN cycle