CSC, Basso and their off-the-shelf bikes (Cervelo, of course) have now taken 3 of the top 5. Basso has responded to the last few day’s worth of questions about whether he’s fatigued or playing possum. And, where’s the $25,000/ride bike crew?
It appears that it may be about the bike, or at least one that anyone can purchase for under $7,000.
I ride a Madone, but I don’t think I could quite keep up with those guys on the mountains…
Here we go again, those Cervelo bikes are the cats ass because team CSC is riding well in the tour - maybe we can extrapolate the same thing about those new Trek TT bikes because they won the team time trial. Face it the bikes are all relatively equal these days, its all about the rider. If I have to read one more Cervelo love fest here I’m gonna puke.
Amen.
How is the CSC bike any more “off the shelf” than anyone else’s? Cervelo worked very closely with CSC to build the right bikes. The R2.5 Team that they seem to be riding wasn’t a stock bike, it was developed with the team. Sure you can buy it now, but you can also buy the Madone. The Cervelo R2.5 Bayonne that they rode up Alp dHuez last year runs considerably more than the Madone SSL. I’m not saying Cervelo is bad or a rip off, just not so much more the “bike of the common man” than Trek.
It’s still about the bike. Almost all of us buy new bikes. We look to see who is riding them and then think that we can ride just as well. We spend hours reading this forum about which bike is really better - just like we wonder whether we can gain 1 second, or lose 1 second if we use Tofus. If you Swim-Bike-Run, your bike is usually on a TT bike or similar configure.