At home, abroad, and the places in between – Marathon style Mountain Biking is my main sporting pleasure. Be it a race, a long training ride, or simply a great ‘tour’ in a far flung location – I am a huge fan of long rides in big terrain. Eastern Switzerland, the Rocky Mountains, the Snowy Mountains, the Dolomites… even circuitous routes in Greater Sydney or the Surrey Hills. Chances are, if you’re reading this – you can relate to the appeal of this type of riding and racing.
Try as I might, I can’t get by on pursuing training and racing in XCM and Stage Race events alone. Many hours are spent, and many moments cherished, while riding drop handlebars. Cyclocross? Sometimes. Road? Just about daily.
The thought of owning a road bike may leave some mountain bikers aghast, but amongst my friends, team mates and contemporaries few, if any, ride a mountain bike exclusively. Amateur mountain biking is a sport that is typically followed by those who just love riding bikes. If you want to compete well, it pays to train. And weather, time and locations can prevent that from being exclusively off road.
Not many people have the luxury of a well stocked Service Course while on the road.
Previously, I have owned a number of really nice road bikes. Agile, carbon fibre, lightweight – all more than capable of meeting my requirements. It’s nice to own nice things. These bikes have been great to train on, and occasionally go to a local crit or road race to DNF more often than not.
Recently, I had the chance to test ride one of the newest bikes to appear from the Condor stables. Condor may not be well known to those outside of the United Kingdom. Condor are becoming unique in todays cycling marketplace. They offer bespoke bicycles, as they have done for over sixty years. Their frames are still made by hand in Italy, and they back the Rapha-Condor Team for invaluable product feedback. The other part of their great bike creation comes from their design.
Ben Spurrier can alternately be described as a designer, mechanic, aesthete, or lifetime cyclist. I’m lucky enough to call him a mate. Spurrier is the bike designer at Condor, moving into this position in 2009. He has been busy recreating the Condor range, and started with the Terra-X – both in the traditional cantilever braked, and disc design. Given his penchant for ‘cross racing, this was an apt starting point. So far it seems that Spurrier is fantastic at designing bikes that are made for those who want to race. Not to ‘race’ out on a club run, or ‘race’ their fellow commuters home. He designs for those who race bikes because that’s what they do. All conditions. All year. His depth of racing experience allows an innate knowledge for what works, and what doesn’t. Spurrier is the type of person you want to design your bike.
The Super Acciaio has plenty of mod cons, running BB30 and a tapered head tube.
“Coming from a mountain bike background I was always used to mud, grit and rain, so when I first encountered it in a road race (I remember my eyes filling up with water) around Eastway, I felt relatively mentally comfortable – relative to those around me it seemed.”
Moving on, his latest bike is the Super Acciaio. Based on the Acciaio, the performance steel road bike already produced by Condor, this one was designed to be ‘next level’ in comparison. Spurrier puts it best:
“People make race bikes, people make steel bikes. Some people make pseudo race bikes from steel but none has a 1.5″ tapered head tube, a monsterous bi-oval down tube, custom rolled top tube and a press-fit BB30 bottom bracket.”
You can’t help but feel that this is the sort of bike Spurrier himself wanted to own. Something reliable, durable, stiff, resilient – but based purely on performing at the races that real cyclists get to. He confirms such a thought.
“This is just the thing for a racer such as myself who might only ever spend this racing “career” doing Tuesday night chippers. It is aimed squarely at the racers.”
A stiff fork and sturdy tapered head tube make for a predictable front end.
And so I was lucky enough to borrow one of the test bikes for an extended weekend visit in London. Given the design behind the bike, it turned out my test period was just about perfect, albeit very short. Some London commuting on rain sodden roads, a circuit race in the wind, more road riding in said wind, and a little more ‘life in your backpack’ commuting as required.
Firstly, it was a pleasure to have a bike available in such perfect sizing. This is entirely personal, but the 55cm frame size was spot on. The full time bike fitter at Condor, James Wakelin, made sure the whole bike was setup to my fit requirements. There was no need to ride away with a multitool close at hand.
If I was pushed for a first impression, I would struggle.
Confident? That’s tempting. The great sizing and well thought out geometry made getting on the bike and starting to scythe my way through London peak hour traffic in the wet a simple affair.
Stiff? Certainly. Although not an attribute readily given to a steel road bike, the Super Acciaio reacted very well to accelerations – even mild ones given the slick nature of the road.
Planted. Like the tyres, I think this is the one to stick to. Combined with the predictable and confident handling, and the well thought out tubing choices, this bike goes forward under hard pedal strokes, yet doesn’t buck around on poor road surfaces.
It was minutes before popping gutters and negotiating the general melee that is urban commuting became second nature.
These thoughts were only verified the next day, when attending a 50 mile circuit race in the far western reaches of London. Although I love to race a bike, I’m not overly good at it. And often I find myself hesitant when racing overseas, when you have more engagements on the agenda that require you to be in one piece. A certain reserved nature can tend to take over.
Lining up in a multiple lap race on a barely familiar circuit, with rain squalls circling and an edgey field required some commitment on a bike I had barely ridden. But within the first few laps I was happy to be active in the race. On a circuit with a series of tight corners, the Super Acciaio allowed the easy confidence to pedal through while tipping the bike over. No energy was wasted drifting back in the corners, and then having to ride back up on the straights. So did I win? No of course not.
Where do these traits come from? I would have to look at some of the features that are becoming commonplace on performance road bikes. The tapered head tube with the 1.5” lower bearing would be a huge help in keep the front end tracking straight when either railing a corner or pedaling in anger out of the saddle. The huge down tube kept the main triangle well braced for low flex, as did the huge chainstays and BB30 configuration.
Keeping with modern design features, the seat stays and top tube are relatively slender – more in keeping with the tube profiles we may expect from a steel bike. And the weight? Although I didn’t feel a bare frame for the typical heft – it was never a concern on the rolling terrain that I used the bike on. With the weights of reliable build kits being what they are, if youe focus is on a total bike weight – not frame alone – a lightweight yet amazingly stable and reactive bike is possible.
Performance aside, the Super Acciaio has a huge aesthetic appeal. The bikes stance is aggressive yet not too far from what a bike should look like. There are no overly swoopy lines. Each tube profile has been chosen for performance and reliability – not to match what a non-cyclist designer thinks will look good. The frame has a tangible sturdy feel to it, and you know it will take upgrades for years to come. I hear there is even a custom drilled version running Di2. No one likes crashing, but it’s easy to feel that the occasional tumble will add to this bikes character, not end its life.
Is it a perfect road bike? Probably not. I know people who manage to go through BB30 bearings faster than tyres. Some cyclists cannot own steel or aluminium bikes due to their proximity to the ocean. The bike won’t be the fastest choice for those who like to use the one bike for road and triathlon – or time trials. Some people say that a 1.5” lower bearing on a road bike is overkill. But no bike is perfect for everyone – and the Super Acciaio doesn’t claim to be.
Without copious amounts of hours spent on the bike, it is hard for me to make a further judgement. The Super Acciaio was a bike that I was happy to throw a leg over and line up in a race amongst racers who I didn’t know, and race with them shoulder to shoulder. If the option was there, I’d be lining up my own in a custom paintjob with a personal parts pick. The frame is exactly what I want from a road bike, and Condor can make sure the rest of the bike is too.