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TECH NEWS
3T Strada 1x Aqua Blue Norman Hansen - 2.jpg1x 3T Strada ridden to first professional road race victory
Lasse Norman Hansen has taken the first UCI professional road race win with a 1x drivetrain bike, the 3T Strada, sprinting to victory on stage one of Australia’s Jayco Herald Sun Tour.
The Danish rider, who had already finished third in the opening prologue, now wear’s the race leader’s yellow jersey.
Naturally, no one is saying that Norman Hansen won because he’s on a 1x 3T Strada – he’s an experienced pro rider who won gold in the omnium at the 2012 Olympics – but his victory appears to demonstrate that a bike with a single chainring and a wide-ranging cassette can cut it at the top level.
Aqua Blue Sport, the Irish UCI Professional Continental cycling team, began riding the 3T Strada at the start of this year. Obviously, it's a disc brake bike, although victory on disc brake bike barely warrants a comment these days.
Our man Dave Arthur reviewed the bike for road.cc last November and it’s fair to say that he was highly impressed.
Mat has been in cycling media since 1996, on titles including BikeRadar, Total Bike, Total Mountain Bike, What Mountain Bike and Mountain Biking UK, and he has been editor of 220 Triathlon and Cycling Plus. Mat has been road.cc technical editor for over a decade, testing bikes, fettling the latest kit, and trying out the most up-to-the-minute clothing. We send him off around the world to get all the news from launches and shows too. He has won his category in Ironman UK 70.3 and finished on the podium in both marathons he has run. Mat is a Cambridge graduate who did a post-grad in magazine journalism, and he is a winner of the Cycling Media Award for Specialist Online Writer. Now over 50, he's riding road and gravel bikes most days for fun and fitness rather than training for competitions.
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21 comments
I've looked closely at this aero bicycle and can't figure out why the seat stay junction is so bulbous and ugly. Why?!! Explain it 3T!
He may not have won because of the bike but the bike certainly didn't prevent him from winning. What we have here is a bike which can allow a top level cyclist to compete with other top level cyclists. You may like the bike, you may not, but you cannot say that it is inadequate when used in the right conditions. Maybe being on the right machie allowed him to be one of only 9 riders left to fight out the stage victory.
The main point though is we are all discussing the merits or failings of the sponsors product, we all know what bike he rode to this victory.
MEGANEWS. Something which has happened lots of times, has happened again, only now with a special proviso to enable more marketing guff. Jesus.
I'll keep my jizz to myself for now but I'm glad they've got a win under their belts so early.
Chapeau!
"but his victory appears to demonstrate" that someone who is much better than the rest on course on a bike. This is NOT a top level race, it's a tier two race at best.
There were only 9 riders at the end run in due to strong winds that blew the race apart, he took an opportunity to stay at the front, that's experience not the bike, he was then the big name/strongest rider for the sprint in which he has form for.
The 3rd place in the prologue is well jack all to do with a 1x as it was a short sprint of 1 mile won by that top road rider Ed Clancy, followed by a 22 year old kid just starting out.
But well done on trying to find a link between a victory and a bit of kit that has too many shortcomings to be useful at a top pro level.
Next you'll be saying that disc braked bikes are the reason for winning a specific stage somewhere when the rider using the bike is the best in the field for that stage type.
Let's have some stats, how many races/stages have been lost by riders using the 1x system against how many victories?
Well there's one in the win column ATM, so, how many attempts has it taken for a 1x drivetrain to win a tier two level event, 50, 100, 150??
Jizzing over this is a marketing managers dream.
In mah day, you had two gears, go and stop, you didn't need fancy new wheels or owt like that. No just some grit in your teeth, a spare tyre over your shoulder, a pint at the local and pork scratchings to eat. These youngsters don't know they're born!
You had a bike - bloody luxery.
I had to get up and 4 in the morning, before bikes had even been invented, build me own bike and then set off fer work down the pits for 24 hours and then get home have 10 minutes sleep and do it all over again and if I missed a day my dad would tan our arse until it bleed and if you tell youngsters that today and they won't believe ya'.
#fearofchange
#inaccurate/speculative reporting/supposition/fake news
Oh the fucking irony - why don't you try not quoting out of context next time ?
Take 5 minutes to think about that last post, is that an appropriate response to a comment made by someone who has a different opinion from you about a bike?
Yes, I think it's entirely appropriate.
Firstly, not only is my opinion of the bike irrelevent, i've not actually made any opinion public about it here. I can do if you want, but it's rather dull and probably not what you think.
Secondly, and more importantly, BTBS quoted part of a sentence out context, added an ending, had a bit of rant about the race and made a straw-man about people saying the equipment was part of the reason for the win - which they didn't. Then replies to another post with a 'fake news' comment. That strikes me as fairly ironic, YMMV obviously.
The actual quote was
..which seems to me to mean that it has the basic functionality to be able to be used at that level - nothing to do with it being somehow the reason for the victory. In fact absolutely nobody here appears to be claiming that. It does, however, seem to put some pressure on your 'fact' that the bike "has too many shortcomings to be useful at a top pro level" - we shall see in due course I guess.
3 as far as I can see.
Isnt it interesting that the Aqua Blue team have been denied places on all 3 Grand Tours this year. Wonder if its any to do with them pushing to envelope and challnging the status quo? Given thier good results last year they should have been a shoe in for at least one of the three.
I hadn't noticed that,bit harsh for them to miss out on a vuelta wild card given their win last year.
I thought Gerard Vroomen's article on 1x differences was interesting. most MTBers have been running 1x systems for years and appreciate the one-hand gear changes, and I can see why this is a definite advantage in a lot of off-road scenarios where conditions and gradients changes within split seconds, maybe not such an issue on road bikes where you generally have loads of time an dnotice to change both front and back, and with electronic it's no hardshift, shifting both just for fun.
I run eTap on my road bike. SRAm will almost certainly be preparing a 1x shifting system as I write this. You can bodge it anyway at the moment by having a left hand blip located near your right hand shifter and ignoring your left hand shifter. Not perfect, but close.
It's the stem wot won it, ouch!
Strange that despite being the key player in 1x, Sram haven't managed to put out an Etap 1x yet. Surely that must be in the pipeline soon. having all the shifting limited to one lever seems odd!
Cracking bike though, really looks the mutts!
Interesting.... if it is more aero then maybe we will see more 1x set ups on 'sprint stages'. I could totally see the protected sprinters running a 1x, in fact I can see most of our national criterium series on a 1x moving forward, indeed why not?
I wonder if we'll see anyone running an adjusted Shimano 1x on paris roubaix this year? It would be sensible.
...of course it's not the flat or sprint stages where we're really interested in how 1x performs....
I was thinking that, maybe a clutch mech and a top guide so no dropped chains
Certainly proves a point that it's not about how many gears you have or what type of brakes you are using!
Power and aerodynamics.