Giant revives Cadex name for new wheel and component brand

Giant Bicycles has revived its Cadex name for a new collection of carbon fibre wheels and components, which debuted at the 2019 Tour de France with the CCC team.

Readers with a long memory will know that Cadex was the name first used by Giant in 1985 for its then cutting-edge carbon fibre bikes. The name has “been re-imagined as a new category of cutting-edge components.”

The new products, specifically the wheels, have been in development since 2016 when unbranded wheels with #overachieve with labels appeared in the pro peloton. The company leaned on its sponsored teams and athletes in the development period, including Greg Van Avermaet of CCC Team, Australian Ironman pros Tim Van Berkeland Sam Appleton, and road racers from the CCC-Liv Team including three-time road world champion Marianne Vos.

“The Cadex staff have been very open to our feedback and suggestions,” said Van Avermaet. “Since our first CCC Team training camps in the winter through the spring classics and now the Tour de France, we have worked together to develop and refine these products to perform the way we need them to under the most demanding training and racing conditions.”

The new brand includes WheelSystems, what the company refers to wheels and tyres designed in unison, tyres and saddle. They won’t be available until September, where’ll they’ll be sold as aftermarket products and on a few select Giant road bike models, but we spotted the CCC team using the wheels and saddles at the Tour de France.

The Cadex wheel range includes a 42 and 65mm depth carbon rims for road duties, a full disc and 4-spoke for time trial and triathlon. The carbon rims use a hookless design and can be bought as tubeless or tubular compatible with disc and rim brake hub options. The spokes are “custom-calibrated” with a Dynamic Balanced Lacing (DBL) technology to “improve power transfer and efficiency.”

Pros might still favour tubular tyres, but regular riders interested in emerging tubeless tech will be interested in the Cadex  Race Tubeless Tyres. They are constructed using an all-new silica-based compound which Giant boasts provides “unmatched rolling efficiency with confident handling.” The CCC Team have been testing them but aren’t racing them, as far as we can see, in the Tour, at least on the road bikes.

The Cadex Boost Saddle features an Advanced Forged Composite frame with an Integrated Rail Design, which are two technologies aimed at reducing unwanted flex to improve power transfer and reduce common pressure points. The saddle has a truncated nose, a shape determined by working with biomechanics experts and pro racers from CCC Team.

“We’ve been fortunate to have valuable insights from top pro athletes, along with their mechanics and technical staffs, from the very beginning of this project,” said Jeff Schneider, head of product and marketing for Cadex.

“We started by rethinking everything, finding new ways to research how components like wheels, saddles and tyres could be radically improved with new materials and production techniques. From there we put prototypes to the test in the lab and under demanding training and racing conditions.”

All Cadex products are covered by a 2-year warranty and 5-year incident replacement program. More info at www.cadex-cycling.com/global