I dropped by City Bike Depot the other day, one of my favorite bike shops, to say g’day to the lads and see what was new. What was new was this Cannondale SuperSix EVO, the same frame employed by Team Liquigas-Cannondale for this seasons campaign.
This is a 2012 Cannondale Super Six EVO frame and fork, which, when pulled out of the box, weighed in at 675 grams. It was then built up with an SRAM Red groupset, connected by Nokon cables. This weekend, it’s heading to the Australian Alps for the 3 Peaks Challenge, a 235 kilometer loop starting and finishing at the Falls Creek Alpine Village. The EVO’s weight savings will certainly come in handy during the vast climbs, while Ciamillo’s Zero Gravity Brakes will definitely be a good investment on the descents, which will be just as epic. It’s rolling on a Reynolds DV32 wheelset, shod with Schwalbe Ultremo ZX tires and latex tubes.
Those with an eye for detail will note the Cannondale Hollowgram SL crankset, which has been buffed by hand from anodised black to gloss silver, a true test of patience usually reserved for those restoring a hard-to-find classic. The final weight? A non-UCI-legal 5.75kg with pedals.
It’s quite a departure from the bikes usually seen on The Spoken, but the focus of The Spoken is beautiful bicycles, and I know there’s quite a few readers out there who will love it. I began to liken it to Formula 1 cars like Red Bull’s Renault RS27, because this bike is built to race, which immediately reminded me of the classic Italian racers we love so much on this site, and others like Fyxomatosis. Surely Ernesto Colnago, Francesco Moser, even Eddy Merckx were trying to achieve the same goal with their bikes as Cannondale did with the EVO. So are we looking at tomorrow’s modern classic?
