No matter how much money you have, you can’t just cruise into a Ferrari dealer and ask to buy the same car that Lewis Hamilton drives at work on a Sunday afternoon. And no matter how friendly you are with your local Aston Martin dealer, you simply won’t get your hands on a facsimile of Fernando Alonso’s F1 car.
oBut cycling is a little different, and the bikes that we are currently watching the world’s best riders use at the Tour de France really are available to us all, and not quite at the eye-watering sums it would take to get even close to owning an F1 car.
One man who enjoys the magic of being able to provide both elite and not-quite-so-elite, with their dream bike is Orbea’s hugely respected road product manager Joseba Arizaga. We caught up with Joseba three-quarters of the way into a sweltering 1,100km drive from Orbea’s home town in Mallabia, Spain to the Tour de France Grand Départ in Lille and – despite being car-bound for long, hot hours – Joseba’s passion for racing bikes was as evident as ever.
“There are two beautiful things that make cycle racing magic. The first is, at races like the Tour de France, you don’t have to pay anything to get close to the action and see the riders go right past you. The second is, the riders at the Tour don’t actually use anything uniquely special – you can buy essentially the same bicycle as your pro rider heroes,” Joseba says.
“There may be some small difference to affect things like aerodynamics. Some riders use super long stems that wouldn’t suit us ‘normal’ cyclists, to get their position just right. So ergonomics are one area where there is a difference: professional team riders have a few more options.
“And we might also choose certain specific components for specific events. For example, the wheels used by an 80kg rider competing in a cobbled Classic will be different to the wheels used by a 60kg rider in a mountain stage. But there are no secrets when it comes to the equipment being used because UCI rules require that any components that riders use must be on the market.”
Tour Bike Option 1 – Orbea Orca M10i Lotto Replica £10,999
Nothing will get you closer to the sensation of what it is like to ride a Tour de France bike than jumping aboard Orbea’s Orca M10i Lotto Team Replica. With it’s awesome carbon frame – featuring Orbea’s incredible OMX carbon-fibre technology for maximum weight-saving and rigidity – along with Shimano Dura-Ace groupset and top-spec finishing kit, including Orbea’s own Oquo wheels, this 6.7kg beauty can make any rider’s dreams come true.
Even better that the real thing
Funnily enough, Joseba points out that non-Tour riders – ie, people like you and me – can even have, at least in one regard, better bikes than the pros.
“We can make bikes that are much lighter than UCI regulations allow. In fact, the bikes that aren’t subject to UCI regulations weigh a lot less than the bicycles that are used in the peloton. So actually, as a consumer, you could by a bicycle that is lighter than the ones used in the Tour de France,” Joseba says.
“Then there are issues like tyre size. Year after year, pro riders have been using wider rims with wider tyres. The UCI has imposed an upper limit of 31mm now, but any casual rider who would like to go against the accepted wisdom in the peloton and use thinner tyres would save a bit of weight. Or if they agree that wider is better, they can go wider than 31mm.
“And then there is the issue of gears. A few years ago we were talking about a 53-tooth chainring; today the norm in the peloton is 55t or 56t, and we have even seen 60t. Typical cassette size has gone up from 11-25 to 11-34. So everything is bigger and slightly heavier but the riders are riding faster because the bikes are more aerodynamic.”
Tour Bike Option 2 – Orbea Orca Aero M10i Lotto Replica £10,999
Designed to cut through the air, the Orbea Orca Aero is the sharpest weapon in Team Lotto’s arsenal that’s been proven in wind tunnel testing to be the fastest bike in the pro peloton. If the mano-a-mano action of normal stage, criterium or one-day races doesn’t quite do it for you and you think the greatest spectacle in bike racing is actually the team time trial, or the greatest challenge is man against wind resistance, the Orbea Orca Aero M10i Replica is the ultimate machine.
New kit for the Tour
Orbea itself isn’t immune to innovating with its technology and this year’s Tour will be the first time the Lotto team riders have used Orbea’s new integrated handlebar and stem, and new Oquo wheels.
“The Lotto guys will also be using our new Oquo wheels with 57mm profile and 23mm internal width, along with the new Oquo Q10 hub for the first time in competition. The Q10 hub itself is already a winner, having recently taken a Eurobike Award for innovation,” Joseba says.
“And from the Tour de France onwards, the Lotto team will use our OC integrated handlebar. This is a one-piece carbon-fibre handlebar and this allows us to reduce the weight to a really lightweight 320g for a 100mm stem with 38cm width handlebar. In addition to the weight reduction, it also improves aerodynamics, so it makes the bicycle a little bit more efficient,” Joseba says.
Of course, success at the Tour is a primary goal in and of itself, but a side benefit is that elite-level competition can help Joseba and his team produce better bikes for everybody.
“We learn something every week in competition because cycling is a very dynamic sport – the preparation, the communication, the nutrition, it’s always changing. That means we have regular briefings with our sponsored riders, like the Lotto team,” Joseba says.
“Sometimes we even do recons of certain races to try to find a way to make a positive improvement to our bicycles before the team even gets to the race. Then, at events like the Spring Classics, we’ll have a continuous conversation with our sponsored teams before doing a debrief of the entire three or four-week period. We’ll look at what happened in the races and what situations were new, and sometimes we do specific debriefings about aerodynamics or safety or reliability.”
Tour Bike Option 3 – Orbea Orca M20i Lotto Replica £6,899
There’s no hiding from the fact that Lotto Team replica bikes don’t come cheap – you are, after all, paying for the most advanced racing machines in existence. However, there is a more affordable option. The Orbea Orca M20i Replica looks like just like the real thing but with some judicious speccing options – including an excellent Shimano Ultegra drivetrain – it opens up the Tour bike experience to even more riders.
Complete confidence
Joseba’s reference to reliability is an important point and fits with the old adage: ‘To finish first, first one has to finish’. With Orbea’s top-level bikes being available to anyone, from weekend riders to elite professionals, how does the company find the perfect compromise between outright performance and long-term reliability?
“Those two ideas actually go together perfectly. When we talk about performance at World Tour level, we are looking at maximum efficiency, so the bikes need to perform as fast as they can in order to race. But that could be on cobblestone races, flat stage sprints, or in the mountains. Professional riders produce so much power in all those scenarios that we need to make sure the bicycle is very, very reliable,” Joseba says.
“It doesn’t matter if we are trying to reduce the weight of the bicycle to make it better for a mountain stage, we will never sacrifice reliability because, on those same stages, the riders will be going downhill at 90kph or 100kph. So we need to keep reliability at a level that matches that kind of performance.
“And, as I mentioned before, there are special races like Paris-Roubaix where we would normally look especially carefully at our team bikes’ wheels, because the road surface can create huge impacts. You cannot decide ahead of time on which side of the pavé you are going to ride or if there is a cobble missing. So in those types of races we might reinforce the wheels to guard against impacts.”
So, with Orbea’s bikes being put through the toughest test possible on the greatest stage possible at the Tour de France, does Joseba ever feel nervous? Not a chance.
“It is true that sometimes it is super scary when you watch the riders taking on certain sectors at high speed. In the last few years particularly, they have been riding faster and faster; it does make me hold my breath to see riders racing at that speed. But we know our bikes are reliable and safe, so it’s not so much nervousness as excitement because we know our bicycle is going to perform.”
To find out more about Orbea bikes visit: www.orbea.com / FB: Orbea Road / IG: orbea_road
