Bike at Bedtime: Steven Kruijswijk’s Bianchi Oltre XR4 Giro d’Italia race bike

The year is 2016. The leading riders have crested the Cima Coppi and have started the descent of the Colle Dell’Agnello. But disaster strikes for the Maglia Rosa, Steven Kruijswijk as he slams into a wall of snow that has banked up at the side of the road.

This is Kruijswijk’s bike from the 2020 edition of that race, though none of these lovely Bianchis made it to Milan after Jumbo Visma pulled out of the race on the morning of stage 10 due to positive Covid-19 cases within the team’s bubble.

> Read our review of the Bianchi Oltre XR4

But let’s not get bogged down with that. Let’s have a look at this Italian beauty.

This Oltre XR4 sports a sleek black and celeste paint job. While the standard team bikes feature a full celeste design, this black version saves a bit of weight, helping keep the bike down at the UCI’s minimum weight limit.

A Shimano Dura-Ace R9150 Di2 groupset provides the shifting and braking and those are Dura-Ace pedals too. Kruijswijk uses a 54T outer chainring with a 39T inner. This is matched with an 11-30T cassette. The cranks are 172.5mm in length.

> Review: Bianchi Specialissima

There’s no integrated front end here. FSA provides a carbon front end and unusually, we see the under-stem Di2 junction-A box. This does make it easy for the rider to enter indexing mode, or crash recovery mode while on the move, so this could be why Kruijswijk chooses this setup.

Kruijswijk also foregoes the usual out-front mount in favour of the classic stem mount for his Garmin Edge 830.

The busy cockpit area could lead your eye away from the re-purposed sprint shifters that are poking out from the celeste FSA cork bar tape. The wire for this sprint shifter isn’t long enough to reach that position on the bar, so we’d bet that the mechanics have been busy adding a bit of length.

Moving towards the rear of the bike, Kruijswijk opts for a seriously skinny Fizik saddle. The Jumbo Visma site says that it is an “Antares 0.0” model, but one look at the central section has us thinking that this is a pro-only version.

Wheels are from Shimano in the form of the Dura-Ace C40 tubulars and these are shod with 25mm Vittoria Corsa tyres in the tan wall finish.

> WorldTour race bikes of 2021 - the models ridden in the pro peloton

Now that Jumbo-Visma has changed bike sponsor to Cervelo, Kruijswijk will be riding the R5 or the S5. Fans of Bianchi will find Team Bike Exchange racing the Oltre XR4 and the new Specialissima in 2021.

> Want another bike before you drift off? We've taken a look at the Team Bike Exchange Bianchi Specialissima here