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.
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.
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.
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.
Obviously can't be trusted, antisocial, ban motor vehicles...
But getting paid for it is the very definition of professional....
Never had a Shimano QR fail on me. They just work. And the top end ones look good too....
If you're only looking at the guy in front of you then you're going to crash whatever brakes you have, you need to look beyond them to anticipate...
As a woman, this works great for me! My chain broke once, and a kind guy stopped with a chain breaker and sorted it all out for me. We stopped at a...
Same. I also have gone through a bunch of their tyres, and only the extralight disappointed (torn sidewall) but the standards are fantastic....
thanks for the ideas....
Indeed - but it's no more inconsistent than our current road design - very often UK high streets are "for shopping" and also a busy through route....
If you ask the world's leading economic commentators how many people have been rescued from abject poverty by capitalism the average answer would...
loads of parking