In celebration of the 25th year of Ritchey’s Swiss Cross cyclocross bike, the brand announces the launch of a limited edition bike based on the original but with disc brakes and room for larger volume tyres. There’s only 100 available in red though so you’ll need to be quick!
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We are Ritchey fans here at off-road.cc, having just tested the new Ultra frameset and had a shed load of fun. With regards to this new bike, limited edition means, yep you guessed it, there’s not going to be many of these around. There will be two versions, one with red to white fade paint and another in black. With only 100 red ones produced it’s likely that one is going to be super tricky to get hold of!
The new bike is disc only, it gets 12mm thru axles (142mm rear spacing) and flat mount brake tabs ready for 145 or 160mm rotors. You’ll also be able to fit up to 40mm tyres now into the bike, it’s still a CX race bike at heart so that room is supposed to be for mud clearance but if you did have other more adventure or commuting based plans for the Swiss Cross you’ve now got room for a wider range of tyres. In fact, the Ritchey Logic Instagram describes this as ‘a gravel smasher, a trail explorer and an all rounds shred sled’!
The new bike also gets different geometry adding slightly longer reach, a lower stack, a small bottom bracket drop and longer chainstays to account for the wider tyre clearance. Head angle is still 72 degrees and a 74 degree seat tube angle. There are six sizes to choose from – XS to XXL with the smaller sizes getting more sloping top tubes for better standover.
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The bike uses Ritchey Logic steel tubing and still uses a mix of brazing and TIG welding. There is still the neatly integrated seat clamp and the bike also comes with the full carbon Ritchey WCS Carbon Disc Fork. It keeps a standard 1.125″ straight steerer and the thin forged and machined headtube with integrated headset cups. There is a threaded bottom bracket, a 27.2mm seat post and external cable routing, with space for two bottle bosses inside the front triangle.
The bike will be available as a frameset only in black for £1259 and for the limited time the red and white anniversary version is £1349 (inc. a colour matched Cow Bell). So get in touch with your local Ritchey dealer quickly if you want a red one! Or if you are happy with the black bike then you can get that online here – www.ritcheylogic.com
If you want to know how the bike might ride, road.cc have reviewed the Swiss Cross Disc back in 2016, read the review here.
