Cycle Show final roundup: Shand, Kinesis, Vielo, Rose, Bottecchia, Light Blue, FLR and more

The Cycle Show took place at NEC Birmingham over the weekend and here are some of the most interesting products that we've not yet shown you from Kinesis, Shand, Bottecchia, Rose and more. 

We covered a lot more of the bikes on display in our story from Friday. Check out Huge Cycle Show First Look Faves. 

Kinesis

The major new model on the Kinesis stand was the RTD, which stands for 'Race The Distance'. It's an £850 scandium frameset that's designed for ultra-distance events like the Transcontinental Race while doubling as a practical fast-paced road workhorse for training. 

Check out all of our Transcontinental Race coverage here. 

Kinesis worked with the late Mike Hall on details for the frame. 

Find out all about the RTD here. 

We've told you about the Kinesis GTD (Go The Distance) titanium ultra-endurance bike before.

Check out our story on the GTD for all the details.

Kinesis was also showing the new G2, a £1,500 complete gravel bike that's designed to be versatile.

Get all the deets on the G2 here. 

Shand 

Shand has updated its Stoater touring and gravel bike with thru axles, flat mount brakes and increased tyre clearance — you can now fit 2in/50mm tyres on 700c wheels.

Read our Shand Stoater review here. 

Shand also its new showed its new Rizello road bike.

Although it sounds like it should be a climb in the Dolomites, the Rizello name is a reference to Scottish punk band The Rezillos (yes, it's a different spelling). 

One other interesting bike that Shand has on its stand is this Stooshie that was ridden in the recent Pedaled Silk Road Mountain Race in Kyrgyzstan by Jenny Tough of The Adventure Syndicate, the only woman to finish. The event was an unsupported single-stage race over 1,700km (1,057 miles) with 26,000m (85,300ft) of climbing. 

Not surprisingly, the bike looks a little dazed and confused by the experience but we're assured that it's still functioning just fine.

www.shandcycles.com

Vielo

Vielo revealed for the first time its V+1 UDG Rival Edition, a new version of its V+1 road plus/gravel bike with a frame that's slightly heavier than that of the original, built up with a SRAM Rival 1x groupset for £3,499.

Read the full story here.

Bottecchia 

Italy's Bottecchia has some interesting models in its range, including the Emme 4 Superlight which is made with Monolith technology, meaning that there are no joints between the front triangle and the stays.

The frame can take either rim brakes or disc brakes although you'd need to swap the fork if you wanted to switch between them.

By the way, "Il cuore non mente mai", which is written on the top tube, means "The heart never lies". This one is priced £3,699.

The Leggendaria is designed to look like the bike Greg Lemond rode in 1989 to the second of his three Tour de France victories. It uses triple-butted Columbus Spirit steel tubing with double-butted cromo at the back. The Campagnolo Potenza groupset (52/36-tooth chainset, 11-29 cassette) might be modern but the silver finish looks the part. Rather than down tube shifters, you get Ergopower controls. It is priced £3,099.

The Pulsar is an electric road bike with a Fazua motor and a claimed weight of 14kg. It's priced £5,749.

www.bottecchiauk.com

Rose

Rose's Backroad is designed to handle a bit of everything, on and off road. It comes with a flattened top tube that's intended to make shouldering the bike more comfortable, and it'll take tyres up to 42mm wide.

This one is built up with a SRAM Force 1x groupset, Rose R Thirty Disc wheels and gravel-friendly Schwalbe G1 tyres. It's priced £2,314.

The X-Lite 6 Red ETAP has a claimed frame weight of just 760g and a complete bike weight of 6.8kg, which is superlight by any standards let alone for a disc brake bike. The groupset is, of course, SRAM's wireless Red ETAP system. This model is priced £5,189.

The Edelrose Metrea (£1,632.72) is an urban bike with an aluminium frame and hydraulic disc brakes

Light Blue Newnham prototype

It was the Newnham’s paint job that first caught our eye on the Light Blue stand, ironically that is likely to be one of the things that will change on the production version of this bike – the feeling being that beautifully understated though it is, it’s not racy enough for what is essentially a performance machine. 

The Newnham is intended to build on what Light Blue have done with their Wolfson model – it’s a performance oriented year round, steel bike. Tubes are Reynolds 853, matched up to an internally routed Shimano Ultegra Di2 groupset and, Ultegra disc brakes with (on the show prototype at least) 160mm rotors front and back. The show bike had tubeless ready Halo wheels (and as they are Ison distribution’s in-house wheel brand and Light Blue’s are one of Ison’s in-house bike brands we’d expect the production models to have ‘em too). 

The all year round aspect is covered by hidden mudguard mounts front and rear.

Prices are yet to be confirmed, but expect it to come in at a similar price to the Wolfson and if the final price matches the figures we heard mentioned at the show it’ll be very competitive… which would be appropriate.

PHO Bi-focal Photochromic glasses

BZ Optics were just round the corner from the Newnham, showing off their latest range of glasses. The ones that caught our eye (sorry) in particular were the latest version of their photo-chromatic bi-focals. If you sometimes have trouble reading your phone or GPS while out on a ride these could be for you. We reviewed a pair in 2016, the latest range boast under-stated, classic looks, but the real beauty is the discrete bi-focal lens at the bottom of each lens. Three different strengths of bi-focal are available +1.50, +2.0 and +2.5 powers. 

In Australia where BZ Optics are based they offer a range of different bi-focal lenses and the option to mix and match them (as anyone who wears glasses will know people’s eyes are often/usually not the same). Not sure if they do the same in the UK, but it’d be cool if they did. The glasses are available in a wide range of colours and styles, feature an adjustable rubber nose piece specifically to help you get the bi-focal lens in the right place, lenses are replaceable too. The photochromic bi-focal retail at £99 while the non bi-focal versions cost £79. More details here.

FLR

New shoes from FLR will be available from March.

This is the top end F-XX III which has a softer upper than the previous version, a little more width at the front and increased ventilation.

It'll retail at £179.99.

The F.11 (above) doesn't have the same posh carbon-fibre sole but it's half the price at £89.99. It comes with a breathable microfibre upper with ventilated nylon mesh over the toes along with micro-perforations elsewhere. 

One other notable shoe in the range is the Energy which is a designed for spin classes, hence a sole that you can easily walk on and a mounting for a recessed SPD cleat.

The Energy will be £65.

FLR shoes are available in the UK through www.bob-elliot.co.uk.