A lot of us have already seen this picture of Fabian taking a picture of his new unnamed TT beast, but after a few weeks here is the official press release on it :
Cut through drag with the Shiv
The radical Specialized S-Works time trial bike that Saxo Bank’s Fabian Cancellara has been piloting over the past few months – to great success, we might add – is now officially called the Shiv and it will be available for public consumption in 2010, albeit in “incredibly limited quantities”.
Key features include the in-line level top tube and integrated stem, the enormous forward bulkhead section with the fully enclosed front brake built-in, the almost nonexistent gaps between adjacent components, carefully configured internally routed cables, special shaping around the top of the seat stays, the bottom bracket-located rear brake, and an especially slippery fully integrated aero bar setup.
In spite of the forward section’s visual mass, it is its relative bulk and width that actually helps it achieve better drag figures at more realistic yaw angles more typically seen during a real world time trial. Naturally, Specialized claims impressive aero figures for the Shiv: just 513g of drag at 0 degrees yaw relative to the current Transition’s 582g; 443g vs. 626g at 15 degrees on the non-driveside; and just 386g vs. 596g at 15 degrees on the driveside – roughly the same as what the non-UCI legal GT Superbike achieved in the ‘96 and ‘00 Olympics with its downsized front wheel, no top tube, and the limited componentry associated with its pursuit role.
In fact, Specialized is so confident in the Shiv’s aerodynamics that it is openly challenging any other bicycle company to best the bike’s performance in the wind tunnel (any takers?).
Aerodynamics is only part of the equation however and according to Specialized, the Shiv is also one of the most confident-handling machines around owing to its near-Tarmac SL2 rigidity figures: 89.1 Nm/degree for the front triangle vs. 92.5 – or roughly 30 percent better than its nearest competitor, claims Specialized.
The front end is especially stout. Though the tapered 1″-to-1 1/8″ carbon steerer tube isn’t all that solid on its own, the forward bulkhead is firmly bolted to the fork at both the top of the steerer and at the crown for a fully boxed-in structure and the larger lower bearing also allows for a broader down tube. The top tube is rather broad as well and down below, the Shiv boasts heaping amounts of carbon fiber around the bottom bracket area. Both the chain stays and seat stays are also imposingly sizeable and in fact, very little about the Shiv’s shaping even remotely suggests the idea of ’spindly’.
As if that weren’t already enough, the Shiv is light to boot: claimed frame weight is around 1,300g and a complete bike with a Zipp Sub-9 carbon tubular rear disc and 1080 deep-section front wheel, FACT integrated carbon crank and a SRAM Red group is just 7.6kg (16.8lb).
Explicit UCI approval is still in progress but Specialized adamantly insists the bike is ‘UCI-compliant’ and it has already been used in competition at both the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de Suisse – cross your fingers.
Specialized will offer the Shiv in four frame sizes, all measured using the easier-to-interpret X-Y ’stack and reach’ system that is quickly gaining favor through the industry. As Shiv is intended as a pure road time trial machine, Transition will remain in the lineup as a more versatile TT/Tri rig and will even gain three sizes for a new total of six.
Shiv pricing is still to be determined but the ‘extremely expensive’ descriptor will almost assuredly apply.
