Elite sponsors GCN – LOOK launch 785 Huez & That Blowout

We discuss the fresh new @look_cycle 785 Huez and plan our test rides. The shock announcement that the GCN show is sponsored by a Chinese mail order wheel company, and how we think they are coming up short. The we discuss the Thomas De Gendt Tubeless Hookless blowout at the 2024 UAE tour.

00:28 LOOK 2785 Hues Launch
08:25 GCN Show sponsored by Chinese company Elite Wheels
14:10 The Thomas De Gendt Hookless blowout.

LOOK 785 Huez
https://www.lookcycle.com/uk-en/products/bikes/road-bikes/altitude/785-huez-proteam-black-frameset

GCN Announcement

Bike Radar Article
https://www.bikeradar.com/features/tech/de-gendt-uae-tour-crash-are-hookless-rims-safe?fbclid=IwAR1qAN4JjCy2xYQ_xtlb7nOiSITcqDpgms38WKQHomkX3gS_3cJ9IZuUQjY

Welcome to another episode of the podcast back here with Jake today. We’ve got three subjects to cover today that we thought hot off the press that we should probably talk about. One is the new look 75 HUEZ, been waiting for that.

The other is that article from Bike Rider on the Thomas De Geant with the tubeless hookless thing. I think we’re going to touch on that and the other that really controversial news from GCN. About the the elite wheel sponsorship. Yeah never saw that coming. No I didn’t either.

So I think we should start with the new look. I’ve literally just been announced as Carnival Barker. So it’s the most exciting news on here. If I fall. Yeah, potentially, because I’ve done something really cool. So we’ve known about this for a while.

We’ve got a test bike come May, call it more of that to come. Now the 75 who has is the bike probably most people would probably want to ride. It competes with the time up to where is that giant TCR check on Monday, doesn’t it. And that sort of thing.

And look, normally known for really fancy engineering. And high prices. Yes. And this is incredibly sensible. I’m quite surprised how sensible it is. So a couple of little features is t 47 ball bracket internal yay standard 27.2 seatpost. Yeah, it’s a semi integrated cable, so the cables work the same as my 765.

Yeah. Which I think is nice. You’re going to put it a bit boxy. It’s part of the most practical way of having. Yeah. If you. Want. If you want the fully integrated look with no cable. Sherrin It’s much, much easier than having like a full integrated handlebar cell.

So for getting cables out and stuff like that. So it looks pretty much integrated. The you have to really carefully to see the cables, but if you want to take your stem off and just wrap them around, put out a bike box, take a holiday. So yeah, it’s so much easier.

And I fly like this 2400 quid. Yeah. So this, this bike to me is in the kind of look line up. It’s obviously it’s in between what the seven, six, five and 795 is. Yeah. As suggested by the numbers and all that sort of stuff.

But it’s, it’s much I would say it’s more similar to a seven, six, five than a blade as just as a consumer feel buy and if you what you’re looking at it looks a lot closer to a765 that does to go out race. Bike but with a standard

7373 geometry rather than the slacker and longer wheelbase of the 765. Yes, it’s a very traditional road bike geometry in. That it looks like the road bike doesn’t it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas the blade is obviously an aero race it and like the thoroughbred. Yeah. Yeah.

It looks like what a normal road bike should look like. And it’s a traditional, you know, triple triangular, you know, it’s really looks really, really small actually. Yeah. My thing they’ve dropped the RS moniker, which I think it’s going to be slightly controversial because the RS thing with one of the R.

S Yeah. Bike look a trying to get rid of that throughout the range. They’ve put it on the blade. Yeah. Columns. That, that is the, that’s the top dog. Yeah. Yeah. But I think the idea is I just want to go to Blade who as optimum and that’s it. I like that.

Which makes sense to me because it’s still a high modernist frame, It just hasn’t got the RS thing which is going to confuse a few people potentially. But it does simplify the lineup. As I like the fact that only one bike, I do think, albeit probably to simplify the line still a bit.

But yeah, because if you if you look at for example a TCR or an Amanda or even specialized network. Three bikes, there. Is it’s a lot more it’s a lot more complex, convoluted as a buying option you think what really are the differences between these.

And SL and this and all these and they don’t. They look the same from the outside, but they’re all that on the inside in terms of weights and stiffness and lay up and stuff like that. So I think as a consumer it probably quite nice. I mean it makes sense for the manufacturer

Because then you then have one product to mate so they can either make it, they can make more or they can make it easier, or they can make it cheaper so they can bring costs down, which I think we’re definitely seeing with the looks at the moment.

And if you believe that guy from Selkirk is named out here, that, you know, the distance train works at a not work is basically the way as a came out the factory and the light ones go into the works factory paint.

Yeah I don’t know how much truth to that in that or not I don’t know. But I do like the fact that it’s if you do make a bike, just make one bike in good volume that you can bring the price down. And I think that’s what

Look I do it here on a £2,400 seems to me really competitive. I mean, you’ve done some. But a little bit of scoping around the internet. I will let me find I so I love shopping and looking around and I will this is my bike really.

So we’ve had a look and see what we think the direct competitors we’ve got down at the minute. The giant TCR tracker, Mondo, the specialized Athos and time up to us. So in terms of price, now the cheapest is the look 75 £2,400. It’s amazing. Yeah. Yeah.

And then we all got the I mean, the top spec giant TCR the the race. I can’t remember the codes on it, but that’s that’s £2,900 for a frame. That’s the one with the Seatpost hire. The completely integrated seatpost that comes in £2,900. So about £5 more, but is a little bit lighter

And it’s a little bit more of a racy kind of bike compared to. Yeah. That is a very stiff frame actually. We got rid of one of these look shifter How stiff it’s going to be. But if it’s going off, there are the two recent bikes. I’d say it’s fairly I’m pretty confident.

But yeah, we’ll find out soon. Yeah. And then the next. Now, the interesting one, I think is the track him on the line up. So they’ve got it’s kind of in between the SL and the SLR in terms what it looks like four frames back and weights and stuff like that.

So the SL weighs Yeah. Among the SL weighs a whopping 1629 grams, which is a lot about that’s 200 over 250 grams heavier. You get mountain bikes lighter. Yes. You can. That’s the 250 grams heavier than the look. Yes, nearly. It’s nearly £600 more expensive. Wow.

And the SLR, which comes in a pretty tidy 1141 grams got to the website is two and a half thousand pounds more expensive? It’s over double. The look as incredible. And what we see from track in terms of it’s probably it’s quite

A similar bag in terms of fully integrated cabling to 47 bottom bracket. Yeah yeah. Stuff like that. Yep. I mean double the price. We have seen little finishing issues and stuff like that. It’s, it’s incredible. I don’t really know how they’re done. It is not expected in the look price to be.

No no I already wasn’t I think they’ve they’ve stunned everybody and maybe it is that that thing of just trying to make one bike really well there’s only four colors they really haven’t gone to town with all the stuff that’s going to add cost and complexity to production. They’ve been quite intelligent.

Now, I think Google also there’s a lot lots of little frightening bits either. I think it’s a real it’s actually a real thinking man’s bike, which leads me on actually we’ve when we do our demo, if you guys can really put your input into here.

So look, we’ve got a whole bunch of fully built bikes that you can buy. You can imagine this, a mechanical 105 arrival. I think about di2 what I five and then the top of the range one they’re going to do, they’re going to stop with Ultegra Di2.

Yeah, it’s like six and a half thousand pounds or something on that. And that’s with career. Wheels, not with cream wheels. And yeah, the rest of the ride you’ve got look branded wheels I think, which are okay. They used 80 Swiss three fifties sapien spokes, I believe it’s

Okay but I don’t really know what the rims are etcetera so but yeah it’s like a stocks that will wheels nothing yet nothing particularly special about them. The prices are okay on those but the challenger is for my mind is that cheapest build so the 1i5 mechanical bells

That you can buy fully built comes in white is 3690 so 3690 quid gets you a 1 to 5 mechanical 12 speed radiocarbon wheels. Yeah. Delivered. That’s quite that’s that’s a nice price. Yeah. So the frame is 2490. So we’ve got a £1,200 gap. Yeah.

Can we build a better bike for that 1200 quid. Two. So when off frame arrives I think we should set ourselves a challenge. 1200 quid. What can we do? I’ve got some ideas. Yeah. We’re shopping around I think. Yeah. Groupsets right now. Yeah. I suffered shape. Yeah.

If you guys got ideas, what would you put on this build? What do you want us to see us build? Are our test model of the 75 with Put it down on the comments. We really want to know

And we’ll see if we can put it in there and debate it when we build it. But I think we can build a better bike. Would you like some elite wheels on that? Chuckling Psychoanalyze the next segway. Okay, let’s just do the GC thing.

So if you didn’t say Kensho the biome of the is the establishment have announced that they are now sponsored by a Chinese wheel brand. Now I love the video that out for this cause that they were on a I like dogmas Yeah. Which are normally road.

The most expensive bike you can possibly buy. Which are normally rocky in like zip Wales one end of Princeton’s the devil’s alleys and there they are on a set of elites and it was a fairly well-made video, I guess it was.

They did well, I could say that there’s a bit between bated to you there, but here’s an interesting thing about Elite Wales. They reached out to us several times, actually is a guy called Patrick Porsche. It’s not his real name because it’s there in China, etc..

But they reached out to us, said, Would you review them at a time like, No, I’m going to give you a negative review so there’s no point. We send the new wills. This is why why would you give us a negative review Like we can’t get spares

Like your website hasn’t got axles and pull kits and spices and you use palace bikes and we can’t get palace bikes here in the UK. So there you go. There’s my review like, Yeah, that disposable wheels until we can get spelt spares. I mean they do they look, they look nice enough. Yeah.

They look nice enough. I’m sure that, I’m sure they’re perfectly nice to ride. I mean one of our mechanics downstairs, he’s got us out of the room. Bright wheels, obviously plenty of customers bring them into us. He likes them until they ride really nice. Yeah,

I did a bit of digging on the website after you kind of mention that. And in all fairness, they do have quite well-documented spares for stuff like spokes and free hubs. Yeah, things like that. So you can go in, you can find your wheelset and it’s a pretty extensive list of stuff.

I mean, they do sell a lot as well. Yeah, they got a lot of the. Bigger area making. Their way as they have. Yeah. Every wheel has from a front drive non drive rear spokes that you can get for free hubs and stuff like that.

Again, they do have axles and things like that which is a pretty inconvenient brake and axle cuts is quite proprietary because all these hubs are proprietary then yeah, they’re not just a biotechs hub rebranded, they are proprietary type. And so the first thing I noticed on the website

Was that if you do want to buy a spare, it says that the spares are only compatible if you bought them directly from elite or a verified dealer. So if you bought them from AliExpress because you can buy them on AliExpress as well,

But God knows what free body it came with or anything like that. It’s just all got and that’s why We Stumble is a bike shop, which is why I wrote to Patrick. So I can’t review these until you get a handle on this

Because we have people coming to us about these wills for a year. I think one of to think two things happens, right? And that is you brought them and you’re going to try and have a mechanic kit

And you got to reach out to Ali and say, I brought a set of wheels from you. And you know, the axle was worn down, The bearings collapse out with what I want, even though. So they’re going to ask you, you know what Wheelset is it? When did you buy it?

What model? Yeah, because I changed so regularly. Yeah. And then. And then maybe they’ll sell you a spare, but then you got to wait for it to ship from China. Like, it’s. It’s not a convenient. And I did, I did check as well if you want to

If you want to buy a free hub which is a price of $45 which is you know, that’s in the ballpark. Yeah. But if you if you buy it separately from anything else, it comes EMI, or you need a free hub. It’s an extra it’s an additional $30 of shipping.

$30 a shipping for free. And it will probably be I would, I would this is obviously not a I would hazard a guess that it will take two or three weeks to get yet to you. It’ll be a little while. Yeah.

If you if you knock on something a week before your holiday or you’ve got a race and something breaks on your bike, you are toast. I said. This is my thing. With all Chinese boat brands, life has been like some and Pete talk like some. And there’s nothing wrong with the will.

The perfectly good wheels. It’s just that they are essentially disposable. I think this is the difference for me between a product and a brand and it might have a fantastic product, but you haven’t got a brand, you haven’t got brand until you have support

And you can go onto a website and you can see a part schematic. I need part number 103 to ring up someone. I need that. No worries in the post, you know, or you go to a bike shop and they said, Yep, I can order one of those. It will be here tomorrow.

I have got a point to bring up on that. So kind of count. You know, they are actually starting to bring out authorized elite service centers and they’re actually listed on the website as got service centers that you can go to. And so I thought, maybe that’s how I did this around.

I’ve got I see where this is. And I clicked on it. And the closest one to us is about 560 kilometers away in Denmark. I close them before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. It’s pretty that close. Yeah, I think I haven’t run them yet.

See if we can get any spares because I need to brush up on my Danish. But, Yeah, that’s the. That’s the closest place that you can officially get your wheels set to England. Amazing. I can’t be honest with that shit. Sorry, but. Yeah, it’s just. Yeah, there’s so much good.

It’s not so good. There’s so much branded stuff that we can get spares for on sale right now at that price. Yeah. It doesn’t do. I can’t see. The price of an elite wheel is not so astronomically cheaper. It’s just a no brainer, is it. Know.

Until it’s still in the ballpark of a set of zips on sale. Yeah. Or fast forwards on sale. Yeah. I mean we we did a little bit with Karima and Karima mode is okay one it’s probably two or three days from France or it’s one day from Northern Ireland.

There’s a distributor in Northern Ireland. Yeah. So I mean that’s probably as long as I’d want to make a little I want to pop nearly everything else like zip. And yeah, next door to us is like next I if I got it in stock, which most of the time

I have now, the COVID vaccines ended, but pretty much it’s like next day and for lot Swiss we keep in stock like we have ratchets and and poles and everything else. So anyway I run over so tubeless. I’m going to pick this. I’ve picked this up because I saw the bike rider

Article on this actually is a really good article. Simon von Bromley wrote it and it was probably one of the best article I’ve seen on Buy, right? Is really, really good journalism. And then I saw GC performance go out for GC performance, do a big clickbait thing, right?

And I was just like, they’re calling for a universal ban on on hopeless. You saw the race life. I did God, I did watch. I watched almost again hit the floor at a high rate of knots whilst his front tire blew off. I think what seemed to be the problem was

Actually obviously the tire punctured flathead came off the rim. The thing that seemed to send him down was actually the evidence coming out of the tire and kind of wrapping in the wheel or in the fork. So I think that’s what seemed to send him down.

Yeah. Which is obviously not what you want. Yeah. And so for me, when I first saw LA aren’t inserts interesting but you’ve got a good idea of why that because you might start your narcos by my title said yeah.

So yeah the traditional use for inserts on a cross bike mountain bike grab a bike whatever you all call it is to stop you from bottoming out and either damaging your rim or flying your tire. But in a road race, especially somewhere like UAE, whether

You bury snow on highways most of the time with perfect road surface, I think the actual reason for the inside is instead of stopping that from bottoming out and that was probably still a little part of it is much more to do with being able to roll back to the car

Or to someone who has a spare, a wheels or a spare bike for you to swap on to. Yeah. So that you don’t have to stop and wait. Just need a wheel. Yeah, a. Lot of the rest. It’s all throwbacks to trying to replicate Tubular

Where if you got a puncture with a tubular, you could at least ride and keep some momentum going until you got the, you know, the team car picked you up and you go it again like, yeah, I can kind of see that. And mean the article is very well written.

We don’t know all the details. And Simon Von Bromley picks up on that. We don’t. He was running a 28 millimeter tire on a very wide 24 millimeter, but it is on the approved list for the pick cetera. We don’t know what the tire pressures were. It was a hot day.

Maybe he hit a bump and exceeded the tire pressures. He talks in the article about, if fact, the whole article read like the comment section. Yeah. On a couple of our more controversial videos. Yeah. Which are definitely worth watching. There’s a controversial videos out there and the comment section

Or you could learn so much about hopeless videos from those comments. It was it was insane. So was he right in 73 pass I hit something or I went over that safety margin. The safety factor were his rims out. Speck seems hard to believe that he had too many wraps of tubas type.

You know, who knows? You’ve got about six millimeter sidewall and one more wrapper that can throw out and we just don’t know. And this is my thing with Hook was like, I don’t hate the technology. I hate how much it was, how badly it was communicated. Yeah, And it does it does.

Seem to be because I’ve got a couple of sets of Hook Kurzweil’s I’ve not had as personally I’m not a single problem with them. We don’t I’ve never seen a customer come in here who’s had a set of tires blow off a set of hopeless wheels.

Not and but it does seem to be coming much more prevalent in racing people having tires, blowing off rims and causing crashes or incidents and things like that. Yeah, I still think this like for years, like decades, we’ve just been taking a tire, you know, a 1923, a 25

Put a tube at it and pump it up to 100 pairs high, you know, pump out 200 parts like when you buy a petrol pump. This is my thing. So you pump it up when you get to about a hundred per.

So it becomes quite hard to get it above 100, you to get it to 110. So even though on the side wall of the tire, it might say max pressure, 150 820, by the time you get to 100, it’s almost like, ooh, that’s quite a lot of pressure and you touch it.

It’s like, you know, you always got that kinetic feedback telling you that you’re almost at your pressure when suddenly 73 most pumps sail past 23 with ease. Yeah. You don’t even think. Can you just and just go in? You don’t have that like kinetic feedback. And then there’s the whole like takes, etc.

I, I think they should have communicated it was that hook. Cross technology is for 30 millimeter tires and above unless you happen to weigh under 70 kilos, in which case you might get away with a tire out. But the thing is, is even if you run a so for what?

What I can see from the article and from what lotto have been doing in the lot sort stuff, they have taken every precaution that you probably would take on a set of tubeless wheels. You stop either getting punctures or being able

To, you know, if you do a puncture, get back to the car. Yeah. And so. I still hanging with. Me up. Even if you’re running a 30, 32 mile tire, I don’t particularly see what stopping from. If you do get a puncture and you’re still rolling

Along, stopping it, blow it off the wreck. I think obviously, if you I don’t think I’d be surprised that I was over inflated or anything like that. I’d be surprised if if there was anything really wrong with that. These guys are professionals. They know what they’re doing.

They’re going to be running the optimal tire pressures and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, you’d hope so. Yeah. Yeah. I’d be really, really surprised if they’d done anything stupid. The cause up to go. RO How heavy do you think, Thomas, To get in?

While he will not weigh a lot at all, he’s pretty sure it will show. You might still be in the sixties. Even in the he’ll be in 60. Yeah. So you well estimate. Say should be he won’t be bouncing off the limits on the No on of 70

He should be well within like 60 something. So if I run on the hot side. Yeah. So it shouldn’t have been anywhere near it. So such an interesting one isn’t it. I think. And Dan big on this article, he actually tweeted didn’t they said a history will not be kind to. Road.

Road hopeless and I think that’s a very. It’s very interesting because obviously Dan Bigham is a guy who’s massive re clued into his tech become a big big arrow guy I presume because he does a lot with any else on the performance side.

I presume he’s very much clued into how much this is going to be an advantage disadvantage in the pure numbers side between hopeless and Hot Wheels because those guys are looking for every advantage they can get. And so whether they’ve done additional testing to work out

Safety factors, stuff like that, I don’t know. It’s. You know, does he know what we do or I think you just speculating the same as you would as a consumer saying I’m saying a lot. I think yeah. Although I think there’s a bit of both on that.

I think I’m pretty sure that Dan’s experimented with the technology for sure and obviously sees all that the faff that’s involved in. Like I think once you get the setup right, it’s okay, but it’s, it’s actually okay. But it’ll save you much more does it at.

The same time it’s just like, yeah, there’s not really, really any benefits to the consumer other than the cheap costs too. My, my, I. Mean the ABC, the cheaper costs are reflected in the price. When you buy the wheels, you don’t need the cheaper cost in terms of the manufacturer.

And really yeah, I can’t see a particular benefit on a side particularly downside either apart from when you get into the situation. But you know if when I’ve used them I’ve used a nice 3032 millimeters on a 21 Wide in total rim and it’s actually had absolutely no problems.

It’s just a thought about it being hopeless. It’s just been like a thing and it’s just, it’s, it’s been fine you know, but I recognize when people have had issues it’s normally like how, which tire what that and like I didn’t know if that was a tire pressures and yeah

So I don’t know it’s all going to end you know like what. Is the conclusions type from this. What this crash, this failure, the continued saga of plus I’d what’s your takeaway from this today. I don’t think Cliff is going to wake up in the same way as it

We banged on about disc brakes and aero extensions and levers turned in and I don’t think this is going away I think is here to stay. I think the whole industry needs to work out a whole bunch more. Like with Ethiopia.

I got somewhere with it, you know, and it just needs to filter through. It just needs to be stopped being behind closed doors. It makes all those documents not behind really expensive documents. Get it out there, get the safety stuff out there I think can do that,

That I think it would just be generally accepted as and if you want to run a narrow tire or a high pressure, you don’t buy across Britain. If you’re riding an endurance bike with 32 millimeters tires, then I’m makes so much difference if your uncle for short conclusion.

I think I think you will always see failures no matter what, no matter what stuff you’re running. You know, you see old Tubular is rolling off, you see. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Clenches blowing up and in the sun. I’ve said that many a time.

People paying out 250 and pass on That gets hot in the day. They blow up and like Yeah. Tubeless or it will deflate overnight and or if you hit a pothole you might puncture. I think you’ll always see failures regardless of the equipment.

And I think I think we’ll wait and see because there is quite a large proportion now of the professional peloton riding whole class Wales. Yeah. Like that Giant. Yeah. It’s a lot of stuff. There’s probably up to up to 30% on whole class wheels now I would guess. Yeah. Yeah. Mr.

Pulled out of fresh air but I wouldn’t disagree with that. On the thinking of the proteins that run those. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 20 of 30% of guys. Yeah. I think if there’s if we start to see more and more and more failures in professional racing,

I think that’s probably assigned to say they might need to do something about it whether, but whether it’s a co complete ban or not. I think that’s it tonight we’ll find out. But time. Yeah, I think the technology will probably stick around. And tell the guy time to end the thing.

Remember put down in the comments what you want to see on this 75 build rolling forward to getting that together. I’m a complete for it to arrive actually so by that I’m sort of quite excited about it and yeah right. We’ll see you on the next one. Thanks for watching. Take it easy.