Sam Laidlow’s Unpainted Canyon Speedmax CFR | Ironman World Champs 2025

Sam Laidlow rode the fastest bike split at the 2025 Ironman World Championships in Nice — and we took an in-depth look at his bike!

From its raw, unpainted carbon frame to precision-balanced Hadron wheels and fully custom aero bars, every element of this Canyon Speedmax has been engineered with one goal: to go faster.
With an integrated hydration system, oversized pulley wheel, and carefully selected SRAM components, the build focuses on weight savings, aerodynamic efficiency, and race-day performance.

00:00 Sam Laidlow’s Canyon Speedmax Reveal
00:15 Custom Unpainted Carbon Frame
00:42 Front End Setup and Cockpit Overview
01:25 Custom Aerobars and Integrated Hydration System
02:05 SRAM Components and Gearing
02:16 Hadron Wheelset and Tyre Choice
03:32 Chainset and Crankset Details
04:47 Prologo Saddle and Rear Bottle Mount

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[Music] I’m here with Sam Low’s super lightweight and custom Canyon Speedbacks ahead of the Iron Man World Championships here in Nice. Let’s get into it. Okay, so first off, let’s discuss the frame. Now, firstly, he’s riding a large in case anyone’s interested. This is actually also Canyon’s first raw frame within the triathlon remit. So, that means there’s no paintwork, no lacquer on there. instead. Actually, these are vinyl stickers. They’ve also put titanium bolts in and all sorts of other weight saving methods and in total shaved a whopping one and a half kilos off of the standard version. So, I’m going to get into that a little bit further starting on the front end. Okay, so we’ve got this extra long reach cockpit which you can also purchase, but even little things like here down on the bullhorns, they’ve actually taken away the standard grip. Um, they’ve put a little 3D printed section here underneath going into the shramm levers. So, that just adds a little bit more grip, kind of an ergonomic bit underneath there. And then they put a little bit bar tape around there for comfort. All these little things just to try and save weight. Coming up into the arrow bars on the riser. This is actually a plastic cover over a little titanium riser going up through there. We actually saw that on Laura Phillips bike. Um, actually also here ahead of the Niss Iman World Championships. Again, just a method to save weight. Then it’s coming up into these custom arrow bars, which are actually developed and made by Canyon themselves. Again, I mean, given this is a one-piece monok sort of aobar design, they’re actually incredibly thin but stiff and lightweight. Now, what I love about these is actually the straw which is going down into the down tube here actually comes up the riser through the arrow bar and then pops up really neatly between his arms and actually underneath his computer mount which is also built into the arrow bar. So, it’s really sleek. They’ve also got this mount that comes off of those arrow bars and then he’s got this kind of double-decker bottle cage setup going on. I should probably also add that Sam is running shramm throughout. So, we’ve got the blips on the end of the arrow bars here, really neatly set up, and then also on the brake levers. Going to move now down onto the wheels cuz we got some really interesting stuff going on here. So, we’ve got the new Hadron wheel set, which were actually only released earlier this year. So, we got the Ultimate 850. So, these 85 mil depth, and then we’ve got the disc wheel on the back. He’s running 28 mil tires on both front and rear. These are the Grand Prix 5000 TT tubeless ready tires and he has got them set up tubeless. Uh don’t know tire pressure, but what I have just found out is that he has just had them balanced. So for those that aren’t aware, wheel balancing is when you sort of add extra material into the wheels. Normally some sort of alloy. Um on the front wheel, these have been put down into the spoke holes and on the rear wheel they’ve been put underneath kind of the uh tubeless tape. And what that does is minimizes or reduces any of that judge that you might get when you normally spin a wheel. Might sound like minor adjustment, but apparently Sam went out on this just today and said it was mind-blowing the difference. And in fact, even those following him said that just coming out of the corners, it was just carrying that speed so much better. So I was super interesting. I am very excited to hear more about that and obviously see how Sam gets on on race day because even just small margins like that on a course like this here in Nice um could be quite sizable. Moving now back on to the chain set. Uh I’m sure many out there are wondering what the gear ratio is and the size of this chain ring. It’s 58 to pretty meaty and we’ve got a 1036 on the back. So still actually quite good range. We’re seeing quite a lot of the pros actually opting for 58. I’ve even heard someone on a 60 even a 62 here. So Sam hasn’t got the biggest, but um it’s a very slick setup. As I mentioned already, he’s running the ShraMM red EAP here. Uh it’s all ready to go. So this is all been waxed up. Yens from Canyon has been do a very good job getting this all well very fast, very slick. Something that did jump out to me is this crank set. It’s from a brand called Cybry, which I’ll be honest, I hadn’t heard about before. Uh I did a bit of Googling. Apparently they produce some of the lightest and stiffest cranks out there. So, we have a little bit more of a look into those. He’s running 165 mil crank length and on the end of those, he’s got the Favo power pedals. You also notice, of course, he’s got this chain guide here that is all carbon fiber, super lightweight, being produced by Canyon custom for this setup and positioning. And one final thing on the sort of chain set and setup, we’ve got the ceramic speed OSP jockey wheels just to really smoothen out that chain line. Okay, final bits then. Let’s discuss the saddle and the hydration setups. We’ve got the Prologo Predator 01T saddle which I’ve got a little bit too excited about a few too many times on GTN. Uh it markets around €12,000. Uh it is the first aero tested saddle. Uh so the saddle rails are almost encapsulated within the saddle. They’re completely hidden. Uh which apparently has reduced its drag and made it more aerodynamic. We’ve also got this aero sort of design going into a fairing on the back which also doubles up as a mount for the bottle. So, he’s got this easy gain bottle mount which attaches directly onto that Pro Logo saddle. So, he’s actually opted for quite a lot of hydration to be carrying here. So, in theory, he’s got two bottles behind the saddle, two bottles between the arms, as well as a down tube hydration bladder. Uh I don’t know whether he’s actually going to start out the race with all of that hydration cuz that is a lot to be carrying up the first climb, but I have also heard that he requires a lot of hydration and fuel and actually wants to be quite self-sufficient and just get his head down. So yeah, that is a lot of fluid to be carrying around, but yeah, pretty cool. I was going to say I’ve absolutely loved running through the bike today. Sam always delivers when it comes to interesting setups and pushing innovation. Let me know what you think about this bike in the comment section down below.