Irish carbon specialists FiftyOne has just released a run of 10 rather expensive, limited edition gravel bikes made in collaboration with ENVE.
Named after Alphonse Steinès — the assistant to the director of the Tour de France in the early days of the race and a pioneer of the sport who truly brought the event to the mountains — the Steinés has been created to mark his achievements.
The top tube displays the legendary telegram sent by Steinès to the organisers of the Tour shortly after regaining consciousness after a fairly unpleasant crash while recceing the Tourmalet that read “Crossed Tourmalet. Very good road. Perfectly feasible”.
ENVE supplied much of the build
The road that Steinès was referring to was a gravel surface at the time and that is exactly the sort of riding that the bike is designed for: lightweight gravel adventures over high Alpine passes.
Each bike is handmade in Ireland using tube-to-tube construction, with fit and layup tuned to each individual customer. A full, and interesting, run through of how each bike is made is available on the FiftyOne site.
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The legendary telegram
The pictured bike features a top-shelf build, with ENVE’s all-new G23 gravel wheels, an ENVE GRD fork, ENVE finishing kit and a Rotor UNO hydraulic groupset, all of which adds up to a bike that is claimed to weigh under 8kg and brings the price to a rather staggering £12,600 (approx $16.700, €14,232, AU$22,500). The custom frameset is available for £5,800.
With its 38mm Panaracer tyres, wide range gearing and low weight, we suspect this will be just a touch easier to tackle the pass on than the singlespeed bikes of the early days of Le Tour.
This isn’t the first collaboration between the two carbon specialists, with FiftyOne producing a line of limited edition bikes to celebrate ENVE’s 10th birthday last year.
