Russian squad Katusha is debuting Canyon's new Aeroad CF SLX at the Tour de France. Here we take a look at the team-spec machine of Yuri Trofimov.
The most notable difference between the team bike and stock is the absence of the integrated bar/stem on the team machines. While Canyon's retail bikes will have one-piece carbon cockpits — available in five stem lengths, with two bars widths for each — Katusha goes with the more practical Ritchey WCS bars and stem, usually in alloy.
The Aeroad CF SLX frame using a truncated airfoil shape that Canyon calls Trident 2.0. Based on the Trident airfoil shape used on Canyon's Speedmax time trial bike, the Aeroroad's Trident 2.0 tubing is based on a 2.6:1 ratio instead of the UCI-maximum 3:1.
As you'd expect with a new aero bike, Canyon claims aero gains over the bike's predecessor. Surprisingly, though, the down tube isn't hyper-slender; Canyon engineers found in iterative prototype testing that the front wheel generated so much air turbulence that they could make a relatively wide down tube without adding drag.
The Canyon Aeroad CF SLX has two front brakes. The bike has two direct-mount Shimano Dura-Ace callipers, but the rear is mounted where a normal rear calliper would sit, instead of the under-the-chainstays positions where a direct-mount calliper would go. Canyon claims mounting the rear calliper atop the frame, instead of tucked down by the bottom bracket, results in less overall drag since the frame shrouds the calliper this way.
The new Aeroad CF SLX gets a tapered 1.25in steerer tube, which should stiffen the front end over the original Aeroad.
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