Custom-painted Specialized Allez Sprint Disc spotted in Adelaide
(Image credit: Instagram: Ide Schelling)
Deceuninck QuickStep's Sam Bennett, Bora Hansgrohe's Jay McCarthy, and a selection of their teammates are set to use the aluminium Specialized Allez Sprint Disc at the Schwalbe Classic criterium this Sunday ahead of the Tour Down Under.
Other riders to be racing aboard the Allez Sprint include Deceuninck QuickStep's Iljo Keisse and Shane Archbold, as well as Bora-Hansgrohe's Erik Baška and Ide Schelling. A post on Instagram Stories by Bora Hansgrohe rider Ide Schelling displayed his new bike, with the joke "new bike days are not so extraordinary in this team".
In 2019, Specialized launched a Down Under collection of shoes, helmets and saddles. It remains to be seen whether the same will occur this year, but Cyclingnews understands this bike will form part of a wider collection.
The bikes will be kitted out with the teams' usual Shimano Dura-Ace R9170 disc brake groupsets, along with CeramicSpeed equipped Roval CLX wheels.
Peter Sagan's Allez Sprint at the 2019 Tour Down Under (Image credit: Jack Luke)
Specialized has a history using the Tour Down Under to showcase its newest and boldest tech - Sagan's gold Roval wheels in 2017, for example - and displaying that the Allez Sprint is good enough to be raced in the WorldTour is bound to please budget-conscious racers the world over.
The Schwalbe Classic criterium is the warm-up to the WorldTour opener, the Tour Down Under, which begins on Tuesday 21st January. It consists of a 1.7km circuit in the heart of Adelaide, raced for an hour plus one lap for an expected total distance of 51km.
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Josh is Associate Editor of Cyclingnews – leading our content on the best bikes, kit and the latest breaking tech stories from the pro peloton. He has been with us since the summer of 2019 and throughout that time he's covered everything from buyer's guides and deals to the latest tech news and reviews.
On the bike, Josh has been riding and racing for over 15 years. He started out racing cross country in his teens back when 26-inch wheels and triple chainsets were still mainstream, but he found favour in road racing in his early 20s, racing at a local and national level for Somerset-based Team Tor 2000. These days he rides indoors for convenience and fitness, and outdoors for fun on road, gravel, 'cross and cross-country bikes, the latter usually with his two dogs in tow.
