Bora-Hansgrohe and Deceuninck QuickStep to use alloy bikes at Schwalbe Classic Criterium ahead of Tour Down Under

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. 

Following a similar move in 2019, in which Peter Sagan and a selection of his Bora-Hansgrohe teammates raced the Down Under Classic criterium aboard custom-painted Specialized Allez Sprint Disc framesets, Specialized will once again be supplying the aluminium road bike to a selection of its riders. 

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. 

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.