Spotted at last year's Critérium du Dauphiné on the feet of Dan Martin, Mavic has just announced the details of its latest high performance road shoes.
The new Comete Ultimate shoe uses a design that's not too dissimilar to a ski boot with an outer shell and removable liner. The exoskeleton is called the Energy Carbon Shell and is claimed to weigh 144.5g in a size 45.5, while the bootie weighs 125.5g for a grand total of 270g — that's 30g heavier than Mavic says its Cosmic Ultimate weighs (240g), albeit in a smaller size (42).
With the booties being completely separate to the shoe, and interchangeable, Mavic says it will be offering them in different weights: one for winter, one for summer and a low weight ‘racing version' so the shoes can be tailored to the weather.
The ability to swap out the shoe liners based on the weather, there's even the mention of a wet weather ‘Rain Ride' liner, are an interesting concept, but we can't help but wonder about heel lift, given that it doesn't appear that the back of the booty is attached to anything.
The French brand says it's spent the last three years working on the Comete and looking for the "Holy Grail" — a shoe that can consistently transmit power for all 360-degrees of a pedal stroke — and in its own testing claims some pretty spectacular results. According to Mavic, 70 percent of the riders that participated in testing were able to produce an extra 20 watts for two minutes in a RAMP test.
The shoes are also said to offer 4.5mm of stack height and increased ankle angular freedom. The low stack height brings your foot right on top of the pedal axle and Mavic says the increased ankle angular freedom allows you to "fine tune your foot angle and position 'on the go' for a rounder pedal stroke," and claim it saves 4.2 watts per pedal stroke.
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To adjust the fit there are two Mavic Ergo adjustment dials, which offer two-way micro adjustment, while the smart release function makes quick work of getting in and out of the shoes.
In the box the shoes come with two sets of footbeds, shoe covers specifically designed to fit these kicks, as well as a pretty fancy travel case — you even get a cleaning cloth.
There is no question that these are a HALO pair of kicks, not only based on the claims that Mavic is making about the performance gains, but also the price.
Should you want to make a pair of Comete Ultimate's your own, it will set you back an eyewatering €1,000 / £900 / $TBC / AU$TBC. For the record you can get a full custom pair of Rocket7s for almost the same price.
Mavic says the Comete Ultimate will be available from April 2017.
