The pounding is incessant. Around a quarter of a million blows inevitably hit our intervertebral discs and wrists until we reach the finish line in Roubaix; our brains pound against the top of our skulls, our vision blurs, our fingers cramp in their tight grip on the handlebars. Some of the pain can still be felt days later. Anyone who has ever taken part in the Paris-Roubaix cycling event on a racing bike will tell you about this ordeal - whether as a professional in what is probably the most spectacular spring classic or as an amateur rider in the Paris-Roubaix Challenge the day before. Responsible for the agony are 27 cobbled passages of varying lengths of a quality that sometimes makes you doubt whether it still deserves to be called a road. The stones measure around twenty by twenty centimetres, laid with large gaps that have often been washed out by the rain. On the worst sections, a narrow hump remains in the centre of the path as the only bearable lane, to the left and right of which deep ruts from heavy agricultural machinery prevent swift progress, with stones repeatedly lying overturned or missing completely.
Two tests, one experiment
The three of us set off to take on the challenge; not for the first time, but this time under different circumstances: The ride over the rough cobblestones is also intended as a test of various concepts with which manufacturers want to make their racing bikes more comfortable.
We tested these 3 road bikes with suspension
- Cannondale Slate Force CX1
- Pinarello Dogma K8-S
- Trek Domane SLR 7 Series
The complete comparison test of the three road bikes with suspension at the Paris-Roubaix everyman race can be downloaded as a PDF below.
Downloads:
Jens Klötzer
Editor
