The Greatest Hits of the Last Decade
I’m prone to the occasional bout of nostalgia, usually when a customer drops off an old bike that I remember fondly or have otherwise attached significant historical value to. More often than not, the bikes I consider to be the Greatest Hits from a given manufacturer or model year are NOT the flagship models… yet they contain within them just a little bit of magic that makes them special and memorable…..and worthy of a mention here.
So with that in mind, here’s a non-exhaustive list in no particular order….Cycling’s Greatest Hits from the Last Decade.
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2015 Giant Reign 27.5
I rode Giant bikes from 2008 to 2017 – owning several different generations of Anthem and Reign along the way. The 2013 Reign 1 was my bike of choice to compete in the Megavalanche, photos of which hang above the desk at work to this day. I use the word “choice” like I actually had some. My buying decisions were driven by my budget, and Giant was the only brand offering cordial on a pond water budget. It had 26″ wheels, cramped geometry, 160mm of suspension and a dropper post. It belongs to the previous generation of bike design, a time before everything got long, low and slack….and good 🙂
And then along came the 2015 redesign. The Reign 27.5
Gone were the 26″ wheels, the short wheelbase and the cramped geometry. In their place were bigger wheels, a much longer wheelbase and roomy geometry for riders across all frame sizes. The silhouette of the Reign, and indeed most other brands enduro models, would change forever at this exact point in time. I had to have one – so I slapped down the credit card on the bike shop counter and rode home on a my new Reign. Mine was a greeny blue colour and for the first time ever I had a bike with carbon wheels (They didn’t last long…..neither did the replacement set. Or the set after that….)
I would ride and race that Reign for the next 2-3 years. It was actually the subject of some of my very first posts on Instagram when TLS was in it’s infancy. I had the frame stripped and painted grey and orange (because TLS) then I documented the whole rebuild and called it Project ReignMaker.
I pulled that bike apart so many times, it is literally the foundation on which I built my extensive skill set that sees me still servicing and rebuilding these older Maestro link frames to THIS DAY, 9 years later! In those days before I could afford proper bearing pullers and presses I used a very carefully curated selection of sockets and a bench vice to press out every bearing from every frame pivot, and reverse the procedure with new bearings going in.
This bike, the 2015 Reign, absolutely deserves a mention in my Greatest Hits List. It helped me understand what a quantum leap forward in bike design looked like. It was my companion on countless race weekends away with friends. It was the first bike that I ever really “practiced” on, given how different the geometry was to every bike I’d ever had up to that point. I think it also kept me busy and focused during those early days where not every day was a fully booked work day.
2. 2016 Cannondale CAAD 12 Disc
Lots of cyclists have heard that high quality aluminium is better than cheap carbon, but until you’ve FELT the difference it’s just small talk material for the post ride coffee. Cheap carbon is the devils plaything. Luring in unsuspecting buyers with puffed up marketing, selling deflated spec and performance. Riding a CAAD frame in anger is a rite of passage for riders. In fact, even just rolling around the carpark can be an eye opening experience. The frames are SO light. From memory, I believe a 56cm frame in CAAD 12 spec came in under 1100 grams – well within striking distance of the top flight carbon layups and easily able to be built into a 6.8kg UCI approved weapon. Every pedal stroke seems to cheat the laws of physics by 0.1% and give you more speed than you deserve.
The CAAD 12 was such a showcase of just how good Cannondale had gotten at making metal tubes and sticking them together in the shape of a bike frame…….they really had no competitor. The Allez from Specialized rises and falls in popularity, but still never matched the CAAD for cult status or sales figures.
The CAAD 12 was comprised of ‘mostly round’ tubes with subtle, purposeful shaping to achieve very deliberate flex characteristics. The spaghetti thin chain and seat stays managed to transfer power without waste, while providing plenty of isolation from the tarmac. The quality of the build was so evident everywhere you looked, too. The welds were beautiful, and the flat mount disc brake adapters were so cleanly integrated into the rear stay and the carbon fork (yes, the fork was carbon) that it looked totally organic. Ironically, with so many later model years of bikes plagued by difficult-to-align disc brakes…….the CAAD 12 was always straight as a die. If you had brake issues, it wasn’t the frames fault!
3. 2014 Trek Madone Kammtail
In my previous life/career, I only got to dream about working with bikes for a living – I hadn’t yet made TLS my reality. To help scratch the cycling itch I would buy second hand bikes, fix them up, ride them for a bit then sell them on to make way for the next one. This is actually how I discovered I quite enjoyed riding road bikes. At that time in my life I had a 45km commute to work, and the trusty old hardtail MTB wasn’t cutting it. My first ever road bike was actually a Trek Domane….pleasant enough and no complaints about it, but otherwise unremarkable. Then…..then I got my hands on a Madone Kammtail. Kammtail referring to the ‘virtual foil’ shape of the headtube, downtube and rear stays. They had a very distinct ‘sawn off’ profile where the leading edges of the frame segments had smooth curves, but the trailing edges were pan-flat. To my eyes, the enormous flat back side of a carbon downtube was somehow more aggressively aerodynamic than the traditional teardrop shaped tubes that we’d all come to identify as ‘aero’.
The funny thing is, it was AWFUL to ride. It was so unrelentingly stiff. If I ran over a piece of chewing gum I could tell what flavour it was by how hard it kicked me through the saddle. I also don’t remember it being particularly fast…..and yet I still remember it fondly.
This marked a turning point in my cycling history, where I suddenly found lightweight carbon road bikes extremely desirable. I started watching the Grand Tours. I started using Strava to track my rides and chase ever higher “average speeds” on my ride home. I started paying attention to the fine line that manufacturers have to walk to achieve different blends of speed, comfort and handling across their road model ranges.
This turning point is now an immovable waypoint in my own personal cycling biography, and the reason that I bestow a “GOAT” trophy upon the now very outdated Madone Kammtail. Chapeau, Trek.
