Bikes tend to come in regular cycles of around 3-4 years. You can’t set your watch by it, but it’s unusual for a bike to leapfrog up a place in the development order. Bianchi’s old Oltre aero bike, still trucking along under Bahrain Victorious, and still carrying the legacy of an immediate UCI ban for its aero fins, has been around since 2022, and was the bike we expected to see updated for the modern era next by Bianchi. However, the Italian brand announced today that it has instead opted to overhaul - and totally redesign - the Specialissima, which last got a do-over in 2023.
Previously the brand’s lightweight machine, it has been morphed to become an aero all-rounder; a one-bike solution for a team that already only uses one bike.
A familiar design story
The trend of bike design in the past 18-24 months has been aero up front, lightweight at the rear, and the new Specialissima hits the brief dead on. The back end is very reminiscent of the old model, with very thin chainstays and even more diminutive seatstays, joining in a way that’s almost wishbone-like to the seat tube.
The seat tube itself, along with the top tube (at least most of it until you get right up to the head tube) looks very similar to the old one, too. Gone is the upward inflection of the top tube where it meets the seatpost however; likely a design flourish that, while eye-catching, was perhaps not the most aerodynamically efficient.
In the down tube, fork legs, and head tube, you can still see the genetics of the outgoing model, but everything is plumper without losing the angular touches. It’s almost as if, from a drive-side view at least, the front end of the bike has been inflated slightly. The similarities visually are underpinned by a geometry that matches the old version exactly, save for some tweaks to the reach figures in the cockpit. The more chunky front end hasn’t made it a heavier frame, however, with a claimed 40g saving over the old model in a size 55, tipping the scales at 750g for the frame.
There is a new cockpit to go with the Specialissima, which makes sense given it’s the very leading edge of the bike. There’s a touch of the Y1Rs about it, but significantly less wild; a little upsweep, a little forward sweep. It’s more akin to a painting of a languid seagull on a summer postcard than a spaceship from a distant galaxy, and has a claimed improvement of 25% over the old cockpit in terms of aerodynamics. The speed at which this is found isn’t stated, but as other claims are made at 50km/h, we assume the same is true here.
The fork, too, is claimed to be 14% more efficient through the air, and when combined with the cockpit and frame, plus we must assume the new RC 49R Reparto Course wheels, there is a total claimed benefit of 16 watts over the old Specialissima.
We don’t have our own aero data for the old Specialissima - nor the new one, for the time being at least - so are unable to place where the new one would be hypothetically if these gains are realised, but to add context a 16 watt difference is just over two watts greater than the difference between the fastest and slowest bikes we’ve ever tested. We do test at 45km/h, though, so at 50km/h the differences will be greater.
Three tiers will be available: Specialissima (SRAM Rival, Shimano 105 and Ultegra) starting at €5,200, Specialissima Pro (SRAM Force, Shimano Ultegra) starting at €7,700, and Specialissima RC (Reparto Corse - SRAM Red, Shimano Dura-Ace) starting at €11,500.
Is this the end of the road for the Oltre?
Bike brands have slowly been consolidating their efforts into single race machines for some time now, with some notable exceptions. R.I.P. Specialized Venge, sayonara Cannondale SystemSix. Yes, Tadej Pogačar still cuts about on an aero bike, but the dawn of the Colnago Y1Rs has meant it’s farewell to the V5Rs for good. Visma have access to the Cervélo R5, but you can count on one hand the times they’ve used it over the S5. Perhaps the fly in the ointment here is Ridley, with Uno-X rocking the very aero Noah Fast 3.0 exclusively, but have been seen testing a feathery prototype at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.
With this in mind, it becomes increasingly hard to see how the Oltre will make a comeback in the near term, and my view is that it’ll fall by the wayside in the same way as the SystemSix. Teams generally seem to want to work with a single race platform, and the cost of developing multiple varietals can be a huge financial drain on bike brands at a time when the industry isn’t exactly flush with spare cash, and when, with enough R&D, you can make a bike that hits the aero targets and is light enough to cause mechanics to worry about the looming scales of a UCI comissaire, it’s a hard sell to make a machine just for those few pan flat stages.
