My first proper ride on the Teammachine SLR 01 ONE was meant to be a short spin in Frankfurt to get a feel for it. It turned into something closer to slapstick after a driver who wasn’t paying attention punted me onto the tarmac. Thankfully, the bike was fine (mostly) and so was I, but the mild panic of sliding along the road on something that costs a significant chunk of my annual income is a sensation I’ll be happy never to repeat.
Once my pride had been scraped back into place, the early impressions were hard to ignore. The numbers are properly eye-catching, with a claimed 222 g saving over the outgoing frame, which was hardly a tank to begin with. But a pure climbing bike is a bit of an endangered species in the pro peloton these days, so the real question is what BMC has done to make the new SLR 01 relevant beyond headline figure top trumps?
