Normally WorldTour tier bike launches involve something of a fanfare. Perhaps we get invited out to a team camp, or a standalone launch where the associated bicycle press can test out the new machine, usually with a couple of indentured professional riders there to say how it’s significantly better than anything they have ever ridden and that they cannot wait to ride it for the upcoming season.
Van Rysel, famed for its high-value bikes like the RCR Pro, seems to have launched a new aero bike with no fanfare at all, hiding it within a sub-page of its website titled ‘ready for 2025’, along with other such trivialities as a new colour for the helmet – incidentally a more visible colour likely in line with the reasons for the more visible helmets on the new Ineos kit – and a slightly rehashed jersey design. In cycling media terms this is a little like in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, whereby the plans for a new hyperspace bypass were “on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’.”
