Specialized, one of the world’s most innovative performance bicycle brands, has further improved its offering in its flagship S-Works model range of mountain bikes with a new hand position option for improved rider comfort.
Although the new hand position hasn’t officially been announced yet, multiple Absa Cape Epic champions, Christoph Sauser and Annika Langvad were spotted using a prototype to good effect on their way to winning the men and women’s titles respectively at the Fairview Attakwas Extreme MTB Challenge in South Africa at the weekend.
Christoph Sauser used the new Specialized FFC hand position to help him overcome a more than five-minute deficit after an early tyre cut to win the men’s race at the 2017 Fairview Attakwas Extreme MTB Challenge. Photo: Ewald Sadie | Fairview Attakwas Extreme MTB Challenge
Sauser closed a more than five-minute gap to the leaders after suffering a cut tyre in the first 30km, while Langvad smashed the women’s course record at her first attempt at the demanding 121km race. Both riders were photographed and filmed using the new position, Sauser on his S-Works Epic and Langvad on her S-Works Era. The position sees the rider lean forward and down with his or her hands resting on the fork crown.
The new hand position offers both rider comfort and a more aerodynamic body angle.
Bar-ends were once a staple for competitive mountain bikers, offering riders an all-important alternative hand position. But with recent advances in bicycle design, which includes wider handlebars with varying degrees of rise and backsweep, longer top-tubes, shorter stems and race-specific frame geometry, bar-ends have been steadily phased out, seen only very occasionally now.
Annika Langvad appears relaxed and even looks like she’s having fun during her remarkable course-record breaking ride to victory at the 2017 Fairview Attakwas Extreme MTB Challenge. Langvad was seen to use the new FFC hand position for long periods on the smoother gravel roads in the final third of the 121km race.Photo: Ewald Sadie | Fairview Attakwas Extreme MTB Challenge
But competitive mountain bikers have again found themselves limited to just one primary hand position, not ideal in marathon distance events or stage races, where contact-point discomfort is still an area that’s not been fully eliminated.
Being a leader in the area of rider comfort, Specialized’s Body Geometry Fit division has been working on finding a new alternative hand position for the past 27 months with its Fork For Comfort (FFC) Program.
“There’s only so much progress you can make with grip, handlebar and glove design with the technology currently available. After that you have to start thinking outside the box. After months of testing with our professional riders, we saw the fork crown as a very capable hand placement option and believe it’s going to make a real difference to riders,” said a Specialized representative close to the FFC program, who spoke to us on the condition of anonymity.
“There are a few of die-hards that still use bar-ends, but they’re in the extreme minority and are generally more from mountain biking’s ‘old-school’. While bar-ends are actually still functionally sound, they’re fashionably shunned and riders using them usually find themselves feeling comfortable while riding, but regularly unfriended on Facebook. We set out to find the ideal compromise between riding position and rider popularity and believe that FFC achieves that,” added the Specialized representative.
It’s evident in this photo that Christoph Sauser, using the FFC prototype, has a significant comfort and aerodynamic advantage over his rival Kristian Hynek during the latter kilometres of the 2017 Fairview Attakwas Extreme MTB Challenge. Photo: Ewald Sadie | Fairview Attakwas Extreme MTB Challenge
Should FFC be approved by the International Cycling Union’s technical committee, the new hand position could be seen on all S-Works model Epic and Era bikes for model year 2018.
“As with most new technology, FFC will eventually trickle down to the less-expensive models and won’t only be the domain of S-Works. Because fork crowns are on virtually all mountain bikes, except obviously for most Cannondales, we can’t have a patent to protect the FFC, but we believe we are far enough ahead of other brands in this area to avoid any significant challenges in the near future,” said the Specialized representative.
One area still to be addressed by Specialized is a way for riders to shift gears while in the FFC position. In this video clip, Sauser can be seen having to make quite a significant hand position change to shift gears, which obviously disrupts his aerodynamic body angle and puts him at risk of a crash should his front wheel hit some uneven ground.
“We’ve been working together with Rock Shox to find a solution for this and expect the second generation FFC will have a gear-shifting option on the fork crown, which will obviously be well received by riders and their sponsors,” said the Specialized representative.
“The UCI technical committee will be addressing our application for FFR approval on 1 April 2017. We’re pretty confident it will be approved. We can’t see any reason it won’t be,” he added.
Read about Sauser’s amazing comeback to win the Attakwas Extreme MTB Challenge here. And see how dominant Langvad was on her Attakwas debut here.
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Note: Most of this article is not factual. We made it up. It’s not something we generally do, but we felt like having a bit of fun. Because in the end, it’s mountain biking, right? And mountain biking is just a longer description of fun…
