Today's Giro d' Italia stage featured a hilly time trial along the Cinque Terre coast. So hilly that all the racers rode standard road frames for the tricky climbs and descents, some with and some without clip on aero bars. Time trialling on a non-aero bike with drop bars is sometimes referred to as Merckx Style because Eddie Merckx benefitted from neither of those things during his racing career and as cycling hagiography goes, was better than every racer born before or after him. What caught my eye was some of the interesting clip on aero bars like this tuning fork model under Damiano Cunego and this wild carbon creation under David Millar. Turns out that's the brand new 3T Zefiro. The Zefiro is a cool product that places silicone pads on the top of a drop bar for armrests and integrates carbon aero tubes. The tubes look like they do not extend very far, making them legal for mass start events where you may end up soloing in the wind. This would also be a good solution for amateur triathletes who own one road bike and need something more versatile and ergonomic than a set of aero bars for their century rides. I went to check it out on their web site and it's so new that the pictures they're posting are basically mock ups. The models sold to the general public will have either gray or red accents. The bar, so far, has probably only been made for Garmin/Slipstream pro cycling team, and therefore has sweet blue and orange argyle accents. So, the rushed and enterprising marketing team at 3T has used the equivalent of Microsoft Paint to spruce things up:
Kind of reminds me of something BikesnobNYC would do.
Photos from http://www.thenew3t.com/
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