What's going to be the big tech news of 2025? Enormous time trial helmets caught everyone off guard, including the UCI, at the beginning of the 2024 season. Nobody could have predicted the Giro Aerohead II, used at Tirreno-Adriatico by Visma-Lease a Bike. There were also the confiscated Ekoi prototype pedals and Thomas De Gendt’s crash at the UAE Tour that was blamed on hookless rims.
So, with the caveat that developments in cycling tech can be unpredictable, here’s what we might see more of in 2025...
Even more radical aero designs
Just like Giro with the Aerohead II, the Colnago Y1RS gave us a glimpse of what’s possible when designers start to think outside the box. That said, although the UCI’s 3:1 aspect ratio rule has been scrapped, there’s still an 80mm-wide box within which frame tubes and members must fit, but with the minimum tube thickness now 10mm instead of 25mm, in theory an 8:1 aspect ratio is possible. Colnago’s head of R&D Davide Fumagalli told Rouleur: “We never used the 8:1 maximum ratio on this bike but we did reduce the tube thickness from 2.5cm. So even if we didn’t exploit it completely, the rule change was necessary for us to design the handlebar, the fork, the head tube and to reduce the frontal area, to reduce the drag. We never went 8:1 because we wanted to have some mechanical performance out of the frame. You can’t go thinner without losing stiffness so that's why the Y1RS is not at the edge of the 8:1.”
You can be sure that other brands are already working on ways to improve the mechanical performance of future aero frames so that the rules can be fully exploited. Monocoque or beams aren’t allowed – the rules state that “for road, track, and for cyclo-cross competitions, the frame of the bicycle shall be of a traditional pattern, i.e. built around a main triangle” – but Colnago effectively split the seat tube by taking advantage of the wording of the rule that says: “The seatpost shall comply with the dimensional restrictions that apply to the seat tube and may be attached to the frame anywhere on the seat tube and/or top tube.” There’s enough scope here for reworking the “traditional pattern” and it’s certain we’ll see more radical takes.
The return of lightweight bikes – and the end of the aero all-rounder
Photo: Roo Fowler
When Specialized scrapped its aero bike, the Venge, in 2021, and focused all its aero efforts on making the Tarmac the one bike to rule them all, it seemed as though that was the direction every brand in the WorldTour would be taking. Pinarello with its Dogma had long proven that one bike was sufficient for all parcours and in 2024 we saw Trek merge the lightweight Emonda with the aero Madone with the Madone Gen 8 for “the best of both worlds”. But Canyon launched a new Aeroad that it claimed was the fastest yet, without discontinuing the lightweight Ultimate. Lead engineer Lukas Birr told Rouleur: “The Ultimate does now have a niche use case in pro sport but it’s being used, mostly by our female athletes. Even with a very conservative team like Alpecin, it’s a fast team but there’s one or two guys on the Ultimate there too. So we will not merge them and kill one of them because we do see a use case for both.”
Towards the end of the year Scott also confirmed that it would not be merging its pro race bikes any time soon with perhaps the boldest statement yet – the ultra-light Addict RC that weighs 5.9kg in its flagship stock build. Scott’s lead engineer Max Koenen said: “Competitors are unifying their competition race bikes but we decided not to – and one of the reasons was because the [aero] Foil RC is pretty light, close to the 6.8kg UCI rule, so the pro teams on flat stages will always go for the aerodynamic bike. But we saw room to make a lightweight bike that is a bit more for the consumer and the people not bound by the 6.8kg rule, so that’s why we went spectacular with the weight numbers.” And most recently of course – see above – Colnago was the latest manufacturer to give its team riders two options for road stages.
New most affordable bike in the WorldTour
Colnago might have featured in the first two predictions, but it’s safe to say it won’t be in this one. Van Rysel made headlines in 2024 with the RCR Pro, hailed as “the WorldTour’s most affordable bike”. But is Astana’s new Chinese bike sponsor, XDS, set to undercut the French sports chain with the X-LAB AD-9, which has been announced as the team bike? At present there’s no pricing information, but based on the AD-7 and AD-8, the full price of a Shimano Dura-Ace equipped AD-9 could be around $7,000. However, there’s also no information about availability overseas – it could be that XDS is concentrating on the domestic Chinese market.
Astana will also have at their disposal the XDS X-LAB RS-9 all-rounder, which could be priced even lower than the aero bike. Van Rysel semi-launched the new RCR-F aero bike in December at the Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale team presentation, but there’s no detail on pricing and it’s unlikely to have an SRP below that of the all-rounder RCR Pro.
New Campagnolo components
Campagnolo is returning to the WorldTour in 2025 equipping the Cofidis team's Look bikes with the flagship Super Record Wireless groupset after a year away. Component brands use partnerships with pro teams not only for marketing but also for developing new products – so will we see a new groupset in 2025? In 2024 Campagnolo launched Super Record S Wireless, a more affordable version of the flagship groupset, but with the two so close in performance and aesthetics, is this paving the way for a new top racing groupset? It’s two years since Super Record Wireless launched, so perhaps not quite yet. It’s more likely that the next groupset down, Record, or perhaps Chorus, will be given a wireless makeover now that the older EPS electronic wired versions of those groupsets are no longer included on Campagnolo’s website.
Metal bikes are coming back
Photo: Alessandra Bucci
Here’s a prediction for 2025 that Colnago again features in, but only briefly. When in November the Steelnovo was unveiled, a state-of-the-art steel bike with 3D printed lugs that “represents the perfect fusion of heritage and innovation”, we wondered whether metal bikes were on the way back. The Steelnovo celebrated Colnago’s 70th anniversary whereas for every other big birthday a new model-C bike made from carbon had been launched. As it turned out, Colnago was about to launch its new carbon aero bike, the Y1RS, so the Steelnovo didn’t quite represent a return to metal, but cult brands such as Berlin’s Standert have for the last 10 years been building a fanbase consisting of a new generation of riders looking beyond mass-produced, Asian-made carbon frames. Standert’s Maxe Faschina told Rouleur: “We’re at a point where there is a market again because we’ve got people who never had a metal bike. Their entry into cycling was via the Canyon or Rose website, and they bought an entry-level carbon bike. Now they’re considering metal bikes – they’ve had no exposure to what it means to own a metal bike, and they don’t know about the history.”
We also spoke to British brand Mason’s co-founder Dom Mason, who said: “I feel as though people really want to know where things come from. It’s unnerving with these huge corporations churning stuff out so quickly. It doesn’t give you any sense of belonging to anything. I do think there’s a bit of a switch, and cyclists are always in touch with this a little bit more. They want to feel like they’re part of something, they don’t want this anonymity.”
More European-made bikes
This one continues where the previous prediction left off. Not only more metal bikes, but more metal bikes made in Europe. The Colnago Steelnovo made a big show of being entirely developed and manufactured in Italy, while Standert recently reshored production of its latest Pfadfinder model to the Czech Republic. Standert found a factory that had made steel racing bikes in the 1990s before carbon took over. Before the German brand arrived, it had been welding cargo bike frames. Maxe Faschina said: “We came with our ideas, and it was like waking up the Sleeping Beauty. This company used to have a race team but they were building cargo and utility bikes, which is cool but doesn’t have the passion. I feel like we all helped rediscover the passion, and they’re on a new trajectory now.”
Mason’s frames are also European made, which is not only a more sustainable model that cuts out shipping from Asia, but also ties in with what Dom Mason said in the last point about provenance: “Two of our latest frames are made by Cicli Barco, a family business who have been around for 65 years. I’ve been telling people because it’s so important. I think it’s comforting for people to know where it comes from, and when they do, they want it to last a long time. It won’t get chucked on top of a big pile of [old and superseded] carbon frames that no one knows what to do with.”
It's also possible to make carbon bikes more locally. British brand Reap manufactures all its frames at its Staffordshire factory and claims that not only does this solve the environmental impact of shipping from East Asia and the associated supply chain issues, but it also results in a superior construction. Founder Martin Meir told Rouleur: “Although frames are moulded in one in the Far East, they’re not laid up in one. When you make in sections, you wrap a BB section, then wrap the seat tube, everything is quite disconnected. You don’t have the continuous flow of fibres. With the Vekta [aero bike] you haven’t got disconnects between the head tube and the BB – you've got one piece of carbon straight down. We hope that’s one of the things that differentiates the ride quality of the Vekta.” Reap showed off its radical new gravel bike, the Type 300, at Rouleur Live, which uses the same manufacturing method.
Fellow British brand Filament makes carbon-fibre frames in its Bromsgrove workshop, specialising in custom tandems that were used most recently at the Paris Paralympics. Founder Richard Craddock makes his own carbon tubes, meaning almost anything as possible – as he demonstrated with his 2024 take on the 1990s superbike. He said: “There’s a lot to be said for the designer of the object getting into the workshop, and handling the materials and seeing how it goes together rather than outsourcing everything.”
3D printing as science, art and everything in between
This one might seem like a safe prediction since 3D printing has been gaining ground for a few years, but we’re now seeing it used for more than just dropouts that are more affordable for small-scale manufacturers. Filippo Ganna’s 2022 Hour Record bike was famously made entirely from 3D-printed elements and was claimed to be a world first; Van Rysel developed its RCR Pro by 3D-printing prototype frames in its own AddLab at B’Twin village. Bastion and Sturdy are turning 3D printing into exquisite art with some breathtakingly beautiful components (Bastion's ArchAngel lug pictured above) while Fizik launched its One-to-One custom 3D printed saddle programme in 2024. The latter proves that there are limitless possibilities with the technology: there is no other way to create padding that’s exactly tuned to an individual rider’s biometric data and and personal pressure profile.
Torx bolts
Canyon’s new Aeroad, launched in 2024, boasted a raft of aero, weight and carbon manufacturing improvements but when we spoke to lead engineer Lukas Birr, the man behind its development, it turned out his personal highlight was something else: “What I am most proud of is that this bike has already won three stages of the Tour de France. But then when it comes to the product, I always joke but I do mean it – I’m very proud of the bolts. It was a lot of fun to develop them with a German company, going back to the beginning and asking, what do you want from a bolt?” The new Aeroad uses Torx 25 for all adjustments of the frameset, cockpit and seatpost and the thru-axle. Canyon said it chose Torx over Allen bolts due to reduced risk of rounding the screw through more positive, secure engagement – and built a TX25 key into the front thru-axle to save riders fishing for their multitools by the roadside. The new Scott Addict RC, launched at the end of the year, also uses Torx 25 throughout, and includes the TX25 key in a mini-multitool that stashes inside the bar end.
It’s great news that bike designers are thinking about practicality, useability and longevity alongside aero performance and weight, and with major brands such as Canyon and Scott blazing a trail for Torx, we’re going to see more of the six-pointed star in the future.
Peering into the gravel crystal ball deserves its own set of predictions so I won’t go into those here, but in the meantime the Reap Type 300, displayed at Rouleur Live, is surely a setting a new benchmark with its bio-derived composites, cavernous tyre clearance and aero profiles.
