The Criterium du Dauphiné has become the road race in recent years to spot the latest road tech before the inevitable maelstrom of Tour de France product launches.
We have seen soft launches of the new Cervélo S5 under the riders of Visma-Lease A Bike, and a frankly bonkers prototype Factor at the Israel-Premier Tech bus, but while roaming the paddock before stage 1, I spotted not one, but two sets of new Roval wheels.
It’s not a huge secret that Specialized has been working on new wheels (Roval being Specialized’s in-house component brand), but personally, I was surprised to see more than one new option in the wild.
The first set I saw, a new Roval CLX III is the latest version of the brand’s general-purpose aero wheelset, unsurprisingly mounted to Soudal-QuickStep’s star rider, Remco Evenepoel’s gold S-Works Tarmac SL8. However, down at the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe bus, more than one bike was kitted out with a deeper set, badged up as ‘Roval Rapide Sprint’ wheels.
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Roval Rapide CLX III
Mounted up to Evenepoel’s golden bike was a fresh set of Rovals. The Rapide CLX was initially conceived as an aero wheelset to complement the Alpinist climbing set the brand also offers, but it became the de facto generalist in recent years.
Latterly, we have seen the introduction of the Roval Rapide CLX Team, a lighter and marginally more aero set that stands out with its shiny silver hubs – incidentally, most of Evenepoel’s teammates were using the Team wheels.
I can’t really tell you much about the CLX III other than the fact that they are new and badged up as production models. They are tubeless, appear the same depth as the Rapide CLX II, and have carbon spokes that are bladed, and perhaps a little deeper than the spokes of the CLX Team, though it’s marginal at best.
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Given recent trends in wheel design, we would expect a slightly wider internal rim width. The CLX II is 21mm internal, and the fact that mated to these new rims was a set of unreleased tubeless cotton tyres of 30c width, I think we’d be looking at something in the ballpark of 23-24mm. There will undoubtedly be aero claims to follow when they do eventually get released.
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Roval Rapide Sprint wheels
Further down the team pit lane – actually more or less at the end of the road, over the brow of a hill and hidden almost out of sight – was the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team bus.
As a team also sponsored by Specialized, I wanted to check if they were also using the new CLX III, but alas, a negative on this front. However, they were using an even deeper set that, on closer inspection, was badged up as the ‘Roval Rapide Sprint’ wheelset, also mated to 30c Specialized tubeless cotton tyres, so I’d imagine the same theory about a 23-24mm internal width would ring true here.
This deeper front wheel is, I think, what we also saw at Opening Weekend, albeit in a front wheel only guise when Jordi Meeus ran what I opted to call a ‘road mullet‘ wheelset for want of a better phrase.
This deeper wheelset also looks to have slightly deeper bladed spokes than the CLX III, and crucially, the nipples at the rim protrude less far for a slight aero gain there. Curiously Specialized hasn’t opted to hide them completely within the rim, as is fairly common on aero wheelsets these days, meaning truing of the wheel may still be possible without having to take the tyre off.
As ever, official details on both wheelsets are non-existent as yet, but once we get anything concrete, I will update this page accordingly.
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