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The bad news for the rest of the world? Great Britain’s wheels are particularly round. Just wait until the French find out.
During Team GB’s stunning success at the velodrome at London 2012, France’s team boss accused them of skulduggery and L’Equipe questioned if they had ‘magic’ wheels. British Cycling chief Dave Brailsford then fuelled the fire by joking that they were indeed ‘specially round’.
This time though, Team GB really have reinvented the wheel. For the first time, they have made them ‘in one’ from a single continuous piece of carbon, rather than gluing together two discs and the rim. The primary objective was to shed the weight of the adhesive, which could be up to 100g. But the knock-on effect has been to form a perfect circle.
‘When you are bonding bits together, it can be in slightly the wrong place,’ explains Sam Pendred, design engineer at the British bike’s manufacturer Hope. ‘Because we’ve managed to make that whole rear disc wheel in one go, we’ve taken out a lot of complexity and a lot of chance for error – so the wheels are as round as they are going to get.’
The Lotus x Hope HB.T – a collaboration between the two British engineering and manufacturing firms - was actually released in October 2019. But it has only been used by a couple of riders in one-off races since then, such is Team GB’s desire to keep its benefits under wraps until the track cycling at Tokyo 2020 gets underway today.
The most radical part of its design is its wide forks and seatstays, designed so air can deflect
