Updated: US road bike stunt video now with bonus tech info

If you’re one of those people whose reflex action when you see Peter Sagan or Robbie McEwen pull a wheelie on a road bike is to issue a terse ‘tsk,’ you may wish to look away now. You certainly won’t want to press ‘play’ on the video below.

If you’re still here, that’s great – hit the ‘play’ button and sit back and watch a couple of Neil Pryde frames being put through some Danny MacAskill-style moves with the help of assorted bleachers, berms, steps and picnic tables.

There’s limited info on the background to the video – at the end it says that stunts were performed by Rick “The Clutch” Roth and Tony “The Sack” Roth, and Neil Pryde gets a namecheck, as do Shimano, Enve and Tune “for making products that hold up.”

The video appears to have been put together by Tucson, Arizona-based Fair Wheel Bikes - we can't find anything on their blog about it right now, but perhaps that's because we got distracted by posts showcasing some great custom builds...

We’re not sure we’ll be incorporating this kind of routine into our bike tests, but road.cc tech ed Nick will be casting his eye over the video later to see if he can ID who supplied precisely which parts… the Dura Ace wheels on one of the bikes being a given, of course.

UPDATE: In fact, what happened was we received a very thorough response from Fair Wheel's Jason Woznick which you can read after video.

The story from Fair Wheel Bikes in Tucson, Arizona

Naturally, having seen the video, we had to ask some questions and Jason Woznick from Fair Wheel Bikes in Tucson, Arizona came back overnight with his answers:

road.cc: Did you break anything? - Well, we had to ask

As far as things that got broken, the list was pretty small, one flat tire, one chipped fork (from the crash at the end) and a couple of slightly bent teeth on a chainring.

road.cc: It looked like the guys were riding different set ups so did you have different builds for different types of stunt?

There weren’t really planned differences in setup, both bikes were just  typical road bikes.  We didn’t build these bikes specifically for this video; these bikes were already built and being ridden. The black one is my daily rider and the blue one is Richard our web editor's daily rider.  When we decided to finally shoot the video we wanted to use our regular bikes.  It’s not uncommon for those bikes to drop a ledge, or a flight of stairs on a typical ride or commute so we really didn’t have any concerns about durability or setup.  The only changes that were made for the video were that the tires were swapped to 28c commuter tires and the pedals were switched to platforms.

road.cc: Oh, and did you have any reasons for choosing particular components to use on the bikes?

The reason we chose the particular components for each bike was that those are what we like to ride.

road.cc: Finally having done this video do you think there's more that can be done in terms of road bike stunts?

There are definitely a ton more things that can and should be done.  When we started planning the shoot we expected to have more time but logistics just didn’t allow it.  We ended up having only 2 mornings to shoot which limited not only our time but also our locations.  We had a ton of stuff which we wanted to do but just never found the time.  Half of this video was Tony and Rick just trying to get used to being on bikes they’d never been on before.  We had plans to do more at the dirt jumps as well as an indoor bmx/skate park, we wanted to hit some of the trails as well.  There were lots of things that we planned on coming back to once everyone was warmed up, but then time would be up and we wouldn’t get back.

road.cc: Finally, finally, are there any particular things that road bikes actually work well for?

(Tongue in cheek) It would have to be road racing. They definitely do that better than they do trials and dirt jumping.  Though the only real issue with them was toe overlap.

What I find most interesting about this whole thing was that this version of the video was never suppose to make it’s way out to the public.  This was just a sketch put together here in the shop.  We have a much better editor who was working on the actual planned release version.  Over the weekend somehow an earlier copy of this sketch got leaked.  We tried to reel it back in but every time we got a site to agree to pull it down, it would pop up somewhere else.  Once it went over 20,000 views we finally realized we’d not be able to stop it so instead we released this sketch which was at least a more completed version.

I think that’s a little sad as I know the other version will be better.  We shot on 2 days with 3 cameras, this sketch was compiled with only half of the recorded footage so just to start it was already limited from the other version.  Not to mention the other version is being put together by an experienced editor.  We still may release the other version when it’s done as a directors cut or something like that.  We’ll also be putting lots of other footage and out takes on our face book page.  We shot a total of about 2 hours of footage on each camera each day so we have lots of stuff that didn’t get included.

The Bike Specs

Bike 1 - the black one, belongs to Jason

Neil Pryde Alize
Dura ace Di2 shifters derailleurs.
Enve rims on Tune Mig 70 Mag 170 hubs with CxRay spokes, 20/24
Enve compact bar
Enve stem
Tune Concord saddle
EE brakes
Prototype EE cranks. (compact 34/50) 172.5mm
Lizard skin tape
Conti top contact tires 28c
Vittoria Latex tubes
Dura Ace 11-28 cassette

Price somewhere around $11,500. This one with it’s normal tires is well below the UCI limit of 6.8kg.
 

Bike 2 - the blue one

Neil Pryde Alize
Dura Ace 7900 group (shifters, derailleurs, cranks, brakes, cassette (11-28), chain.)
Dura Ace C50 wheels
Conti top contact tires 28c
Vittoria latex tubes
Lizard skin tape
Specialized Toupe saddle
Pro PLT bar and stem

Price about $8500