Mavic Comete Ultimate shoes

Mavic's new £900 Comete Ultimate shoes offer unrivalled performance for racing, but the limited size range and the massive price tag are going to be stumbling blocks for many (most?) cyclists.

An all-new approach to shoe design

Mavic has thrown out the rule book that most cycle shoe manufacturers have adhered to for generations, and taken inspiration from the ski footwear market. It's designed a two-piece shoe: a carbon outer shell with a separate one-piece bootie.

Development began back in 2011/12 to meet requests from Mavic sponsored rides for a stiffer shoe, and countless prototypes later the Comete Ultimate was born. The aim was to create the most rigid, light and stable shoe possible without going down the full-custom route.

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The carbon shell provides the stiffness and low weight, the inner bootie the comfort. It's a carbon shell in the most minimum sense. There's very little to it, with large holes not only contributing to the low weight but also to ventilation for hot weather cycling. Inside is a small removable metal mounting plate, something to attach cleats to, and the heel rubber bumper is replaceable. It's a thin shell but Mavic has impact tested it to ensure its toughness.

The carbon shell also provides a very low stack height – the distance between the bottom of the shoe and the pedal axle – of just 4.5mm. It's generally considered to be a good thing to have the shoe as close to the axle as possible, and in this regard the Mavics come out trumps compared with most other high-end shoes on the market.

The bootie fits into the carbon shell. The tongue is padded and ventilated, and the bottom has a grippy material to stop it slipping inside the shell. A winter bootie is being produced that will provide more insulation for the colder months.

An inner sole is placed inside the bootie and is used to tune the fit: a thicker version for smaller feet, a thinner one for bigger feet. And this is where the Mavic differs from other cycling shoes. Instead of one shoe for each foot size, the Comete Ultimate comes in just six sizes, with the inner sole used to adjust the fit. I'm a 45 so used the thinner of the two supplied inner soles. A size 44 would have required the thicker inner sole to provide the right fit.

In an age of custom mouldable shoes and half sizes, it could be a potential limiting factor for some people. You'll definitely want to be trying them on first and Mavic is operating a fitment and trial scheme through select dealers for this very reason.

As luck would have it, the shoes fitted my feet well. The most immediate observation is that the toe box is shallower than most other shoes I've tested recently (Sidi, Fizik, Giro), so that's something to be aware of, but in all other areas the fit is excellent.

Impressive performance but long distance comfort isn't the best

The design and technology set the shoes apart from everything else on the market, and it's the same story when it comes to riding in them. They are unlike any other cycling shoe I have ever tested.

A few impressions are very quickly formed. They're incredibly stiff, stiffer than any other shoe I can recall testing in recent years. Press down on the pedals and there's no hint of flex from the one-piece carbon shell, and that translates into a phenomenal feeling of speed and acceleration. You feel like you have any extra 80 watts at your disposal.

Ankle movement is the other big factor and a key differentiator to almost all other high-end shoes. Ankle movement is unhindered compared with other shoes. Because of the low cut ankle of the carbon shell and the flexible tongue of the bootie, my pedalling stroke – which does have a reasonable degree of ankling – felt freer and less restricted than with other high-end shoes that wrap higher and closer to the ankle. This freedom of ankle movement is the biggest takeaway for me of the Mavic shoes and goes some way to supporting Mavic's claims for 'rounder' pedalling.

So they feel more efficient and smoother through the full pedal stroke than other shoes I've tested, but is me feeling faster just a psychological benefit of wearing £900 shoes?

Mavic claims the Comete Ultimate shoes improve pedalling efficiency by reducing 15% of the energy cost of the calf muscles with a rounder pedal stroke. It says there's less variation in the power output at the dead point and the power phase of the pedalling cycle, as Nicolas Gregoire, the man in charge of biomechanics testing for Mavic, explains: "The goal of one of our tests was to maintain 250 watts for the duration of the test. If we look at the instantaneous power during the pedalling cycle, there is a variation between 70 watts (through the 'dead point') and 400 watts (when the crank is around 90° – in the power phase). With the Comete Ultimate shoes, we discovered less variation (4.2 watts less) due to a more efficient stroke through the dead zone. So, to maintain 250 watts, you require less effort through the power phase."

You can read more explanation and see some graphs on Mavic's website here.

Keen to get some numbers from real-world rather than lab testing, I bolted a power meter to my bike and set out for some comparison testing. I rode the same stretch of road and a set loop, with a few climbs, in various shoes including the new Sidi Shot, Specialized S-Works and Fizik R1B, and then the Mavic Comete Ultimate.

And having collected some data... well, to be honest it was difficult to accurately and consistently produce figures that backed up my sensory feedback. In a few places, notably on the climbs, I saw higher average power figures with the Mavic shoes, but the difference was too slight to call out as a significant performance benefit without factoring in a margin of error due to other uncontrollable variables. I did feel faster wearing the Mavics throughout the testing, but it's difficult to put an absolute figure on it.

They're also surprisingly comfortable, to a degree. The bootie and carbon shell combine to provide an excellent fit, and the two rotary dials, easy to micro-adjust in either direction on the move, keep the shoes nicely in place. So good is the fit that only light tension is needed on the dials. There were no pressure points or hotspots during longer rides, and no heel lift during even the hardest bouts of pedalling or climbing out of the saddle.

Where the comfort does fade away compared with other shoes is on longer rides. The shoes are hard on your feet. That's because there's very little cushioning between the fleshy underside of your foot and the pedal axle, and all vibrations from the road surface are felt through your feet. On a stiff race bike it can be rather tiring; I certainly found them fatiguing on a six-hour ride. They're shoes for racing not for cruising.

Conclusion

Can a pair of cycling shoes be worth £900? Is that good value for money? Difficult questions to answer, but the performance is definitely there, even if it's difficult to measure and quantify.

Whether they're worth two or three times more than other high-end shoes is another question, and you've probably already made your mind up about the answer. If you're after the best racing shoes and have deep pockets, the Mavic Comete Ultimates are at least worth trying because, if they fit, there is no doubting their performance.

> Buyer's Guide: 14 of the best performance road cycling shoes

For everyone else, well, it'll be interesting to see where Mavic takes this technology. There's something highly appealing about the radical design and certainly some encouraging benefits over regular shoes, but there are a few issues that need resolving to broaden their appeal. They also need to lower the price, but the trickle-down effect will most likely take care of that, eventually.

Verdict

Some definite performance benefits but not without their issues, the biggest of them being that massive price tag