It’s common practice for professional riders to black out the logo of a component if it’s not from an official team sponsor, so why has British revelation Oscar Onley – not to mention Mathieu van der Poel, Jonathan Milan and other Picnic-PostNL, Alepcin-Deceuninck and Lidl-Trek riders – been using wheels from Dutch brand Scope for the Tour de France time trials instead of those from their teams’ official team wheel sponsors, Shimano, Bontrager and Ursus?
Scope's co-founder Rik Kusters explains: “Teams are focusing more and more on performance. There are commercial objectives, of course, and this is typically the biggest obstacle: even if your product is the best product in the world, it could be that not a single team is interested in it because they have commercial relations with big bike brands. But the interesting thing is, for the time trial many teams have some freedom. So it’s a good indication to see which brand of wheels is performing well, because teams are free or to some extent free to choose them."
Alpecin-Deceuninck, Lidl-Trek and Picnic-PostNL have all chosen Scope wheels for their time trial stages based on data, says Kusters. “We are typically approached by the teams and we are happy to collaborate. Sometimes we perform the wind tunnel tests in cooperation with the teams. We make use of the Silverstone Sports Engineering Hub wind tunnel. We can take the bike, the reference wheels and they can follow exactly what we’re doing. We’re fully transparent with the results, and based on that they make the decision on which wheels to choose for the time trial. So it’s really about aerodynamics but another key point about the Artech wheels is the weight. Our time trial wheels are very lightweight. Typically compared to the wheels they have, we reduce the weight by up to 500 grams, which is more than significant. The aerodynamics combined with low weight are the criteria they like.”
He continues: "Normally of course a time trial is flat, and they typically use our Artech 8T front wheel and Artech disc wheel in the rear. But for the climbing time trial stages, like in this year’s Tour stage 13, they also make use of our Artech 2 and Artech 4 wheels.
The Artech rear disc wheel weighs a claimed 890 grams while the Artech 8T front wheel weighs 690 grams and has a deep 85mm rim. Both feature Scope’s unique Aeroscales surface, which the brand says generates velocity streaks travelling at different speeds over the rim surface, which has a stabilising effect on the airflow and reduces drag.
Scope uses hooked rather than hookless tyre beds for its road rims. Kusters’s view here is: “The consumers are not professional end users so anything that can go wrong will go wrong. It only has an application in mountain biking and gravel biking where the pressures of the tyres are much lower [The Spoke Artech 4G gravel wheelset is hookless] but for road racing it doesn’t make any sense. Safety is the most important thing for a consumer product – everyone should be able to use it safely. It’s a little bit sensitive and not for us to comment because my point of view is not independent, but it’s good to see that some brands are turning back to hooked.”
The Artech 4 wheels, as used by rising British star Oscar Onley to finish seventh in the uphill time trial to Peyragudes, have a rim height of 45mm and weigh just 1,190 grams while the Artech 2 has a total set weight of only 965 grams and are, says Scope the lightest available. The Artech rims are built on a skeletal-looking 3D-printed hubset with Carbonlite Aerospokes.
Kusters says Scope’s relationship with Picnic PostNL goes back three years to when the Dutch team – then DSM – used Scope’s Atmoz tyre pressure system at Paris-Roubaix. “They are a really innovative team. In terms of scientific approach they are one of the leaders I would say.”
I suggest to Kuster that the use of Scope’s wheels by the yellow and the green jersey in this year’s Tour de France – despite the Scope logos being on view – still feels like more of a ‘secret weapon’ story. “In terms of mass marketing and mass media, what’s more important is the performance of the athlete,” he says. “But now the nice thing is that Onley is performing this well and used our Artech 4 wheels in the climbing time trial, so we gave it some attention.”
In the future might we see Scope, which was founded in 2014, becoming a team's sole wheel sponsor for all the stages? “Yes,” says Kusters. “At the moment there are also Lidl-Trek and Alpecin Deceuninck, two major teams, but there are also individual athletes approaching us. At the World Championships you will see professional athletes who because of sponsorship arrangements are not free to choose their own wheels – they will be using our Artech wheels in the time trial and also in the road race. And if you looked very closely at the Olympics in Paris you would have seen some athletes on our Artech 6 wheels. Typically then they black out all the logos, but we also had athletes in Paris purchasing our wheels for the race.”
Who does Scope see as its rivals in the realm of lightweight racing wheels? “Syncros has some very lightweight wheels,” says Kusters, “if you look worldwide, one of the lightest on the market but not in the pro peloton is One-K, a German manufacturer. But what makes our lightweight wheels unique is that there’s no rider weight limit and we can replace the spokes and the hubs and rims individually whereas others have a concept where everything is made in one piece. To achieve that has been a huge challenge, because we’re talking about the lightest hubset in the world, the lightest wheelset, so we are approaching limits. We succeeded with the Artech wheels in passing all the same safety standards that we put our Sport series through, which is significantly heavier and chunkier.”
So although Kusters won’t reveal Scope’s plans for future WorldTour sponsorship – the cost is an estimated $250,000 to $1.5 million per year – the brand is gaining a reputation and a foothold at the top level. The lightest wheels have some heavyweight backers and they’re gaining momentum fast.
