This article was produced in collaboration with Zipp and was first published in Rouleur Issue 143
Aerodynamics have become the dominant consideration in bike and component design in recent years as manufacturers look to shave watts across the board to leave riders with more return from their power-based investment.
But there's still a place for a lightweight set-up, particularly when the gradient rises, gravity rears its head and the extra load of an aero system blunts its effectiveness. It doesn't have to be a hors categorie climb or mountain top finish, either. If the flashpoint of a race occurs on a steep-yet-short stretch of road, the marginal difference in weight could help create the winning move — the breakaway able to do enough damage to distance the chasing pack regardless of the remaining parcours.
This was Zipp's thinking when it was formulating its new iteration of the 202 NSW. "One of our realisations a few years ago was that on flat stages, an aero bike with 454 NSW wheelset is still the fastest setup because you aren't climbing much. But in that set-up, not many bikes in the peloton are close to the 6.8kg limit — they're a good 400-500g above," says Ben Waite, design engineer at Zipp.
"As you move into stages where climbing is much more critical or the selection happens on a really steep climb, what can we do to get the weight closer to 6.8kg? That's where your biggest barrier to speed is weight versus aero."
The updated 202 NSW wheelset looks to solve this issue, providing riders with a sub-1,100g wheelset that shaves more than 300g off of the brand's 454 NSW range and more than 400g from its predecessor, giving teams "another arrow in the quiver". It doesn't get there by sacrificing its streamlined properties either, and Waite says that in testing, it was a superior set-up aerodynamically when paired with an aero bike compared to a lightweight bike with a deeper wheel, making it an easier switch between stages for mechanics too.
The wheelset took a year to develop and continued the learnings from the 303 and 353 models launched in 2025. "We had the rim shape for maximising aerodynamics at a certain depth and we had data of how much team bikes weigh," says Waite.
A sub-1,100g marker was set, but with the weight of German-engineered ZR1 SL hubs and 20 Alpina Hyperlight spokes per wheel fixed, it left a remaining 275g per rim to play with, which ultimately determined the rim's 35mm depth.
"Even though this is our shallowest rim, and it's not a variable cross section like the sawtooth, it's our most complicated carbon layup because of all the different prepreg strips we use — we have over 50 unique strips we put into the rim," says Waite. "On top of that, we have five different fibre types that give us stiffness and strength." At the tyre bed, the fibres are stronger and the epoxy resin binding them provides a lot more toughness against impacts; the spoke bed is stiffer, preventing tension loss caused by forces from the tyre.
The latter also acts as a failure mode for any severe impacts, causing energy to flow towards the more brittle spoke bed and crack, rather than shearing through the rim bed and causing complete system failure. "Not only do we want to have a certain strength in our impact testing, but whenever it does break, we don't want the rim to explode," adds Waite. "Our impact criteria say it has to withstand a certain amount of energy but still maintain rider weight and a tyre and not explode."
The result is a wheelset that comes in at an impressive 1,090g including tubeless valves and tubeless rim tape. Zipp's pursuit of a lightweight system doesn't end at the parts of the wheelset it can control, though. A 23mm internal rim width means it can safely run 28mm tyres on its hookless set-up, saving extra weight on the rubber it's shod in. "Our 353 and 303 had gone to 25mm internal and per ETRTO and ISO [universal safety standards that determine suggested tyre widths and maximum pressures], a 30mm tyre is required. We needed to go back to 28mm tyres to get the lightest possible overall weight," he explains.
When combined, it leaves the rider with a responsive set-up that has a lower rotational inertia and a snap with any surge. "As you're jumping and accelerating, you can really feel that," says Waite. "It's fun and like being a kid again — you just want to go uphill over and over."
And in the heat of the battle, that sensation could be all the incentive required to instigate a decisive, race-winning move.
