With its inexpensive costs and high quality specs – beforehand marketed below the Triban umbrella – Decathlon has an enormous presence within the worth finish of the street bike market. So why has the French sporting superstore chain launched the RCR Professional, a £9,000, 6.9kg aero/light-weight superbike pitched on the premium finish of the market?
Maxime Delabre, chief advertising and marketing officer for Van Rysel places it merely. Whereas cyclists may select certainly one of Decathlon’s bikes as a primary street bike, as they develop and wish to improve their experience, they’re trying to different manufacturers. Decathlon desires that to cease.
“The reality is that at one level, while you’re actually into street biking, you’re going some other place. We would like not solely to assist fanatics to study to experience, however to get alongside them till the top of their expertise,” he says.
Van Rysel’s goal is to supply bikes which are the most effective at school in any respect ranges, to allow them to cease being the feeder model to their opponents; it’s a enterprise technique that is smart, and one which Decathlon has gone all-in on.
Requested how the model is ready to meet value factors beneath its opponents, chief product officer Yann Le Fraillec informed Biking Weekly in April: “It’s the proper value for this bike… we aren’t dishonest the shopper. That is what we think about a good value for individuals to benefit from the thrill of pace.”
Supporting the headline-grabbing RCR Professional, which can be obtainable outfitted with Ultegra from £5,500, Van Rysel is providing a variety of race bikes at specs and value factors to fulfill these for whom even an ‘inexpensive’ – learn: nonetheless very costly, owing to being a WorldTour machine – professional bike is past their aspirations.
Whereas the RCR Professional body weighs a claimed 790g and is made utilizing excessive modulus carbon fiber, the non-Professional RCR has a decrease priced carbon lay-up and provides round 80g to that however retains the identical aero body profile.
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That also places the £4,500 RCR bike outfitted with SRAM Rival and Zipp 303s wheels – which we rode after we visited Van Rysel in Lille, France – across the 8.1kg mark, in keeping with the model.
How ‘inexpensive’ are Van Rysel’s bikes?
(Picture credit score: Future (Andy Jones))
At £9,000, the highest spec Van Rysel RCR Professional, outfitted with Shimano Dura-Ace and SwissSide Hadron2 500 Ultimat wheels is identical construct as ridden by the professionals, with a 6.9kg claimed weight.
Sure, it is nonetheless very costly. However, it is a WorldTour bike, and these price much more elsewhere.
When you wished the same spec Specialised Tarmac SL8, you’d be taking a look at £12,000. Specialised’s claimed weight is just a little decrease at 6.6kg.
The Big Propel Superior SL aero/light-weight bike would additionally set you again £12,000. Big doesn’t quote bike weights.
Canyon’s nearest competitor within the aero/light-weight class is the Final CFR Di2. It’s priced at £9,500, however with its 24mm deep DT Swiss Mon Chasserai wheels has a claimed weight of simply 6.2kg.
Transfer all the way down to Ultegra specced bikes and the Van Rysel RCR Professional prices £6,500. Specialised’s equal is priced at £8,000, Big’s at £9,000. With Canyon, you’d have to step all the way down to the CF SLX grade body, with the Final CF SLX 8 Di2 priced at £6,200.
We rode the (non-Professional body) RCR with SRAM Rival, priced at £4,500. Specialised expenses £6,000 for the Rival-equipped Tarmac SL8 Skilled and Big £5,500 for the Propel Superior Professional 1. At Canyon, the Rival-equipped Final CF SL has the third tier CF grade body and alloy wheels, however is priced at £3,500, though at the moment marked all the way down to below £3,000.
There’s a parallel endurance vary, named EDR. The present prime spec EDR bike is provided with 11-speed Shimano Ultegra and Fulcrum Racing 3 wheels, has a claimed weight of seven.7kg with an 890g body and retails for £3,000.
Van Rysel guarantees a stream of recent bikes all through 2024 and 2025, with eight new fashions deliberate because it completes its line-up.
From a staff of ten when it was established in 2019, Van Rysel has grown to a enterprise unit of round 100 inside Decathlon. Delabre says that it’s one of many few biking manufacturers that has the experience to develop its personal carbon lay-ups for its frames, a course of that’s normally subcontracted to the framebuilder.
It really works with a manufacturing unit in Vietnam, which manufactures the frames to its specs, whereas meeting takes place on 5 manufacturing strains on the Decathlon web site in Lille.
The Flanders issue
The Van Rysel Café is straight reverse the riders’ entrance to the Roubaix velodrome
(Picture credit score: Future)
Rysel is the West Flemish for Lille, the place Van Rysel and Decathlon are based mostly. It’s solely a 5 mile/8km drive from Decathlon’s immense headquarters constructing to the Roubaix Velodrome, certainly one of biking’s landmarks. Van Rysel has totally embraced its flandrian heritage.
Reverse the doorway to the well-known velodrome, there’s the Van Rysel café, loaded with eponymous clothes and merchandise. It’s in a chief place to function a backdrop to tv protection of the riders as they enter the velodrome on the finish of Paris-Roubaix.
Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Workforce throughout stage 2 of the Criterium du Dauphine 2024, with Sam Bennett within the factors jersey
(Picture credit score: Getty Pictures)
However it’s the quick success in 2024 of its sponsored Decathlon-AG2R WorldTour staff driving the Van Rysel RCR Professional that has been most conspicuous.
For the staff, it was a step in the dead of night to work with Van Rysel, a model which didn’t also have a manufacturing bike to its identify when sponsorship discussions began.
However from a rating that in earlier years has been constantly within the mid-teens among the many 18 WorldTour groups, in keeping with Professional Biking Stats, in 2024 Decathlon-AG2R has climbed to 3rd by its variety of wins to the beginning of June. That features two of the 15 phases on the 2024 Giro d’Italia not gained by Tadej Pogačar.
Delabre is fast to notice that the staff’s new-found racing success isn’t simply concerning the bike, but additionally a brand new imaginative and prescient and the arrogance generated by Decathlon’s five-year sponsorship deal. He hints at extra headline-grabbing gear to be rolled out to the professionals within the coming months.
“Proper now, a few of our staff are with Decathlon-AG2R riders to check our subsequent merchandise,” he says. “It is a essential a part of our partnership. It’s a day by day relationship and we additionally work with particular person execs on growth of particular merchandise.”
Retailer inside a retailer
Van Rysel is opening a string of shops inside Decathlon websites
(Picture credit score: Van Rysel)
After all, establishing a efficiency biking model isn’t nearly professional wins and halo bikes, it additionally requires the shopper expertise and the vary and costs to again it up. Right here, Van Rysel is leveraging the worldwide presence of its dad or mum, establishing store-within-store places worldwide.
“The target for us was to have a greater setting to showcase the merchandise, to supply customized companies to our clients and assist them really feel extra linked to Van Rysel,” says Delabre.
The primary Van Rysel retailer has already opened in Decathlon’s big web site in Surrey Quays in London, with CW’s Adam Becket attending the ribbon-cutting occasion. It shows Van Rysel’s bike vary in a setting with a flandrian theme and a welcome desk impressed by the showers on the Roubaix velodrome. In addition to displaying the bike vary, the Van Rysel retailer provides bike becoming and different companies.
There’s the entire vary of Van Rysel gear too, from helmets, glasses and clothes to good trainers and biking computer systems. Delabre factors out that Van Rysel is without doubt one of the few biking manufacturers to supply an entire vary of its personal biking gear.
Van Rysel will open extra shops at Decathlon websites. Berlin and the on-site retailer at its Lille headquarters, the most important sporting items retailer in Europe and the scale of 14 soccer pitches, are subsequent on the checklist.
Decathlon’s goal is to place Van Rysel as one of many prime 5 biking manufacturers worldwide.
“We’re working to make sure model consciousness and quantity, however notice that there’s an extended path till we attain there,” says Delabre.
With its high quality bikes, aggressive pricing and canny advertising and marketing it appears to be like nicely set to realize that objective and disrupt the street biking market as well, which might solely be excellent news for shoppers.
From Roubaix to Lille on the Van Rysel RCR
We rode laps of the Roubaix velodrome earlier than heading out on a loop again to Lille
(Picture credit score: Future)
We rode the £4,500 Van Rysel RCR (with the decrease grade carbon body), from the Roubaix Velodrome to the Decathlon HQ in Lille. Geared up with SRAM Rival AXS with an in-series single sided energy meter and Zipp 303s wheels, Van Rysel claims an 8.1kg weight.
Beginning with a couple of laps of the velodrome (and a tour of the long-lasting showers), we headed out on a 50km loop south, which took within the short-but-initially-vicious two star Secteur 8 of the Paris-Roubaix parcours, Moulin de Vertain.
With no actual hills and solely 145m of ascent, it’s tough to attract conclusions on the bike’s experience, notably as, bar the cobbles, the street surfaces – even driving by roadworks the place the floor had been eliminated previous to resurfacing – have been significantly smoother than any again house.
However the experience does really feel each quick and comfy, and the place not unduly aggressive for the non-pro rider. Tackling the cobbles, the dealing with didn’t really feel nervy, even when the preliminary part of rougher cobbles was bone-shakingly jittery. The second half of Secteur 8 was much less demanding, with sand and dry mud protecting the cobbles for a extra typical all-road experience.
Look out for our full overview of the highest spec Van Rysel RCR Professional, on-line quickly, or purchase Biking Weekly journal out on 6 June to see it featured inside our Bike of the 12 months take a look at.
