Cyclist
FiftyOne’s first stock design, the Sika, is a road bike for ‘real riders’
Irish custom bike specialist FiftyOne Bikes has announced the Sika, which it says is a race bike designed for everyday riders, with a more comfortable ride position but without being an endurance bike.
There’s 40mm tyre clearance, aero profiles and a one-piece bar/stem, but also a 27.2mm round seapost and external clamp designed for comfort and ease of use.
The Sika is priced at £3,950 in the UK with deliveries from June 2024.
A bike for real riders
FiftyOne claims that the Sika is ‘a cutting-edge road bike that delivers top-level performance for real riders, not the pros’. It says that it’s not an endurance bike, but a modern performance road bike.
That’s despite a pretty huge 40mm tyre clearance, a more relaxed riding position and what FiftyOne calls ‘confident handling’. At the same time, the Sika has NACA truncated aerofoil frame profiles, a low weight and high stiffness – and a UCI approval sticker.
The brand reckons that the Sika is for riders who want all-day comfort on mixed road surfaces, without the fussiness of bikes designed for racing.
FiftyOne says it developed the Sika based on its experience building over 500 custom frames and data provided by its clients’ bike-fitters, giving it insight into the needs and desires of real riders.
FiftyOne founder and MD Aidan Duff says, ‘I’ve long thought that the current model is a little broken – producing bikes for the world’s best athletes and then selling them to consumers. It never made sense to me.’
So the Sika is claimed to be comfortable for the majority of riders, without having to resort to a large spacer stack under the stem. The size M frame has a reach of 380mm and a stack of 555mm. It’s a similar argument to that of Pearson Cycles when it developed its Forge.
FiftyOne says the Sika is precise, stable and planted, thanks to a short trail and longer chainstays – 420mm for a size M. The 40mm clearance lets you fit tyres appropriate for poor road surfaces, cobbles or gravel.
Aero cockpit but a round seatpost
The Sika has a claimed frame weight of 690g for a size medium, which FiftyOne says is one of the lowest frame weights for a bike with the Sika’s tyre clearance. At the same time, it says that the Sika offers high frame stiffness thanks to its high grade Toray carbon fibre mix. It uses the increasingly popular T47 pressed/threaded bottom bracket standard.
FiftyOne has developed its own one-piece cockpit for the Sika. Alongside full internal routing, this has NACA aero profile bar tops with three degrees of sweepback for a comfortable hand hold.
There’s a standard 27.2mm seatpost with an external clamp – so there should be no slipping seatposts or frozen clamps and it’s a lot easier to remove the post and saddle for travel.
FiftyOne says that a round seatpost also flexes more than an aero post for added saddle comfort, which it reckons trumps the small aero gain from going aero.
The low frame weight is claimed to allow a fairly standard top tier build to tip the scales at under 7kg, pitching it against the best lightweight road bikes.
Despite not being designed for racing, the Sika frame is UCI-approved and covered by a lifetime warranty.
Sika frameset price and availability
You can buy the FiftyOne Bikes Sika frameset for £3,950 / €4,500 / $4,500, which includes the single-piece integrated cockpit and Sika seatpost. It’s available in six sizes from XS to XXL.
Deliveries are slated from June 2024 with a Black Ops Evo the only colour at launch: raw carbon with an iridescent keyline and clear coat finish. FiftyOne promises a second colour option later in 2024.
Read our review of the FiftyOne Custom Disc road bike or the FiftyOne Assassin gravel bike
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