Cyclist
Meet the maker: Ryan ‘Rhino’ Flinn of Curve
The average sales exec might zip from boardroom to boardroom via train or plane, clad in a suit and carting their overnight gear around a fancy leather holdall. But there’s nothing average about Curve co-owner, sales director and ultra-distance rider Ryan ‘Rhino’ Flinn. To his mind, when he’s peddling his adventure and bikepacking bikes, the only real way to get from meeting to meeting is by, well, pedalling his adventure and bikepacking bikes.
‘I’ve mainly been living in my tent,’ Flinn tells us as we catch up during his latest two-wheeled trans-European work trip to visit Curve dealers scattered across the continent. ‘I stay in a hostel here and there to wash my clothes and keep the bike in “showroom” condition.’
So far, Flinn’s current adventure has taken him through Wales, England, France, Switzerland and Germany. As you can probably imagine, he’s had his fair share of interesting encounters. While wild camping in France, for example, his too-good-to-be-true pitch in a postcard-perfect country meadow was ransacked by crazed wild boars during the dead of night. On another occasion, he unintentionally startled a bunch of local men on their way home from the pub, who caught him bathing nude in a river by moonlight.
‘It must have been a most peculiar sight for a group of young men after a night out on the town. Can you imagine staggering back home through the forest only to see some oddly disturbing creature in a river bed, frolicking around washing its weirdly tanned legs?’
Flinn is no stranger to such escapades and adventures. A traveller since childhood, he was born in South Africa and spent his youth moving around places such as Mozambique, Botswana and Lesotho with his parents. These days, he spends most of his time cycling around the world for work. When he’s not in business mode, you can probably find him participating in an epic ultra-endurance race of some sort.
Curve’s tough-as-nails metal bikes are built for this type of riding. They’re ridden by some of the world’s top ultra-endurance cyclists, and there’s a strong emphasis on hardcore real-world testing. Many brands would be happy ticking off the required ISO boxes before releasing a bike, but co-founder Jesse Carlsson insisted on riding (and winning) the 2015 Trans Am Bike Race on a Curve titanium frame before he was ready to sell them to the public.
‘The testing standards we set ourselves are sometimes far beyond what the industry requires because of where we take these bikes and what we do with them,’ says Flinn. ‘It’s anything but conventional riding.
‘I think Curve has helped to make metal cool again, especially titanium. It’s magical – hard and temperamental to work with, but once mastered it’s a smooth, comfortable and compliant material perfect for a bike frame: lighter than steel, the same strength profile, and it lasts forever.’
X marks the spot
The GMX+ Titanium seen here is Curve’s signature drop-bar titanium adventure bike. It was created for the Race To The Rock, a gruelling off-road ultra that sees riders battling it out in the Australian outback over 3,000km to reach Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock.
‘You need massive tyre clearance, like 29 × 2.6-3in, to soak up all that rough riding,’ says Flinn. ‘Suspension doesn’t really work for us as it requires a service interval after 50 hours. By which point, we are normally only three days into a ten or 14-day ride.
‘For me the bike is a real workhorse. It actually rides better loaded. It’s a long beastie with the handling of a road bike but the climbing ability of a tractor. It just takes on any extreme, rocky or sandy, with ease. I was one of only three or four riders to set a sub-50 hour on the Victoria Divide with this bike. It’s a challenging off-road mountain bike ultra, but I took the GMX+ and set some of the fastest descents on the trails.’
The frame is crafted from grade 9 titanium, which is more commonly used in aerospace manufacturing and marine equipment because of its incredible corrosion resistance. The bike pictured is from GiRodeo 2022 and features a Sram GX Eagle AXS 1× groupset, Ingrid chainring, Enve M6 wheelset and Thompson titanium finishing kit.
‘It has a huge standover, prioritising the rider’s desire and need to carry gear [as the high top tube opens up space in the front triangle],’ says Flinn. It is a bike designed to ride, not get on and off.
‘We make some wildly unique bars for the GMX+ too. We like to go wide to ensure loaded handling isn’t diminished and to maximise front-roll capacity and hand space. Jesse has introduced backsweep to the bar too, so that as you go wider your reach isn’t increased.
‘It’s a stroke of genius because riders can buy the bar on its own, keep the same stem and probably get a similar reach. Some will need to be re-hosed to accommodate the new width, but we’re living out in the future here and it can get a bit lonely when conventional designs haven’t kept up. We’re definitely ahead of the curve, so to speak.’
• This article originally appeared in issue 146 of Cyclist magazine. Click here to subscribe
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