Cyclist
Running riot with Ribble Rebellion
This year, Ribble Rebellion’s nine-man team of hard-hitting disrupters has its sights set on global crit racing domination, and they’re already handing American racers their chamois-clad asses on a plate. This could be the most exciting thing to happen to homegrown racing for quite some time – so, what’s the story?
Mission control
The Ribble Rebellion team is the latest chapter in Ribble’s long history of involvement in bike racing and is focussed on one of the fastest and most furious sub-categories of the sport – action-packed, nowhere-to-hide crit racing.
‘In crits, every performance advantage counts,’ says Ribble’s Head of Marketing and PR, Sasha Castling. ‘And when you have the fastest riders in the world competing on the world’s most aerodynamically optimised bike, you have something very special.’
The team is made up of nine of the planet’s hardest racers – hand-picked from around the world for their power, cunning and sheer grit – all piloting Ribble’s Ultra SLR, the bike that won last year’s UK National Crit Series.
Wall-to-wall hitters
Ribble Rebellion’s squad of riders is turning in some standout performances, even this early in the season. Ex-US National Road Race champion Cole Davis is already notching up wins, while 23-year-old Yorkshireman Jim Brown – a domestic crit supremo, with Tour Series and national race wins to his name – has now had his first taste of victory on foreign shores too.
Among the other riders on the high-class roster are ex-ProTour rider Ruben Apers and Manx crit specialist Matt Bostock. Grimsby-born, Girona-based road captain Joe Laverick, the consummate all-rounder, sums up the team’s ambitions: ‘Ride to compete, to podium, to win.’
American revolution
The team’s race calendar takes its riders around the globe in pursuit of those victories. In April the team jetted to Atlanta, Georgia for Speedweek, an eight-crit series on the state’s sinewy public roads. Ribble Rebellion took four wins from a possible eight, the highlight being Jim Brown and Cole Davis’s dramatic 1-2 in the closing race at College Park (just don’t ask Cole if Jim jumped him on the line to win).
Brown netted another top-five finish in the team’s return to Stateside competition at the Armed Forces Classic in Arlington, Washington. And the Ribble Rebellion boys made their presence felt at Oklahoma’s notorious Tulsa Tough crits too, with Davis finishing a strong second. Add to this the UK National Crit titles, domestic racing, a mid-summer foray into Canadian races and a full-scale assault on Belgium’s punchy kermesse races in September, and you can guarantee you’ll be hearing a lot more about these boys as the year hots up.
Weapons-grade assault
Even when the team aren’t off the front of the pack, their presence remains unmistakable thanks to the colour-clash paintjobs of their Ribble Ultra SLR framesets. Each rider has their own unique handlebar and fork colour, while the components hanging off the frame are as high-end as the team’s performances.
The frame and fork are T1000/T800 carbon fibre, with shifting accuracy and finesse delivered by a 12-speed Shimano Ultegra Di2 groupset matched to Rotor 56/44 chainrings. Mavic supplies Cosmic SL 65 tubeless disc wheels fitted with 28mm Continental GP5000 tyres. The riders sit on Selle Italia SLR Boost saddles fixed to Ribble Ultra SLR carbon seatposts, and completing the lightweight, aero-optimised package are Ribble’s own Ultra Aero integrated carbon handlebars.
Feeling inspired? The Ribble Ultra SLR starts at £4,499, and in the absence of a team replica edition, you can design your own custom colour scheme at ribblecycles.co.uk/ribble-customcolour
The post Running riot with Ribble Rebellion appeared first on Cyclist.