Colnago has again sup­plied Team Europcar with spe­cial bikes for Paris-Roubaix, to help the rid­ers han­dle the bat­ter­ing and blows of the leg­endary pave.

Four rid­ers from the French team will use cus­tom ver­sions of the Colnago Prestige bike devel­oped with the advice of cyclo-cross star Sven Nys and used by Niels Albert to win the 2012 world cyclo-cross title. This road ver­sion is lighter but has sim­i­lar wheel clear­ance and is fit­ted with can­tilever brakes.

Damien Gaudin used a sim­i­lar bike in the 2011 Paris-Roubaix, fin­ish­ing in the front group of big name favourites.

Other rid­ers at Team Europcar have opted for cus­tom ver­sions of the Colnago C59 for Paris-Roubaix. The frames have a longer wheel­base to boost com­fort and bike con­trol on the pave, while offer­ing high per­for­mance on the road.

Colnago bikes have shaped the his­tory of Paris-Roubaix by rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing the bike design for the world’s tough­est race. The iconic Colnago C40 frame Colnago won Paris-Roubaix five times in the nineties with the Mapei team: Franco Ballerini in 1995, Johan Museeuw in 1996, Ballerini again in 1998,  Andrea Tafi in 1999 and Museeuw again in 2000.

Before the cre­ation of the Colnago C40, rid­ers tried dif­fer­ent sus­pen­sion designs and rad­i­cal frame mate­ri­als. However the Colnago C40 frame com­bined with the Precisa straight forks was a far bet­ter solu­tion. Colnago proved that the right frame geom­e­try and a high qual­ity car­bon fibre frame design offered the per­fect per­for­mance on the pave.

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