While Monaco plays host to plenty of professional cyclists, thanks to a pleasant climate, easy access to some excellent climbs, and a relatively light-touch tax regime, it doesn’t ever really become the focus of the cycling world in terms of racing. It does however play host to a charity cycling event attended by a slew of professional racers, including Monaco local and current world champion, Tadej Pogačar.
While the event in question rarely, if ever, makes headlines, pictures emerged on Twitter of Pogačar astride what appears to be an all-new Colnago bike. We cannot make out much from the images, partially as they are low resolution and uploaded to social media, rather than proper high-res sports photography snaps, and partially because of the deliberately bedazzling paintwork, but we can at least surmise that there is a strong likelihood that this is the new V5Rs, what with the current Colnago V4Rs approaching its third year of use.
Colnago has already garnered headlines with its eye-catching new aero bike, the Colnago Y1Rs, which Pogačar has been using to great effect since its launch. With news breaking that the Slovenian will indeed race Paris-Roubaix for the first time this year we can speculate whether he’ll do it aboard a new machine, even if it’s in the prototype phase, or stick to what he knows.
Is this the Colnago V5Rs?
New bikes, and other tech too, are often ‘leaked’ into the wild with a paint scheme consisting of irregular polygons to break up the lines of the product in question. It’s effective, and so realistically we can’t tell much from the images.
From what we can make out it seems like this new bike has a flatter top tube, likely in an attempt to drop the weight, and the fork looks a little wider too. Given the trend towards wider tyres, especially in the wake of our own lab testing proving significant wattage savings over cobbled surfaces, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that the new machine may have wider tyre clearance than the old model.
Colnago was contacted for comment as to whether this was a prototype V5Rs but declined to comment on the matter.
This will be Pogačar’s first Paris-Roubaix, but we have seen him earlier in the year on a reconnaissance of some key cobbled sectors ride using the current V4Rs. He’s also rode a prototype version of the V4Rs in the 2022 Tour de France and has ridden the current machine to victory at the Tour of Flanders.
While having additional tyre clearance (and we suspect this is clearance he would make use of, as Pogačar has always been an early adopter of wider tyres) would be of use over the cobbles it is our prediction that he will use the V4Rs for both Flanders and Roubaix.
This is the first time we’ve seen this new machine, and while there’s every chance he’s been testing it and been an integral part of the development cycle, racing a brand new machine with only a few weeks of use is likely too big of a risk.
