Press release #7 2015

Merida Italia Team: 2015 race bike check Francesco Niccoli of Merida Italia Team staff describes the mountain bike on which the athletes of Team 2015 are riding. For the season just started Gioele Bertolini, Lorenzo Samparisi, Alessandro Naspi, Mattia Setti and Stefano Valdrighi, are equipped with a Merida Big Nine CF Team, fitted with Sram XX1 groupsets, and completed by special DRC wheels and Rubena tyres.

Every athlete's bike is undoubtedly a concentrate of innovation and technology, ideal for those who stress the materials until the limits in the competitions.

The frame has compact wheelbase and aggressive corners, and this makes the bike easily directable and quick in narrow spaces, and also very agile.

Merida has managed to create a performant chassis, but also very comfortable, adopting its technologies Nano Matrix Carbon and Double Chamber Technology in the manufacturing of the carbon parts. The first involves an enrichment of the carbon fiber's matrix with special nanoparticles, which allows to reduce the weight and to improve the impact resistance of the final composite of fibers and epoxy resin. The carbon fiber of the composite, is also woven with flax fiber, characterized by lower mechanical characteristics, but with excellent damping properties. The Double Chamber Technology instead, consists in the insertion of reinforcement walls in the central part of the most stressed frame pipes, improving the design in order to minimizing the total mass of the frame and maximize the resistance.

The rear stay takes advantages of the Flex Stay technology, which thanks to a special design of the carbon pipes allows the decrease of vibrations and shocks absorbed in the

rear part, while still ensuring an excellent stiffness of the structure, and therefore a perfect transmission of power from the athlete to the rear wheel. The head tube is tapered, to isolate the bike from the shim, an undesirable vibratory phenomenon generated during braking by the bending of the whole system fork - front wheel.

The Big Nine Team have also a rear wheel fit of type thru-axle 12x142mm, internal cables passages and rear brake fit of type post-mount.

All mountain bikes of the Team are equipped with wheels provided by DRC, an Italian bicycle wheels manufacturer based in Lentate sul Seveso, in the north of Milan.

The wheels are built up on Climber XC rims, top of the range of DRC for cross country field (380g in 29" version), made of aluminum alloy 6082 T6, with asymmetric geometry of the profile (DRC D-Center technology), to improve the stiffness characteristics of the wheel. The spoke hollows of the rim are reinforced with stainless steel nipples, to distribute the concentration of tensile stress generated by the spoke tension, and to withstand wear generated by the relative movement between the head of the spokes and the rim, thanks to the low friction surface characteristics of the stainless steel. The rim is tubeless ready, with a width of the internal channel equal to 21mm, easily adaptable to tubeless tires by the application of the specific tape.

The complete wheelset supplied to Merida Italia Team are assembled with Sapim flat spokes, on hubs K010 and K015 produced by the Italian company PMP, for a combined total weight of the pair of wheels equal to 1510 grams.

Regarding the tyres, since some years now the team is relying on Rubena, an important Czech producer of tires and other rubber components for various fields, which from 2016 will dedicate an appropriate brand to the cycling field, ie Mitas.

The Team uses tyres with Tubeless Supra construction, with a 127 TPI carcass, a tread in composite of rubber based on silica, and kevlar reinforced heel. The tires are dual compound: in the central zone there is a compound of type CRX, which is made by rubber compound on active carbon black basis, which combines good characteristics of abrasion resistance and grip. On the sides is applied a compound SSC (Soft Silica Compound), or the so-called Grey Line of Rubena, consisting of a very soft tread composite of rubber and silica, with high adhesive characteristics, which ensure an optimal grip.

The models available to athletes are four: Charybdis (2.00") and Scylla (2.25") suitable for dry and sliding soils, Kratos (2.25") for wet and very slippery conditions, and the new Hyperion (2.10"). This model was designed by following the directions of the team, starting from Charybdis model, the most used by the athletes, and trying to improve it. The Hyperion is little wider than Charybdis, and allows to keep more amount of air in the tyre while keeping the same pression of the Charybdis, allowing more confidence on harder tracks, such as those of the World Cup. The tread has the same design of the Charybdis on, but is been carved in a slightly different way, allowing greater movement of the dowels and then allowing the tire to quickly reach the working temperature, thus gaining in terms of grip.

As mentioned earlier, the bikes are fitted with Sram XX1 11 speed groupsets, with its brakes Sram XX and Rock Shox SID XX forks, properly tuned and reviewed by the mechanics of the Team with r.s.p. products, based on the information provided by the historic partner Bike Suspension Center.

The latter, also provides the pads for the braking systems marked EBC, allowing to the athletes the choice on two different types, namely one with an organic base, which allows a smooth braking completely avoiding the stick-slip phenomenon between the disc and the pad, and the other composed of sintered copper alloy, for rough braking and greater durability, more suitable for wet conditions.

The bikes are refined with Selle Italy SLR with carbon chassis, and American Silicone knobs ESIGRIPS, bringing the total weight of the bike including pedals to 9.020kg (size 17").