White hot heat: a closer look at DL Killer's KS1s

I wrote a piece for Cyclist (UK) recently profiling some of the best kit for Spring. These shoes were included, but space (the article was LONG) meant I only added sparse comments on them, not the real estate they deserved (which is part of the reason I’m trying to get Hairpins off the ground in the first place).

Chris Puttnam, co-founder of DL Killer, was kind enough to send a pair on behalf of the company. They are one of the most lively and enjoyable scarps I’ve had the pleasure of riding in recently. A stiff, responsive, comfortable and great looking shoe; the rubber outer, a minor detail, is a great scuff guard and a good example of the care former Italian pro Danilo Di Luca put into conceiving them.

Looking at the market, my only knit with the KS1’s is that BOA dials are better than the ATOP lacing system and I wish they were made using them. Otherwise, these are as high-end as it gets. Sure, they cost 325 pounds. But don’t choke on the price tag - they are worth it. Especially if you go for an aesthetic rooted in craftsmanship.

I spoke to Chris about what makes these shoes so interesting. Below is an exert from that conversation.

What makes the KS1 shoe unique?

Every DL Killer shoe, be it the KS1 or the Vito, is handmade in Italy by craftsmen with generations of shoemaking behind them. Our unique approach to production allows us to create bespoke shoes in materials and fabrics not usually associated with cycling. We have created gold KS1s with a herringbone pattern and a houndstooth version, for instance. Our most popular model still remains our gold KS1 though, and you need to be a true hitter to carry those off.

Something that's rarely seen in cycling shoes today is the real leather outer. I love it, but wonder, why leather?

Leather is a wonderful material to work with and wear, as millions of owners of leather shoes will testify. It moulds to the foot and when looked after will improve with age. The reason leather is not often found in cycling shoes is that it needs a particularly high level of care to put up with the demands placed on it through cycling from both inside and out. Our leather uppers are treated and coated to protect them from the rigours of the road, using a process common with other performance shoes such as inline skates, making them exceptionally durable.

While the KS1’s come with complete customization, I found them solid and comfortable right out of the box. Easy on the eyes, too.

How does the carbon molding process work?

The carbon fibre hulls of our shoes comprise two sections - a stiff outer shell and a mouldable liner. This liner can be heated through the outer hull with a hairdryer and moulded to shape the individual’s foot, where necessary. A lot of people will already find the shoe incredibly comfortable and well fitting, in which case this process will be unnecessary. However the option is there.

The KS1s dovetail nicely with VB's bespoke-like image. What are some of the other design elements that make the two brands seem to fit together so nicely?

Both DL Killer and Vélobici share similar values in design, quality and production. We believe in using craftsmen local to us rather than outsourcing production to the Far East and are obsessive about detail and precision in manufacture. Both brands create products that are classical in appearance and transcend seasonal trends. They are designed to provide the owner with years of dependable service.

What I've really enjoyed riding these shoes is the stiffness. How is the sole made to give it that level of responsiveness?

The outer hull of DL Killer shoes is manufactured from a carbon weave, which delivers incredible lightness while remaining stiff and responsive. The shoes have been engineered by experts in road shoe performance with input from professional cyclists. The stiff sole ensures maximum power transfer from the rider through to the pedals.

Against the odds: how tools and talent transformed Team KGF into Huub Wattbike

Two and a half years ago, four engineers with backgrounds in road racing sat around a table talking about how to become professional cyclists. One had been cut from Team Great Britain’s development program years earlier, but all were equipped with academic ideas about how to train smarter and go faster using theories from school. With a little luck, they’d compete at a track nationals, maybe even qualify for a World Cup event.

Armed with an unconventional approach to bike fitting, kit and training, Charlie Tanfield, Jacob Tipper, Dan Bigham and Jonathan Wale - four unknown talents from Derby, UK - started racing under the name Team KGF. With their first nationals approaching, the guys were confident in the performance analysis they’d done themselves, acting very much as outsiders in an insular sport. Other than Tanfield, Tipper, Bigham and Wale, few people anticipated the result.

“We broke the competition record, won the team pursuit and beat the national team,” recalls Bigham, an engineer by training who used to work for the Mercedes Formula 1 team in the aerodynamics department. “I mean, it was pretty outrageous to rock up to our first nationals and have so much success. After that, we figured why not see where this could go?”

Cap in hand, the team pushed on, creatively sourcing enough money to enter their first UCI World Cup event in Poland (November 3-5, 2017). Lightning didn’t strike as it had at home. “We didn’t really maximize our potential in Poland,” recalls Bigham by interview over the phone. “We were not yet able to compete at that level.”

The experience was an eye-opener. The cycling world got very curious about how four athletes, untrained by traditional program standards, could come at track cycling so differently and with so much success. Like Billy Beane did for baseball’s Oakland A’s, they showed that much of the conventional wisdom that then dominated track racing was dated.

More funding ensured, followed by some World Cup success. “Pretty awesome for a bunch of mates just winging it,” adds Bigham. Now embracing the moniker of underdogs, the team wasn’t done. Their application of engineering to track cycling’s biggest stages had only just started.

Measurable, not marginal gains

A tsunami of press coverage followed Team KGF’s flop in Poland. Rider Charlie Tanfield took first in the Individual Pursuit event at the January 2018 World Cup event in Belarus; the Team won the Team Pursuit at the same event. They continued on, honing their version of progress. Several of the riders competed at the World Championships in the Netherlands in March, others competed at the Commonwealth Games in Australia later in April; at the event, Tanfield won gold in the 4000m Individual Pursuit.

As the world watched Team KGF cement themselves as contenders, Argon18’s incubator business, Notio, was also finding its footing in the cycling world. Their personal aero - meter - the Notio - was being used by Astana Pro Team, enabling them to make data-driven decisions in real road conditions (optimizing pull times, keeping the team together, maximizing speed and power) ahead of that year’s Tour de France. Ed Collins, who had recently joined the company to help market the Notio device, got in touch with Bigham to see if Team KGF might be interested in similarly maximizing their aerodynamic efficiency in a measurable way.  

“Obviously I’d heard about the device all over the place, as we all followed the space with a lot of interest. But when Ed reached out with a message for coffee, it was exciting to see what we could do together,” recalls Bigham. “A lot of teams have the capability to measure and apply data analysis, but few are actually doing it. We jumped on the opportunity.”

Team pursuit analysis has a lot of potential to help track teams ride faster. Acceleration, role angles, coefficient of aerodynamic drag - all these variables (and more) can be measured in training using a device like the Notio.

Bigham left that first meeting with Collins with a device in hand; soon after everyone on Team KGF started training with one attached their bike. Bigham took on the role of digesting the Notio outputs on team performance. The first test after they started training smarter came later in October 2018 at the World Cup event in Paris.

“One of our strongest riders wasn’t performing to the level he should have been,” says Bigham about the Team’s initial performance in France. They got to the next event in Milton, Ontario, early, and hit the track, Notio’s mounted, and started aero testing ahead of race day. The data helped quell any internal anxieties expressed toward change. They qualified first and narrowly missed out on a gold medal, altering skin suits, extensions and stack height - last minute changes that were confirmed by definitive data.

With sponsor interest and a rebrand to Huub Wattbike in 2019 - now an Independent British UCI track team - Bigham and team continue to use the Notio to measure air speed during all training sessions, splitting data out by half laps looking for improvements. There’s no questioning their ambition to go faster, internally or outside the team, and with an eye toward breaking three world records in Mexico (June 2019) (the Team Pursuit, Individual Pursuit and the Hour Record events), what was once looked at as a radical approach to training for the track is now considered pragmatic by other teams.  

“We are constantly making gains, whether that’s equipment, strategy, or clothing, all because we can be so definitive with our analysis,” explains Bigham. “We went from obscurity in two years to winning World Cups. We can keep pushing the boundaries forward without any limitation, all in the space of a day.”

This article was originally written as a result of project with Notio and conversation with Team KGF lead engineer and rider, Dan Bigham. Check out the Notio if you haven’t already - - a device that could transform aerodynamics in just about every discipline in cycling.

100% Launches S3 Sport Sunglasses; Expands Photochromic Models

A slightly less-angular frame joins the 100% roster, made in Italy (like all 100% sunglasses) using a 5.5-base design with a one-piece, shatter and impact-resistant polycarbonate lense featuring both scratch-resistant and hydrophobic/oleophobic coatings.

The S3 comes stock with 100%’s French-made Ultra HD lenses with additional HiPER (contrast-defining) and photochromic lens options available. The photochromic lens options are designed for variable light conditions without having to carry extra lenses. A full review to follow.

Aerodynamics is always the inspiration: an interview with Luigi Bergamo

The first time I interviewed Luigi Bergamo was in 2015 for Canadian Cycling, not long after he left a design role at Assos to start what’s become one of the most unique brands in road cycling kit. The next was last month for a piece in Cyclist, this time to review the company’s Salopette Dottore L1 Bibs, short sleeve L1 Pinstripe and L1 essential vest in camo for a Spring feature (click on the Cyclist link for more product details + review).    

Bergamo has a unique vision of cycling, operating outside the confines of traditional design to envisage something completely different. His passion for design is immediately obvious when we start exchanging emails; five years after the launch of Q36.5, the individuality of the product is forever evident.

The Salopette Dottore L1 Bibs are unlike many we’ve seen in testing over a dozen so far this spring - their fit and comfort is almost without equal, while the L1 essential vest is so functional, well cut and versatile, we’ve been reaching for it on repeat since ours arrived. Over conversation from his office in Bolzano, northern Italy, he talks about the influence aerodynamics continues to have on his clothing and Q’s focus looking ahead.

How have rider concerns for speed and aerodynamics factored into your designs?  

Aerodynamic is always the main inspiration for us. When we presented the first essentials collection, it was really born from aerodynamic concepts or better from part of the lesson that we learnt from our experiments and passion for aerodynamics in general.

For us this is not just something to make you faster but a method of development, a philosophy. To eliminate everything that makes you slower, you need to eliminate the superfluous, the unnecessary, it is the cleanest form, the purest form.

This is our inspiration we called our road collection - the essential collection. Essential is the driver of our development where we eliminate all the unnecessary in order to design functional apparel. An expression of our obsession for aerodynamics is the Jersey short sleeve L1 Pinstripe and the Salopette Dottore L1, where the aerodynamics concepts and the ergogenic performance are fused together.

To eliminate everything that makes you slower, you need to eliminate the superfluous, the unnecessary, it is the cleanest form, the purest form.

How do you know the kit is aerodynamically sound?    

We have done wind tunnel tests on different conditions, by testing the fabric’s performance (cylinder test) and testing the whole ‘system’: rider, bicycle and the equipment. We are really interested in the research side and we are looking also on the CFD modelling that can make some predictions about the drag or through new units that measure and analyse drag in real time.

Good kit is a componentry system made of several variables: not only the fabric properties but also competition speed, the typology of air flow (several times completely different from the static condition of the wind tunnel) and the placement of the pattern construction - all fundamental aspects.

What's been updated this year in the essentials collection? 

This year we haven’t just added more colors but truly innovated with smart fabric development. After introducing wool into the UF Active (see the Cruise Collection), we have gone on to explore more natural fibers like the UF Seta, a new, ultra-lightweight fabric with a high silk content and added silver thread to give maximum results in the area of thermoregulation.

The outcome of this research is an ultra-lightweight jersey: Jersey Short Sleeve Seta that works extremely well in hot, humid conditions but can adapt, thanks to it’s woven structure, to the cool mornings of summer.

What is the focus for the company in the next five years?  

With this year we are coming to an end of the 4 year collection life cycle and with the 2020 we will completely renovate the Essential Collection, not only an update, but we are developing new materials, new pattern construction, in order to offer an extreme vision of what the future of cycling might be.

For the next ‘Olympic cycle’ we have three main focus in mind that work together: first we’re obsessed with thermoregulation and, in collaboration with EURAC research centre, have developed a method to detect the exact comfort zone areas for different types of cycling clothing. The method is based on the continuous measurement of temperature and relative humidity, environmental and physiological, as well as how textiles respond to these various factors. Our method relies on monitoring the performance of an athlete under different conditions. We collect temperature and relative humidity readings through sensors distributed on both the body and on the clothing. We also use thermal imagery to detect the hot spots and see the distribution of water/sweat saturation.

At the same time, we’re tracking power output of the test rider. These methods allow us to explore the relationship between temperature and comfort as well as the relationship between moisture and comfort.

Another concept that we are focused on is sustainability. Our products are made from start to finish in Italy - from the design to the packaging and including the complete production of both the materials and the finished pieces. Our footprint is within a 350 square kilometer radius of Bolzano. Short transport routes during the production cycle result in reducing the production’s impact on pollution. When choosing our raw materials we collaborate with companies that have a social responsibility, for example they restrict their use of water in the production cycle such as the dying of fibers and materials. When possible, we use recycled fibers as long as we are sure they will not compromise our end product. Q36.5 also uses eco-sustainable raw materials such as post-consumer recycled yarns, biodegradable fibers and natural fibers.

The third element, that is also our raison d’etre, is to create a more functional product. A product that interacts between the human body and the environment and helps the body to maximize the performance and adapt to the different environmental conditions: our dream is to create the most versatile product as possible, an utopian 4-season product that becomes your necessary equipment.

PEdALED joins number of kit makers vying for "adventure" market

Crossing Europe in the Transcontinental Race, professional races with Britain’s oldest team, JLT Condor, and exploring Kyrgyzstan during the first Silk Road mountain - from these experience, PEdALED has gathered up what it has learned and introduced the Odyssey Collection to their growing line up of kit.

Founded in Tokyo, Japan in 2007 by Hideto Suzuki, the Odyssey Collection offers a jacket, bib, jersey, socks and gilet geared specifically for going the distance on epic rides. Full review in a couple weeks.