The Damocles is built using the most advanced method available for carbon fiber construction: It's a monocoque frame, which thanks to its seamless design gives it loads of durability and lightness. But where the Damocles is unique amongst its monocoque counterparts from other brands -- and where it should capture your attention -- is in its ride quality. The true test of a carbon bike is to big ring it down a chip-and-seal country road (after all, every bike feels great on smooth pavement). By now we've had countless experiences drilling monocoque bikes in the boonies and we're almost always jackhammered by road shock and annoyed by the constancy and the loudness of the sharp echoing noise that reverberates in their oversized tubes. Take just one test ride on a Damocles, though, and you'll come to a glorious conclusion: It's the exception to the monocoque rule. Even on chip-and-seal, there's a distinctive forgiveness to its tubes. It has a smoothness and a silence absent from nearly every other pro-quality carbon bike in the market. In a "me too" world of homogenous carbon fiber framesets, the ride quality of the Damocles will breathe new life into your belief of what's possible with carbon.

As smooth as the Damocles is, there's no disputing its race pedigree. Ridley optimized it for sprinters by building it with a tapered headtube. The bottom bearing in the headtube is an oversized 1.5" in diameter, and it tapers up to a standard 1-1/8" at the top, giving the front end supreme stiffness when you're out of the saddle. And the BB/downtube interface is massive, giving the drivetrain area the rigidity you need when you're throttling it in a sprint or a climb or are otherwise at top power. Ridley designed the Damocles tubes using their "Sharp Edged Design", triangulating the cross-section of the top tube where it mates to the headtube, and by making the downtube hexagonal where it feeds into the BB shell. The net effect is to give the Damocles maximum resistance to flex under power. By pairing this rigidity with its capacity for absorbing road vibrations, the Damocles has a finely balanced ride of which most other manufacturers can just dream.