Competitive Cyclist

RIDLEY DAMOCLES

When bike lust strikes us, it does so with bolt-in-the-blue randomness. Some bikes tantalize us with their mystique and heritage, while others turn us on with their raw performance and wealth of results in the professional peloton. The Ridley Damocles is a bike from the latter category. After all, Ridley as a company has only been in existence for 17 years. But, as a quick search on cyclingnews.com will indicate, it's been an amazing time -- a brief era capped off by a streak of victories that include the Australian, Dutch, Belgian, and British national road race championships; umpteen wins in field sprints under Predictor-Lotto's Robbie McEwen in the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia; plus a glorious mountaintop solo victory for American Chris Horner in Switzerland's prestigious Tour of Romandie. It gained its most recent notoriety as the bike of choice for Team Katusha's Fillipo Pozzato as he battled with Tom Boonen at the 2009 Paris-Roubaix. It's thanks to this diversity of wins -- in the rolling courses that define national championship races, in the dead flat sprinters' stages of the Grand Tours, and in the dizzying finishes on the ski stations of the Alps -- that we're convinced of the Damocles' versatility as a race bike.

The Damocles is built using an advanced tube to tube method for its carbon fiber construction. The attention that Ridley can pay to the layup of each individual tube before they're joined into a complete frame gives it a special blend of durability and lightness. But where the Damocles is unique amongst its composite 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 carbon fiber bikes in the boonies and at times have been jackhammered by road shock and annoyed by the constancy and the loudness of the 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 carbon fiber 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. Ridley designed both the top tube and the downtube to enhance the Damocles' stiffness. 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.

A medium-sized Damocles weighs in at 1.2kg, just a shade above 2.5 lbs -- putting it in the same weight class as the Cervélo S2 and the Colnago C50, two other bikes widely respected for their ride quality and their durability. The beauty of the Damocles is that you get every bit of performance you'd expect from a ProTour bike, but at a price that saves you sufficient money to upgrade your wheelset or other components to give you a bike that looks the part of a ProTour bike from stem-to-stern.

The Damocles comes in 6 sizes from XX-Small to Extra Large. Given its compact geometry, we strongly suggest that you focus on the virtual top tube length as you make a determination of the proper size. The frame comes with a beautifully painted-to-match Ridley 4ZA Damocles monocoque full carbon fiber fork and a proprietary FSA integrated headset. It requires a 31.6mm seatpost, an English bottom bracket, and a 34.9mm front derailleur. It has a 5-year warranty from manufacturing defect. One other new detail for 2009: The Damocles now has a replaceable derailleur hanger. We keep it in stock in a lovely White scheme with Black details, known as 911A.

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2010 Ridley Damocles Pricing

2010 Ridley Damocles Geometry

Size	Seat Tube c-c	Seat Tube c-t	Actual Top Tube	Effective Top Tube	Head Tube	Seat Angle	Head Tube Angle
XXS	41.0	45.0	50.0	51.5	11.0	75.0	71.5
XS	44.0	48.0	51.0	52.5	13.0	74.0	72.0
S	47.0	51.0	53.0	54.5	14.5	73.5	73.0
M	50.0	54.0	55.0	56.5	17.5	73.0	73.5
L	53.0	57.0	57.0	58.5	20.5	72.5	73.5
XL	56.0	60.0	58.5	60.0	23.0	72.5	74.0