Profile Design

1/ThirtyFive Road Handlebar

Ideally, the drops of a handlebar should be parallel with the ground. According to Profile Design, the reason why many of us break that sacred covenant is that, as frame geometries and handlebar shapes have evolved, those of us who prefer a level transition from the flats to the hoods have found ourselves victim to ever rising bars—often at the expense of ideal positioning in the drops. Profile Design's 1/ThirtyFive Road Handlebar aims to address this, bringing the hoods in line with the tops and the drops in line with the ground.

The 1/ThirtyFives come out level at tops and drops because of Profile Design's Drop Reach Variant (Drive) Metric. Drive involves triangulating the drop angle by using the flats and reach, establishing a shape that manages to hit the mark at both ends without sacrificing the ideal angle to ride forward in the drops. The shape maintains comfortable stability whether you're hanging lazily onto the ends during a long day in the wind, sitting up on the hoods while navigating through the bunch, or torqueing on that sweet spot in the drops to maximize power and control while hammering.

The bar's name, 1/ThirtyFive, designates its Drive of 135mm. This size combines an 80mm reach with a 148mm drop, dimensions that we're used to seeing either on heavily shaped ergo bars (the shallow reach) or huge, sweeping rounded bars (the generous drop). The 1/ThirtyFive's Drive Metric is Profile's largest, meant for riders with wider palms to ensure that the forward stretch of the drops is long enough to provide a firm, secure platform for intense efforts when control is of the utmost importance.