Ridley

Orion

Most folks tempted to ride and race a Ridley find themselves at a common decision-making crossroads: Damocles or Excalibur? The technical reason for choosing one over the other is typically a matter of weighing the fact that the Excalibur offers perhaps the smoothest ride of any carbon bike in the marketplace against the fact that the Damocles has flex-resistance in spades. But there's another factor -- perhaps it goes unspoken, but it's there. The look of the Damocles is defined by the triangulated "Sharp Edge Design" profile of its tubes, while the Excalibur offers a traditional round-tubed appearance. In other words, the choice between the two isn't just a matter of ride, but of aesthetics as well.

With the Orion, Ridley provides a new middle ground -- both in terms of ride quality, and in appearance -- and they do so at a price that's nothing short of alarming. Like other Ridley frames raced in the ProTour, the Orion is built in a monocoque design. The tubes are made from what Ridley terms 24-ton carbon fiber. By definition, it has a tensile strength of 24 tons per square cm, and Ridley chooses to make the outermost weave unidirectional carbon. Given its use of 24-ton carbon instead of the 30-ton and 40-ton carbon used in the Damocles and Noah, and given its lack of an expensive 3K outer layer of carbon (which means the frame is fully painted, instead of having a visible clear-coated carbon exterior), the weight of the Orion is nearly identical to the Damocles, even though it costs 40% less.

Don't let the economical price of the Orion throw you off -- it still has technology that'd make it a chart-topper for countless other brands. One example of this is the tubing profiles on the Orion. It has an oversized, semi-round, semi-square downtube with a reinforced bottom bracket to maximize stiffness and power transfer. It's reminiscent in our minds of the "Squoval" tubing on the Cervélo R3 -- it's has a rounded boxy shape difficult to explain in words, but its shaping directly correlates to its resistance to torsional and lateral flex. It's no different from the Helium, Noah, Damocles, and Excalibur: The Orion is a pure race bike, and it's at home in any conditions -- flat or hilly, smooth roads or jarring. And not unlike the Excalibur, Ridley built the Orion to deliver the sort of vertical compliance that's nice on sub-2 hour rides, but absolutely necessary when you're out for 4+ hours. You can rest assured its stiffness under power doesn't make it a jackhammer on chip and seal roads.

The Orion is available in the same sizzling "Team" paint scheme as the Helium, known as 901R, as well as a Black/Red scheme. It comes in 4 sizes from 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 matching Ridley Fenix carbon fiber fork. It comes with a standard 1-1/8" threadless headset, and requires 31.6mm seatpost, an English bottom bracket, and a 34.9mm front derailleur. It has a 5-year warranty from manufacturing defect.