A homage to the last great rim brake bikes

After many years of tussling, the rim brake versus disc brake debate has slowly fizzled out. While there are still ardent supporters of the older rim system, they’ve been largely phased out of the road cycling industry, leaving consumers with little option but to adopt disc brakes.

Not everyone is happy about this, including GCN’s Alex Paton, who is an old-school rim brake fan and believes the last generation of rim brake bikes, many of which were released within the last five years, represent the pinnacle of bike design.

To show why, he decided to pay homage to what he considers to be one of these peak bikes: the Pinarello Dogma F12.

• Read more: Banesto Pinarello team bike: Is this vintage bike from the mid-90s the pinnacle of road bikes?

Pinarello Dogma F12: A WorldTour-conquering bike

Released in 2019, the Pinarello F12 was the latest incarnation of the Italian brand’s iconic Dogma range. Its release came at the end of a decade in which the Dogma had dominated professional cycling at the hands of Team Sky, racking up six Tour de France titles through Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas.

Big shoes to fill then, but the F12 lived up to its predecessor's reputation with ease, as it piloted Egan Bernal to his first Tour title and the team’s seventh, to cap off the all-conquering decade. As it turned out, it would be the team’s last for a while, as they’ve struggled to compete against the might of Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard since.

While the bike was available in both a disc and rim brake option, Team Sky and then Ineos Grenadiers used the latter, which is the same bike Alex has been using for the last few years. One of the last teams to resist disc brakes, the British outfit didn’t use discs until 2021, by which point the Dogma F had superseded the F12 as the range-topping model.

2019, the year that the Dogma F12 was released, was also the year that Alex Paton last raced professionally, which happened to be on rim brake bikes - this may go some way to explaining why he loves them.

But, as he explains in the video, his affinity has many more roots. To find out why Alex is such a fan of rim brakes and the Pinarello Dogma F12, watch the video at the top of the page.

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