Is lightweight back? The best bikes at Sea Otter Europe

Sea Otter proved to be a hotbed for new cycling tech, with Canyon, Orbea and BMC bikes catching our eye

Updated 11:00, Monday 25th September 2023. Published 17:30, Monday 25th September 2023

Tom Hallam-Gravells

Online Production Editor

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This Orbea was among the best bikes spotted at Sea Otter Europe

Sea Otter rolled into Girona over the weekend for another jam-packed three days of cycling action.

Now into its seventh year, the European edition of cycling’s largest festival attracted a huge crowd of over 60,000 attendees, all of them taking advantage of the cool tech on show. Among them were our friends over at GCN en Español who went to the festival with a mission to discover the best bikes on show - and there were a lot!

Unfortunately we can’t include every bike they encountered - there were simply too many - but here’s a rundown of our top picks.

Canyon Aeroad: a bike worthy of a world champion

German brand Canyon is one of the most recognisable names in the sport, partly because its bikes are used by some of the best riders in the world, across a range of disciplines.

The German brand boasts an impressive roster of market-leading bikes, but few have enjoyed quite as much success as the Canyon Aeroad. Its pure aero bike is used by multiple teams at WorldTour level, including Alpecin-Deceuninck whose squad includes current road world champion Mathieu van der Poel. The flying Dutchman pulled off a trademark attacking performance to secure his first senior road world title in Glasgow recently, but he couldn’t have done it without the help of his Aeroad, a bike that was on display at Sea Otter.

Mathieu van der Poel's Canyon Aeroad was in top condition despite its travails

Having attacked solo from the leading group, Van der Poel’s hopes were momentarily imperilled by a crash. Luckily the Dutchman was quickly back on his bike and, despite a broken shoe hampering his efforts, was able to ride on to win the title. Incredibly, the bike didn’t show any signs of its World Championships hardship, with barely a scratch on the surface. It’s proved to be as resilient as its world champion master.

Alongside its World Championship winning bike, Canyon also had some very eye-catching designs on show. These Lux CFR, Ultimate CFR and Aeroad CFR bikes had photochromic lilac paintwork which changes colour depending on how the light hits it.

Canyon's photochromic paintwork

Orbea Orca: all-in lightweight bike

While many brands are now centralising their efforts into one all-round superbike, Orbea is doing things a little differently.

The Spanish brand has shunned the one-bike solution, going all-in for separate dedicated aero and climbing bikes. That culminated in the new Orbea Orca, released earlier this year, a bike designed purely to be as lightweight as possible. A lightweight climbing bike is nothing new, but brands are increasingly sacrificing some of that light weight for additional aerodynamic features. Not Orbea.

The Spanish brand doesn’t believe that there’s any benefit to adding aero features to a lightweight bike, as explained by its road product manager, Joseba Arizaga, in the press release upon the bike’s release: “On the climbs the lighter the bike, the better, and at high speeds the more aero, the better. The middle-weight bike with aero features doesn't win anywhere.”

Orbea has followed its 'praise the light' philosophy for its latest Orca road bike

That philosophy was on full show at Sea Otter through the sharply contrasting features of its dedicated Orca Aero and climbing Orca bikes.

New BMC Speedmachine: fastest TT bike in the world?

After multiple sightings of a prototype throughout the season, the new BMC Speedmachine finally broke cover at the beginning of September.

The bike is the product of five years of design, benefitting from BMC’s partnership with Formula One experts Red Bull Advanced Technologies (RBAT). RBAT were an integral part of the project, helping with the frame profiling to improve the flow of air around the front of the bike.

The BMC Speedmachine took five years to design

This, most notably, resulted in the unique spoiler underneath the crown of the fork, designed specifically to create clean airflow around the front wheel. That’s paired with on-trend, wide-profile forks. It’s a design used by other brands as it more closely aligns a rider’s legs with the forks, improving aerodynamics.

The BMC Speedmachine has a spoiler underneath the fork

Although aerodynamics are at the forefront of the design, BMC’s engineers took a more holistic approach to the bike, aiming to create a bike that is also stable and well-fitting. The latter is a really important part of the aerodynamic equation. A bike can be as aerodynamic as possible, but if the rider can’t get into an aero position, it’s meaningless. BMC drew on the experience of others while making these changes, including four-time time trial World Champion Fabian Cancellara.

Extralite’s 4.6kg bike

Bikes don't get much lighter than 4.6kg

While Orbea has taken a path less travelled with its Orca, it’s far from the lightest bike GCN en Espanol encountered at Sea Otter - to be fair, the Spanish brand has to create a bike that can hit the UCI’s 6.8kg minimum weight limit.

That title went to this Extralite bike which tips the scales at an incredible 4.6kg. It’s so light that it doesn’t sound like it could possibly be structurally safe, but the brand assured our team that it definitely was.

Beyond the frame, which only weighs 580g, the low weight is achieved through carefully selected components, including a Darimo crankset, the brand’s first prototype model. There are no details about it available just yet, but Darimo says more news will be available soon.

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Taking ‘all-round’ to the extremes

Modern bikes are increasingly designed to blur boundaries between the different disciplines, but this Vent bike has taken things to the extremes.

Is it a gravel bike? A mountain bike? An e-bike? According to its owner Ben, the bike is designed for all terrains and any discipline. The result is a drop-bar, full-suspension bike - and it’s definitely one of the coolest bikes at this year’s event.