Speeco gives Aero Breakaway Bar UCI legal makeover

The pursuit for any marginal gain can often take brands down some interesting paths, leading to some unique products. Speeco caught the headlines in 2020 for this reason when it released the Aero Breakaway Bar. While designed for road bikes, the bar strayed wildly from usual designs as it extended radically forward to provide a platform for a rider to rest their forearms on. As it turned out, Speeco had strayed too wildly for the UCI’s liking and the bars were promptly banned by cycling’s governing body.

Not perturbed by that setback, the Dutch company has unveiled the Aero Breakaway Bar 2.0, and this time Speeco says that it is UCI legal, although it has come at the cost of its trademark look. To ensure that the bars conform with the UCI rules, the long extensions have been binned to give the bike a general shape that will be more familiar to most cyclists. The more traditional shape should prevent cyclists from resting their forearms on the bars, something that was essentially unavoidable on the first iteration and was the reason that it fell foul of the UCI’s rules, which state that “using the forearms as a point of support on the handlebar is prohibited except in time trials”.

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While Speeco says that the bars “conform with the current UCI rules”, there may be incidents when they don’t as the dimensions can be completely customised for each order. There are no specified limits to this on the Speeco website, so presumably it’s possible to go to extremes that would be beyond the liking of the UCI. Alterations, according to Speeco, can be made to the reach, drop, width, flare and height difference, giving anyone interested the ability to alter the bars for virtually any need.

Those alterations will be made to a bar that is firmly at the performance end of the scale, having been designed with the help of CFD (computer fluid dynamics). It’s a common method used by many brands to refine and optimise how aerodynamic a product is. The main result for the Aero Breakaway 2.0 is the airfoil tops which protrude backwards. This sort of shaping is common for aero bars but Speeco has taken things to the next level - and we can’t help but notice that there's plenty of room for resting forearms on there.

© Speeco

The tops of the bars extend backwards

Elsewhere, the drops have a flattened profile to offer extra hand support, so “you don’t have to worry about your grip, but can just focus on your sprint”. As is to be expected from a high-end bar, it supports internal cable routing too.

However, unlike many high-end aero bars, the Aero Breakaway 2.0 is forged from AlSi10Mg aluminium but that comes at virtually no sacrifice to weight, with the bars tipping the scales at 320g. The bar costs €1000 and can be customised on purchase on the Speeco website, linked here.