The ONLY Aerobar that Checks ALL the Boxes

Hi everybody. Nick here, and today I want to walk you through perhaps our most important product: the Alpha One aerobar. This bar, more than anything else we sell, makes a real, tangible, measurable difference to how athletes perform, and how they interact with their bicycles.

Alpha One wasn’t our first aerobar. Its predecessor, Alpha X, was a traditional dual-spacer-stack design, and although it was already a best-in-class product, we just felt that the whole product category could be so much better. The aerobar is your home on the bike, and also the first thing to cut through the wind as you ride. So it’s critical from both a fit perspective and an aerodynamic one. There is so much an aerobar needs to do in order to maximize its function. Here’s what we think of as the critical requirements for a bar:

• Easy stack adjustment, without the need for a box of hardware and a trip to the bike mechanic.
• Easy reach and stance width adjustment, without having to disassemble anything else on the bar in order to access the necessary bolts.
• Easy and continuous tilt adjustment, from below horizontal to at least 12-15 degrees of rise. Again, without disassembly or needing a mechanical engineering degree.
• And we need to accomplish all this in a package that is as minimal as possible, with the smallest possible frontal area. And hey, if we could make it UCI legal for our friends in time trial events, that would be great.

Yet, in 2024 … Alpha One is still the ONLY aerobar on the market which ticks every box on that list. Despite the slowly growing understanding in the industry that we need these things, most companies don’t bother to prioritize them. Even if they sell a bar that can technically adjust stack, reach, and tilt … they often do so in very cumbersome and technical ways, meaning you need a whole lot of parts, a deep understanding of the user manual, and often a dedicated mechanic, just to make simple changes.

Side note – back when I was customizing bikes for Andy Potts … between myself AND an assistant, both of us reasonably technical and capable bike mechanics … we needed over FOUR HOURS to make a 5mm stack adjustment to his sponsor-mandated aerobar. It was a nightmare.

Quick rule of thumb: if you’re looking at buying any aerobar – or a bike that comes with an integrated bar – and that manufacturer doesn’t explicitly show you HOW to make adjustments for stack, tilt, and reach … not just a fancy animation showing it’s possible, but actually showing someone DOING it in real time … then that bar is probably a nightmare to work on. Most of the time, the slicker a bar looks, the bigger a headache it is to live with.

That brings us to Alpha One, which is the exception to that rule. It’s the slickest, fastest, most minimal bar you’ll ever see. And yet EVERY adjustment on this bar can be made with a single wrench, by yourself, without a trip to the mechanic. In fact, you can even make adjustments mid-ride. Want to test a position that’s 5mm lower? No problem. Just pull over, take out your wrench, and in under 30 seconds, you can have the adjustment completed and be back on the road. Want to try tilting your arms up just a bit? It’s these two bolts right here, which offer continuous adjustment from -5 to +17.5 degrees. No extra parts, no swapping spacers, no hassle whatsoever.  There is literally nothing else on the planet with this degree of simplicity, functionality, and versatility.

That’s why Alpha One has won awards, including a patent on its stack and tilt function. In fact, Jim Manton of ERO Sports, professional bike fitter who has worked with athletes at every level from the first-time weekend warrior, up to multiple Ironman-winning champions – he has called Alpha One “God’s Gift to Bike Fitters” Now, setting aside the question of whether that makes me God … the point is that this bar changes the game on how an athlete can relate to their bicycle. The fundamental truth of bike fit is that it CHANGES over time. Every athlete benefits from changes to their bike fit, whether due to improving fitness, aging or injury, refinements in our understanding of aerodynamics, etc. Every person can benefit from testing these small tweaks. But most people don’t, because it’s so complex, cumbersome, and expensive. But with Alpha One, testing a new position is a matter of one wrench and a few seconds.

But now that you know the function of Alpha One, let’s take a look at its aero design. This one was very interesting. Previously, we had been designing bars with deeper airfoils, with aspect ratios as high as 6-to-1 representing a virtual 10-to-1. In designing Alpha One, we even considered the possibility of making two separate bars, one with a deep airfoil, and one with a shallower one to remain UCI compliant. Or making one bar with a snap-on fairing to make it deeper. We designed these things. We tested them … over a hundred different shapes, running CFD analysis on tiny changes here and there, refining and refining until we found that in fact … our fastest shape … was a complex wing with dynamic 3-to-1 truncated airfoils which became the final shape you see here. This wing is the fastest shape of everything we tested. So we scrapped the idea of a second base bar, because we’d already found the fastest shape. And as mentioned it’s not just a single airfoil. The cross-section of the Alpha One wing changes as it transitions from the stem, to the mid-wing shape, to the brake flats. It’s as narrow as possible to present the lowest possible frontal area to the wind, and blends seamlessly with the stem for a unitary shape that is faster than any other bar we’ve tested.

Yet there’s still room inside the stem cavity for electronics, cables, or hydraulic lines. It uses standard pinch bolts for easy installation and can install on any bike with a standard 1-1/8” steerer.

In short, Alpha One is our idea of the perfect triathlon front end. It helps you to hit your fit easily, while offering the ability to change things, tweak your fit over time, without the hassle of disassembly or a trip to your mechanic. It completely changes the game on what you can expect from your bike, and opens up a whole new world of possibilities for athletes everywhere.

That’s why when we went to design our Omni bike, we *started* with the shape of Alpha One, and designed the frame around it. Of course, that’s a story for another day.