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History of the Roubaix
No other bike has been as dominant at Paris-Roubaix as the Roubaix. With six wins to date, our Roubaix has used the Hell of the North’s vicious cobbles as the ultimate testing ground for its lineage of revolutionary technology, proving year after year that Smoother is indeed Faster. Here is its story.
History of the Roubaix
No other bike has been as dominant at Paris-Roubaix as the Roubaix. With six wins to date, our Roubaix has used the Hell of the North’s vicious cobbles as the ultimate testing ground for its lineage of revolutionary technology, proving year after year that Smoother is indeed Faster. Here is its story.
"Your option in the late ‘90s was a very stiff, steep angle, super-short chainstay race bike, and that didn’t work because you couldn’t fit real-world tires. It was harsh. It wasn’t the right bike for many hours in the saddle. So, we made the Roubaix."
— Rodney Hines, Inventor of the Original Roubaix
The signing of the Tom Boonen and the Quick-Step team in 2007 drove the development of the Roubaix SL2. It represented a step-wise improvement in the overall torsional and rear-triangle stiffness that resulted in a bike that was agile and supreme in its handling, while still being extremely vertically compliant. Tom had back-to-back Paris-Roubaix victories on this chassis in 2008 and 2009.
For the Roubaix SL3, we drew from all we’d learned developing the Tarmac SL3 and mated the superlight new chassis with the Roubaix geometry, new Zertz visco-elastic dampers, and internal cable routing. Fabian Cancellara took the Paris-Roubaix win in the debut of this bike, and it looked so effortless, a debate of whether Cancellara had a hidden motor took the press by storm.
The Roubaix SL4 was the final iteration of the stiffness-to-weight obsessed Roubaix. The fork and head tube were tapered to balance torsional stiffness and vertical compliance, while each tube and layup was independently sized for each size. It also introduced the CG-R seatpost. Tom Boonen and Niki Terpstra both won Paris-Roubaix aboard this chassis in 2012 and 2014, respectively.
The most radical reimagining of "Smoother is Faster" came in 2017 with the Roubaix featuring the Future Shock. Lighter, smoother, and Rider-First Engineered ™, it also had 20mm of active suspension in the Future Shock. This bike reset expectations for how smooth a performance road bike could feel. And after Zdeněk Štybar’s 2nd place in 2017, Peter Sagan took the 6th victory on a Roubaix in 2018.
15-years and seven Paris-Roubaix wins after the Roubaix made its debut, our “Smoother is Faster” concept had spiraled into a complete obsession for designing the fastest machine on the cobbles. In 2019, the all-new Roubaix delivered the perfect balance of aerodynamics, light overall weight, and compliance. Not only did Philippe Gilbert claim victory on the new generation of the Roubaix this year, but seven of the top ten finishers were riding it as well.