Bike Tech

Three weeks ago we walked through the leaked images of a new Tarmac and made the case that Specialized wasn’t about to blow up a proven formula. That call held up. The S-Works Tarmac SL9 is now official, and it’s exactly the kind of update the leaks suggested: real, measurable, and nowhere near as dramatic as the marketing copy wants it to sound. The headline numbers Specialized is calling the SL9 the fastest road bike it has ever built, and the case rests on three figures: a claimed frame weight of 687 grams, complete builds as light as 6.5 kg, and a 4-watt aerodynamic saving over the outgoing SL8 at 45 km/h in the wind tunnel. A dedicated Alpinist climbing build reportedly comes in at 6.1 kg. None of that is a leap. The frame is actually 2 grams heavier than the SL8’s, and 4 watts at 45 km/h is a number that matters mostly to WorldTour sprinters and time trial specialists chasing marginal gains, not to the rest of us. ...

Something is coming from Specialized, and the cycling internet has been trying to figure out exactly what since May 12. That’s when side-profile images of what appears to be a new Tarmac surfaced on Instagram, posted by an account called @czice_. The shots spread quickly — to BikeRadar, TrainerRoad forums, Weight Weenies, and everywhere else road bike obsessives gather to argue. Two weeks later, a second piece of evidence landed: video footage apparently showing Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe rider Florian Lipowitz aboard the same bike in Spain’s Sierra Nevada, with the person who posted it writing plainly in the caption, “Yes, that’s new S-Works SL9.” ...

When XDS launched X-Lab globally last month and started showing up in WorldTour press coverage, a familiar complaint surfaced in cycling forums: isn’t it unfair for a contract manufacturer to start selling its own bikes? Doesn’t XDS benefit from years of R&D feedback, tooling knowledge, and production secrets developed in partnership with the Western brands it built bikes for? It’s a reasonable question. It’s also one the cycling industry answered about forty years ago, when a Taiwanese company called Giant did exactly the same thing — and in doing so, built the largest bicycle manufacturer on earth while helping drive its most famous client into bankruptcy. ...

There’s a phrase cycling fans have heard for decades: “Made in China.” What’s newer — and more interesting — is “designed, developed, and racing under a Chinese brand name at the highest level of professional cycling.” That’s what XDS is doing with X-Lab in 2026, and the global launch that dropped in April makes it relevant to anyone shopping for a high-performance road bike. This isn’t a feel-good story about underdog brands or geopolitical cycling drama. It’s a product question: are these bikes actually good, and what do they cost? ...