road.cc: Racing a Bamboo Bike
When UK cycling title road.cc wanted to find out whether a home-built bamboo frame could really hold its own, they did the only thing that settles the question: they raced one.
Over a multi-part video series in April–May 2018, road.cc's Dave Atkinson built a bamboo road bike from a Bamboo Bicycle Club kit — from constructing the jig, through "the sanding years", to paint and final assembly — and then took it to a third-category (Cat 3) crit race.
As road.cc put it when the finished bike was ready for the road:
"After a test ride the only other thing for Dave to try is rock up to a race on the bamboo beauty."
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— road.cc, "Building a bamboo bike part 6: time for a ride!", 25 May 2018
road.cc later summed the whole project up in their feature on the easy-build kit: their man had taken the bike "from jigging right through to Cat 3 racing" — a bamboo frame, built at home from a kit, lining up on a race start line.
It's the kind of test we love: not a lab claim, but a real rider racing a frame they built with their own hands.
Read the full road.cc story:
- Building a bamboo bike part 6: time for a ride! (road.cc)
- New video series: building a bamboo bike (road.cc, the start of the build)
- Bike at bedtime: bamboo road bike made with the easy build home kit (road.cc)
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As featured by road.cc. Bamboo Bicycle Club has trained 4,000+ builders across 36+ countries since 2012.