Olympics 2024: Team GB look to Hope Lotus Paris bike to extend cycling dominance. The frame is yours for US$31,000
- British Cycling’s innovators, the so-called Secret Squirrels Club, have been pushing the boundaries of what is possible with two wheels
- 3D-printed parts among the modifications made to the bike Great Britain used at Tokyo Games
The old saying that a worker is only as good as their tools could be applied to the world of elite track cycling where Olympic medals are often decided by fractions of seconds.
So delivering a bike that can maintain Britain’s more than decade-long domination of the velodrome at the Paris Olympics is a process that occupies many of Oliver Caddy’s waking hours.
Caddy is the lead project engineer for British Cycling and it has been his job assembling the jigsaw of components that make up the recently unveiled Hope Lotus Paris bike – a machine that has pushed the boundaries of two-wheeled design.
“It’s in my DNA,” Caddy, a former competitive racer who joined British Cycling’s so-called Secret Squirrels Club nine years ago, told Reuters.
“I’ve either been riding bikes or taking them to bits and putting them through my mum’s dishwasher for as long as I can remember. A combination of Lego and cycling has led me to where I am.”
The Paris bike is once again a collaboration between British Cycling’s in-house developers and the best of British engineering, including Lotus Engineering, Renishaw and Hope Technology who built the frame.
