Land of the Giants

Warren Rossiter heads to Taiwan to experience the launch of the new Giant TCR

- Warren Rossiter

This is the place where this huge company build every one of their premium performance bikes across road, gravel and mountain biking, and hopefully I'm going to see where it all happens.

The occasion is the unveiling of Giant's new 2024 TCR road bike, which has been designed, developed and manufactured here at the GTM. Launched in 1997, the TCR is arguably the single most important bike of the last 30 years and you could say it has influenced modern bike design more than any other model since its nineties debut.

The TCR was the brainchild of the legendary British bike designer and engineer, the late Mike Burrows. Until the TCR, Burrows was most famous for the radical Lotus Type 108, which Chris Boardman powered to 1992 Olympic gold and the hour record. The original aluminium TCR blazed a trail itself with its compact frame featuring a radically sloping top-tube, which left much of the bladed aero seatpost visible above it.

In 2000 the TCR gained a threadless headset - one of the unsung cycling heroes of the 21st century - that shed weight and added front-end stiffness. The next big leap was the TCR Composite, the first full-carbon TCR that debuted at the 2002 Tour de France, ONCE's Joseba Beloki taking second behind a certain Lance Armstrong.

It's since been ridden by pro teams such as Sunweb and elite riders including Mark Cavendish and Marianne Vos, with the rim-braked TCR winning our Bike of the Year in 2018. The newest models now inevitably feature disc brakes and electronic gearing - two of the biggest developments in recent decades - but what can we expect from 2024's TCR Advanced SL? Let's venture into the GTM and out onto the Taiwanese roads to find out...

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