A 'LILLE' TOUCH OF CLASS

French brand Van Rysel offers an inexpensive way to buy a road bike worthy of the pro peloton

- Laurence McJannet

Van Rysel means 'from Lille' V and it's in this famous French city that the new bike brand on the block manufactures a range of affordable high performance road bikes. Ridden in the Tour de France by the AG2R Decathlon team, its top-end team-edition machines are also available to buy off the peg unsurprisingly from the team's principal sponsor, ubiquitous outdoor brand Decathlon - at a fraction of the cost of similar high-end bikes. Its lower-end models are also ultra-competitive, in terms of cost and performance.

I was lucky enough to test-ride both the Van Rysel speed-focused RCR on the company's local roads of Roubaix and the endurance-oriented NCR on my own rolling local roads of Somerset to see if they could match the performance of their big-name (and big price-tag) rivals.

Van Rysel RCR

While the Van Rysel RCR Pro Replica Dura Ace Di2 AG2R Decathlon Team model may still be out of the price range of most mere mortals, the RCR Rival AXS Power Sensor model I had the pleasure of testing on the streets of Roubaix as well as the famous velodrome there is much more reasonable. OK, it may not seem that way at £4,000. But for a full-carbon chassis, electronic groupset and integrated power meter I'd be expecting to pay at least a grand more.