Lightweight wheels
CYCLING WEEKLY|January 09, 2020
The high-end hoops that embody the best of German engineering
Simon Smythe
Lightweight wheels



Starting life in a garage is not necessarily a barrier to a company’s success: look at Apple, Google and Amazon. But the Munich tractor garage where Heinz Obermayer and Rudolf Dierl made Kevlar parts for sulkies — horse-racing carts — in the 1980s, was an impossibly humble beginning for the legendary carbon wheels that would be ridden to World Championship and Tour de France victories by Johan Museeuw, Jan Ullrich, Lance Armstrong and, most recently, Team Ineos.

The story goes that Obermayer and Dierl, engineers who were interested in sports cars and horse racing but not bicycles, accepted a bet that they couldn’t make a bike wheel.

This story is from the January 09, 2020 edition of CYCLING WEEKLY.

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This story is from the January 09, 2020 edition of CYCLING WEEKLY.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.

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