Cipollini NK1K

The famously flamboyant Italian sprinter’s bike brand has a new flagship. Is it a winner or all show and no go? Procycling’s Jamie Wilkins thrashed it to find out

- Jamie Wilkins

There were times during his career and since when the antics of Mario Cipollini reached levels of unintentional self-parody. For one, there was the infamous Northwave ‘Bikeman Forever’ advertisement that ran on the back of issue one of this magazine, featuring Cipollini dressed like Batman alongside a Catwoman in a costume that was painted on…and they’d missed a rather important bit. Then there’s all the riding shirtless, or seemingly having a near-death experience on the first mountain stage of a Tour de France only to appear on a beach the next day having withdrawn, irking the organisers to such an extent that for a number of years his team was not invited.

Upon the launch of his eponymous brand in 2010, it was feared that his bikes may too fall victim to excess in the name of showmanship. The unapologetically aggressive RB1K had many qualities – most notably vast pedalling stiffness to handle the 1800W that Super Mario claimed he could still produce in a sprint – but it also had a headtube so short that even Cipo himself required a spacer or two beneath his stem. Its cartoonish proportions were akin to a flashy concept car with huge wheels and tiny windows, designed to look great on a show stand but destined for a museum not a production line. The RB1K looked stunning under a spotlight with its stem slammed but was ruined in most cases by the time it reached the road with a tower of spacers to put the bars within reach.

The question, then, was whether Cipollini would put business or vanity first as his range developed. In his book