The new Focus Izalco Extreme has just arrived in the RCUK office. It’s the latest development from the German company and the changes owe much to the feedback from the Milram professional racing team, for which it supplies bikes. Interestingly, many of the new features in the carbon frame were first seen in the company’s cyclo-cross bike.

Changes include the novel cable routes inside the walls of the tubes (but they’re more akin to external routing just with carbon laid over the top) which results in a strange looking tube profile across the bike. Other changes have been brought in to better the ride comfort, with a thinner and dramatically narrow top tube, 27.2mm seat post and a tapered seat tube and new ‘Elbowed Comfort’seat stays. The head tube is the increasingly standard tapered affair, dropouts are carbon and there’s a BB30 bottom bracket.

Slotted into the increasingly standard tapered (1 1/8in to 1 1/4in) head tube is a 3T Funda Pro fork. In an effort to drop the weight the dropouts are now carbon and to ensure it’s plenty stiff enough for the power the pros put out (not to mention my power output) there’s a BB30 bottom bracket.

The same frame is available with various componentry levels, but the Extreme here is a near complete Shimano Dura-Ace groupset with just the TRP brake calipers the exception from an all-Shimano drivetrain. Wheels are an impressive looking Zipp 303/404 combination with Continental Grand Prix Attack/Force tyres, and finishing kit (bars, stem, seatpost) is from the 3T catalogue.

“Our new technologies, especially the Integrated Cable Tunnel, lend the new Focus Izalco an extremely impressive design. Rounded lines and soft forms unite with the aggressiveness of a truly unique language of form”, states Jörg Arenz, product manager at Focus.

As the bike rolls out, it looks ready to race. And I’ll be finding out if this is the case as I embark on a couple of weeks of road racing.

More at www.focusbikesuk.com and www.wiggle.co.uk