Aluminum is dead.

That’s what much of the mainstream cycling industry would have you believe, anyway.

After many decades of steel road bikes, aluminum had a heady few years as the next great tech advance in the mid 1990s. When Pantani danced up the slopes of the 1998 Tour de France on his now iconic celeste and yellow Bianchi, it wasn’t immediately clear that he was ushering in the end of one era of bike tech and the start of another, but it turned out that way. Every Tour since has been won by a rider astride a carbon fibre machine, and for a long while it seemed like it was game over for aluminum as a performance material. A new narrative around the material emerged and it went something like this – aluminum’s too harsh, too flexy, too heavy.

And sure, if you look at where the material was, then maybe there’s something to all of those criticisms. But thanks to a committed few manufacturers – Cannondale and Specialized in particular – that’s certainly no longer the case. Development of aluminum has steadily continued, while manufacturing advances have paved the way for the most sophisticated aluminum frames ever. Today, in a cycling world still dominated by carbon fibre creations, there’s a convincing case for the return of aluminum to the top of the sport – and in collaboration with one of the top US Pro Continental teams, Hagens-Berman Axeon, Specialized are making it happen.