After placing third at the Collegiate Cyclocross Nationals, Israeli born Rotem Ishay joined the Boo-Training Peaks team alongside Skyler Trujillo. Intrigued by the Boo RS-X Skyler was riding, Rotem sought out a place on the Boo Bikes team, and is flying the bamboo flag for 2013-14. Starting Firday at the Cincy3 Darkhorse Cyclo-Stampede in dead last with no call up, Rotem managed to climb all the way up to an impressive 11th place on his own RS-X, which you can check out after the break.
Built using a combination of bamboo and carbon, the RS-X certainly stands out in the sea of cross bikes. Fully up to the rigors of cross, Nick Frey the founder of Boo Bicycles told us that Skyler is on the same frame as last year – the rest of his components not so much. Racing has provided valuable insight into improvements for the Boo bike line like the addition of a replaceable driveside dropout instead of a derailleur hanger. The dropout offers improved shifting precision and allows for the use of a belt drive as an option.
Building race worthy bikes out of bamboo and carbon is not an easy process – we’ll have a more in depth piece on that in the near future.
The RS-X uses a full carbon seat mast with a Ritchey WCS seatmast cap holding a WTB Silverado saddle.
Rotem runs a 1×11 drivetrain with a SRAM Force 22 right shifter. The left shifter is a previous generation SRAM shifter with the shifting guts removed providing just the s900 brake lever. An alloy 3T ARX-Team stem and Ergonova Pro bar wrapped in Lizard Skins DSP Race tape finish off the cockpit. Of course the spacers are made of Bamboo as well.
After speaking with Nick about Rotem’s set up, they are still using a standard chain ring with a K-Edge chain catcher and external bash guard to sandwich the chain. Nick said they are considering the move to a narrow wide chainring in the future. The single ring is mounted to a Force 22 crank in a PF30 shell.
Avid BB7s Road disc brakes clamp 160mm Avid G2 6 bolt rotors mounted to the DT Swiss hubs with Centerlock adapters.
Rotem’s other bike is essentially the same set up, though it is running Hed Ardennes or technically the Hed Belgium+ laced to Chris King R45 disc hubs. This was Rotem’s A bike for the Harbin Park Cincy3 race as the Challenge Chicanes were the tire of choice.
Both bikes are propelled by a pair of CrankBrothers Eggbeater 11 pedals.
