In a bit of a repeat for Specialized bikes, Annika Langvad rode to the elite women’s World Championship in the second race of the weekend in Nové Město on the women’s version of the Epic. She rode her Specialized S-Works Era World Cup 29er at the front of the race from the start much like Gaze, and by the end of the second lap had distanced her competition and didn’t look back. She rode her Era and RS-1 through pretty much all of their travel on the technical course and built her lead outpacing the others on the climbs. Langvad’s Era was built up very similar to Gaze’s Epic, but with a few unique touches. Take a closer look after the break, plus her bike’s actual race weight…
Langvad’s 95mm travel S-Works Era World Cup 29er is essentially the same bike as the men’s Epic, but built around geometry targeted at the top women XC racers. That mostly amounts to a bit shorter frame reach & stack numbers and a closer spacing of the bikes’ small to large size range. The women’s Era World Cups also end up with even shorter wheelbases than the Epic WC, making them more nimble on tight cross-country courses.
As the current leader in the World Cup Langvad raced with the number 2 plate (number 1 reserved for outgoing World Champ Pauline Ferrand Prevot who had a pretty nasty crash onto her face during the race), so a World Championship win wasn’t too surprising even though no other Danish rider has won in more than a decade.
Langvad’s cockpit consists of an S-Works FACT SL carbon flat handlebar with team green ESI silicone grips, and SRAM Level Ultimate brakes. She sat atop an S-Works Power road saddle on a 20mm offset S-Works carbon post.
Langvad’s bike gets the current Specialiazed Racing XC team paintjob with a thin black and bright green logos. It uses the same Brain suspension setup with the Brain internals Rock Shox RS-1 fork and Fox/Specialized remote Mini Brain rear shock. Her bike gets the same team name and flag top tube deal and personalized Carbon-Ti X-Clamp 3 seatpost clamp. For pedals she sticks with the classic, tried-and-true XTR race.
For drivetrain, like the rest of her team, Langvad ride the new SRAM 12 speed XX1 Eagle with the 10-50 cassette and carbon XX1 cranks with a small 32T ring. Specialized team mechanics tell us that it is sponsor SRAM that wanted the team to run the complete Eagle group instead of swapping in S-Works cranks, but that they were really happy with how light and stiff the XX1 Eagle cranks were in any case.
Her stem was a standard 110mm S-Works affair topped off by a Carbon-Ti cap and team-matching ano alloy bolt.
Langad rode on a pair of two different Specialized S-Works tires set up tubeless for the win. She had a 2.1″ Fast Track 2Bliss up front and a 2.1″ Renegade 2Bliss tire in the rear.
Total bike weight was just 10.35kg/22.82lb.
Her face at the finish after winning was pure excitement, and a little different from Gaze’s earlier in the day. But both showed a similar dominant performance to win a pair of World Championships on Specialized’s premier cross-country full-suspension race bike.
