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Battaglin Portofino delivers full internal routing in modern lugged steel disc brake road bike

2021 Battaglin Portofino Edizione Anniversario road bike, handmade Italian modern lugged steel road bike with full internal routing, no cables
23 Comments
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What’s missing from that picture? Officina Battaglin’s Portofino Edizione Anniversario delivers the seemingly impossible – a modern lugged steel road bike with fully internal cable routing for disc brakes and any electronic shifting setup. No external cables is certainly the trend in carbon bikes these days, but we’re still a bit surprised that Battaglin managed to pull it off inside a lugged steel road bike!

Battaglin Portofino modern lugged steel road bike with full internal routing

2021 Battaglin Portofino Edizione Anniversario road bike, handmade Italian modern lugged steel road bike with full internal routing, complete
c. Officina Battaglin

The beautiful lugged steel Portofino already had our hearts by combining modern oversized tubing, chromed-out lugs, wild cromovelato paint finishes, disc brakes, and custom geometry developed with their namesake Giro/Vuelta double winner. Now adding fully internal cable routing kind of blows our mind as the sickest, cleanest Italian road bike we’ve laid eyes on. If this bike doesn’t make a modern roadie drool, we don’t know what will…

From the original rim brake Portofino just two years ago to the Portofino Disc update last year, I’ve personally been a bit enamored how Officina Battaglin has settled into a niche of building ever more refined steel road bikes inspired by classic designs, but never leaving modern tech behind.

2021 Battaglin Portofino Edizione Anniversario road bike, handmade Italian modern lugged steel road bike with full internal routing, limited edition number plate

Now celebrating the 40th anniversary of Giovanni Battaglin’s 1981 Giro-Vuelta double win, the lugged Portofino now gets the same fully integrated, hidden cable cockpit setup that we saw recently on their welded steel Power+ road bike. Alex Battaglin, son of Giovanni, and CEO of the custom bike workshop said, “Many customers had been asking about the fully internal cable routing option on our Portofino… to make it possible, we developed our proprietary carbon fork, entirely fabricated in Italy.

Tech details

2021 Battaglin Portofino Edizione Anniversario road bike, handmade Italian modern lugged steel road bike with full internal routing, frameset

Not one to sacrifice on fit or adjustability, the 2021 Portofino Edizione Anniversario is designed to take advantage of a Deda Elementi DCR cockpit setup that combines a separate carbon handlebar and stem that seamlessly route cables into the headset.

2021 Battaglin Portofino Edizione Anniversario road bike, handmade Italian modern lugged steel road bike with full internal routing, headtube

Like the Power+ EVO, the custom full-carbon fork is produced by WR Compositi in Italy with a D-shaped 1.125-1.5″ tapered steerer that allows the cables to transition into the inside of the oversized Columbus Spirit HSS steel frame tubing.

2021 Battaglin Portofino Edizione Anniversario road bike, handmade Italian modern lugged steel road bike with full internal routing, diamond

Beyond the complex, multi-step fade paint cromovelato process that yields the unique translucent color over chrome look, the 40th anniversary bikes also get a gold-plated badge on the seattube to commemorate Giovanni’s 1981 wins, embedded with a real diamond.

There’s an incredible amount of painstaking manual work behind this new paint scheme… But we’re delighted with the final result,” according to Alex, and “It goes without saying that the cromovelato colors can be customized according to the owner’s preferences.

2021 Battaglin Portofino – Pricing, limited availability & options

2021 Battaglin Portofino Edizione Anniversario road bike, handmade Italian modern lugged steel road bike with full internal routing, paint

Only 70 limited edition Portofino 2021 Edizione Anniversario framesets will be produced, each with their own serial number plate. Half of those are set aside for previous Battaglin bike owners, and the remaining 35 are likely to sell out soon – all direct from the Battaglin workshop in northern Italy.

2021 Battaglin Portofino Edizione Anniversario road bike, handmade Italian modern lugged steel road bike with full internal routing, angled

Can you really put a price on unparalleled Italian road bike craftsmanship like this? Yes, yes you can. And it’s 5000€, for the custom-sized, custom-painted frameset. But that’s really just the beginning. Battaglin will work with you to paint-to-match your seatpost, stem & bar if you want, and they’ll be happy to organize a complete build kit too – whether you want an all-Italian build with Campagnolo or any other suitably premium finishing kit. Get in touch with Officina Battaglin to claim your bike in the limited run.

OfficinaBattaglin.com

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23 Comments
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mudrock
mudrock
2 years ago

Battaglin never won the Tour. He won the Giro and Vuelta in ’81.

BMX
BMX
2 years ago

it’s all very beautiful till you get to the stem. Like putting a neck brace on a model

Jaap
Jaap
2 years ago
Reply to  BMX

Incredible… Such a classic look, such a let down that headset and stem combo!

zigak
2 years ago
Reply to  BMX

Yup. Slam that stem!
(at least for promo pictures 🙂

Angstrom
Angstrom
2 years ago
Reply to  zigak

And here I was thinking that it looked like something a *normal* person might ride…. 😉

To my eye, the way the spacers carry the lines of the head tube up to the stem doesn’t look bad — it looks strong.

Jm
Jm
2 years ago
Reply to  BMX

I asked them the very same question some time ago and their bikes are provided to their customers with few cm of extra steering pivot length so they can ride it and adjust it in case the first rides feel different that what the custom process anticipated.

Officina Battaglin
2 years ago
Reply to  Jm

Exactly!

FritzP
FritzP
2 years ago

I still like the cleaner seat post binder bolt integrated into the seat stay like Scapin does/did.

Dan
Dan
2 years ago

Battaglin makes some great looking bikes. Unfortunately the one I ordered had the rear triangle way out of alignment and the company stopped responding to me. I wish they’d spend less time marketing and more time on quality control.

Tom
Tom
2 years ago
Reply to  Dan

at least with steel, you can cold set it to proper alignment. Not ideal, but it will still ride nice.

Dan
Dan
2 years ago
Reply to  Tom

Alas, with disc brakes and thru axles, it’s basically a paperweight.

Tom
Tom
2 years ago
Reply to  Dan

Ackk, have you consulted with a frame builder?

Tom
Tom
2 years ago
Reply to  Dan

come to think of it, I visited their workshop 35 years ago and recall a mechanic building a new bike with Gipiemme components. He was whacking the chain rings with a rubber mallet to get them true – probably not the best thing for the BB bearings/races! Guess bikes are not really art pieces, only priced that way.

Officina Battaglin
2 years ago
Reply to  Dan

Which frame did you order? Was it custom-built for you?

Dan
Dan
2 years ago

Yes, it was custom built for me, and if you go back through your email records, you’ll find an email you never responded to showing pictures of the rear wheel sitting crooked in the frame.

Officina Battaglin
2 years ago
Reply to  Dan

We can’t track your order or email address from the name “Dan” that you’re using here. Please can you reach out to us through our contact form at http://www.callofficinabattaglin.com?

Crash Bandicoot
Crash Bandicoot
2 years ago

Stunning, I always joke my work email is on the Battaglin marketing email list, and I’m scared that my company is going to flag the photos of the bikes in those emails as pure pornography.

Bryin
Bryin
2 years ago

I have no idea why anyone would want this over a nice Indy Fab, Desalvo or Waterford. The best steel bikes in the world are made in the USA. The only selling point of this bike is internal cable routing… and no one that actually works on their bike wants that…

Indra
Indra
2 years ago
Reply to  Bryin

Because it’s beautiful

Oren Hershco
Oren Hershco
2 years ago

Very cool bike, except one thing: going with 2x crankset is so 2011…. Modern 1×12 systems have a sufficient range of about 510-520%, and the gaps between the gears a reasonably small. Definitely for 99% of the riders, which are NOT professional euro-peloton riders.

The road community has a typical stubbornness in resisting new technology from the MTB world. Eventually it will be accepted, just like disk brakes.

Frank. H.
Frank. H.
2 years ago

True Roadies will never accept a single chain ring w/12 gears being a good bike setup. On tarmac we would always be looking for that in between gear to keep our cadence correct. A 1X system just has too much gap between gear jumps. There is no better feeling then the snick, snick shift of a corn cob cassette when you want to go fast on varied terrain. 1X is for MTB or gravel, keep it off the road.

Anders
Anders
2 years ago

The DCR Deda system is made for modern carbon bikes so it doesn’t blend so well with classic steel frame. The internal routing solution requires a 52 mm top bearing diameter (instead of normal 42) so you end up with a rather bulky look. I think it would look better with external routing and a bit more classic spacer/stem combo. Or maybe semi-internal when you go external outside the headset top cone so you can have narrower spacers and stem.

I think you can get away with quite much space above the headtube if you have a nice looking high headset top cone. Quill stems look good even non-slammed too.

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