When you’re Nino Schurter you always race on the newest tech. This weekend Nino is back on his Spark RC 900 with a new one-piece carbon Syncros Fraser iC SL bar+stem. And he also gets the newest prototype SRAM eTap Eagle wireless shifter & derailleur.
Nino’s Syncros Fraser iC SL SE cockpit
We’ve seen Nino Schurter’s bikes a number of times – getting sneak peeks at next gen components, looking at the difference from XCO to XCM setups, and weighing in his race winning bikes. On thing remains the same on his 29ers is a crazy steep, slammed stem to get a low bar position.
Syncros has that solved with their latest, lightweight carbon Fraser iC SL bar and stem cockpit combo. We looked at the cockpit in detail back at Sea Otter along with their 1250g Silverton SL wheels, but now Nino is racing on a Special Edition of the bar setup.
Nino’s Fraser iC SL Special Edition comes only in the longer 90mm effective stem length and spots an aggressive -25° virtual stem angle. The 740mm wide superlight carbon bar gets 9° of backsweep and is said to tip the scales at just 225g. The standard Fraser iC SLs will come spec’ed on Scott’ World Cup Scale & Spark, but this special edition will be aftermarket only through Scott dealers in very limited numbers.
But wait, what’s that on Nino’s shiny new bar…
Nino’s updated SRAM eTap Eagle wireless prototypes
Yeah, so it looks after last week when we got exclusive detailed, up close shots of the new eTap Eagle wireless shifter, SRAM has dialed back the secrecy at the races a bit. I mean you can’t race without the shifter, right?
So now we get a close look at Nino’s wireless Eagle eTap shifter. For the most part it looks just like Malene Degn’s. Although the mounting bracket here is not black anodized. That actually makes it easier to see the modular construction (see that bike pic above too. as always, click to enlarge.)
It’s very clearly Matchmaker compatible, but Shurter is using it with its own clamp, possibly because of how far away from the grip he has located his brake lever.
Besides seeing that Nino has the latest & greatest wireless Eagle eTap shifter, we see he gets a rear derailleur update as well. Gone is the machined & clear anodized aluminum prototype he was racing at the first & second World Cups. No more reference to Blackbox on this black ano rear mech that looks ready to hit the market.
Getting a closer look we can see the derailleur cage’s locking mechanism, main return spring, and of course the standard modular eTap battery. One curious thing on Nino’s bike is F.D. lettering on the battery that we haven’t seen before. Is that perhaps a reference to a front derailleur specific battery pack? Electronic front derailleurs are said to require higher energy load to shift, but used less often. Is this maybe a lighter, race-only battery pack?
All in all the fancy new team edition color-matched carbon bar and new wireless XX1 Eagle eTap drivetrain treated Schurter well enough for a third place in Friday night’s short track XCC race. We’ll see how he fares on Sunday’s main event.
