T°Red Bikes is an Italian bike builder whose metal and carbon disc brake road bikes have popped up on our pages over the past year. But a few weeks back they happened to be in Prague where we have our EU HQ, so we had a chance to get a closer look at a few of their newest bikes on our own streets. As cyclocross season was heating up and moving towards the big end-of-season championship races, they were in town with one of their CX Factory Racing team – Czech rider Luboš Pelánek – who is based in Desenzano del Garda, Italy alongside TRed. We got a detailed look at his titanium TRed CrossBeast that he’s been racing around the Elite circuit, plus the details on how you can get one of your own in ti or steel, or even in either metal in its gravel sibling the CamoBeast…
While most of the top cyclocross pros you’ll see on the podium of the World Cups are racing carbon bikes these days, if you look a bit further down the ranks and even at the top of some of the smaller international races you’ll find plenty of modern titanium, steel, and aluminum cross bikes being raced. If you are looking for something a bit more custom than a cookie cutter carbon CX bike, CrossBeast like this ti one belonging to Luboš Pelánek could be the ticket.
The TRed CrossBeast Factory Racing is designed to be a quick-handling, top-level frameset ready to race at the highest level of the discipline. But at the same time it takes the durability and classic ride feel of titanium (or steel) to make it a bike you’ll want to ride not only on race day.
This CrossBeast Titanio gets subtly shaped tubing designed just for cyclocross with a wide slightly flattened toptube, tall downtube and tapered headtube to balance front end stiffness, quick predictable handling with race-day comfort shouldering the bike. TRed’s own full carbon fork and the rear end of the CrossBeast are matched to clear up to a 38mm tire, and both go with growing industry standard 12mm thru-axles.
Its rear end uses tall shaped chainstays for good power transfer, but thin seatstays transitioning into a dropped monostay to take the harshness out of bumpy courses and frozen ground. Stock geometry gives it a high bottom bracket for good off-camber clearance and steep angles for quick handling, but in the end it is custom so TRed will work with you to tube the geometry for your style of riding and racing.
TRed mostly sticks with traditional threaded bottom brackets, but Press Fits are usually an option too. Routing is all internal and modular so can fit to whatever setup you choose. TRed also has a pretty unique parametric frame design software that they use to fine-tune your fit. They start out creating a 3D model of you the rider from a digital scan and image mapping, and use that to work out your ideal geometry.
The TIG welded ti frame is handmade in Italy and gets a simple stock logo paint job over the bead blasted beast patterning, but again more intricate options are available as part of the customization process. This bike is a bit bigger, but a size 51cm ti frame is claimed to weigh just 1490g. In our quick meeting we didn’t get a chance to weigh the bike, but this Czech construction worker we found on the street said you could take his word that it was really light. (I think that translates to any bike under 9 or 10kg, so that might not be a precise unit of bike measurement. He also was fairly amused by the price for just the frame and fork, and then put it down rather gently.)
The CrossBeast is available in both titanium and steel framesets or complete bikes setup for either mechanical or electronic shifting. They always get disc brakes and the new flat mount standard, but can do routing for hydro or mechanical brakes depending on rider preference. This ti CrossBeast Titanio frameset sells for 4800€, while the steel CrossBeast Acciaio frameset version is just 1840€. This black and white CrossBeast Acciaio is the steel race bike of Factory Team racer Mattia Finazzi, recent Lombardia regional champ, who is gearing up for January’s Italian National Championships.
Similar setups to the CrossBeasts are also available in gravel geometries in the bikes’ siblings – the CamoBeasts, even in a singlespeed version as well. Pricing for the smaller diameter tubing CamoBeasts is a bit higher at 4990€ for ti and 1990€ for steel as they add in adjustable rear dropouts, belt-drive compatibility, and more braze-ons for added versatility.
