If you have been anywhere near a cycling publication in the past week you’ll be aware of this little newsflash – I’ve seen 4 or 5 articles on it already and friends who know my leanings have alerted me as well. Colnago has bucked the trend and their flagship C68, realizzato a mano in Italia, is now on offer as a rim-brake frame set.

There are a couple of things here that make me do a double take here: first, good on someone for catering to ‘refined’ cyclists who might prefer rim brakes; and second, you blink and the whole world can change like that. Only 3 years ago Pogacar won the Tour de France on rim brakes and now you (nearly) can’t buy a top-end bike with them…the Colnago V4 he rides in the Tour included.

The one concession to modernity that Colnago has made is that these new framesets are electronic groupset only. Nobody’s perfect, I guess.

I suppose that Colnago, like Campagnolo with their mechanical groupsets, are hoping that there is a market segment out there who have the money and want to stay relatively simple with their hobby. And you will need money for this. The C68 frame-set costs €6750.