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The Connecticut-based bike-maker will be running ‘The Six13 Challenge’ throughout the Sea Otter Classic, inviting riders to pit their bike against the Six13 in a weight comparison.
Any rider with a lighter bicycle will win a Saeco team jersey. The first 613 riders who fail the challenge will each receive a Six13 waterbottle for participating.
"Our Six13 models may well be the lightest production bikes available anywhere, so they’re going to be tough to be beat," said Cannondale’s ommunications director Tom Armstrong.
"Hard-core riders love to get the lightest frames possible and trick them out with the latest lightweight parts, but we’ll go head-to-head with anyone willing to step up to the scale."
Armstrong said the Six13 displayed at Sea Otter will be a production model equipped with Campagnolo Record components. Cannondale will also offer the Six13 frame with a Shimano Dura Ace package and a Campagnolo Centaur gruppo.
The Cannondale Six13 frame weighs 2.5 pounds (1,150 grams), and is offered in 12 frame sizes. In development for two years, the new Cannondale has been road and race-tested for more than 18 months.
The Six13 is named for its carbon fibre top, down and seat tubes (carbon is number six in the periodic chart), and its aluminum tube clusters and rear triangle (aluminium’s atomic number is 13).
The Six13 made its public debut at the 2003 Tour de France, where an advanced prototype of the new design was race-tested by Gilberto Simoni of the Cannondale-sponsored Saeco team. Simoni rode the bike to an impressive victory in the Tour’s 14th stage – one of the toughest of the entire Tour – despite the fact that mechanics had been forced to add weights to the bike in order to satisfy the UCI’s 15-pound minimum weight rule. Cannondale launched a semi-serious "Legalize My Cannondale" appeal to the UCI in protest of the rule.
