PRO CYCLIST INSIGHT: Ben O’Connor REVIEWS his Van Rysel RCR Pro (how good is it REALLY?)

I spent two days riding with pro cyclist for Decathlon Ag2r, Ben O’Connor, right before he headed off to the 2024 Giro d’Italia – and spoke with him about his new Van Rysel RCR Pro and XCR race bikes. Affordable and performance oriented, but how good are these brand new offerings from Decathlon, really?

A big thank you to Ben for his time in helping make this video possible!

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00:00 Intro
01:27 Quick chat
02:01 Van Rysel XCR time trial bike
03:25 Custom TT aerobars
06:23 Van Rysel RCR Pro
08:47 Swiss Side 500 wheels
09:40 Integrated handlebars
10:19 Gearing for races v. training
13:33 Outro

This video was filmed in Andorra, where many professional cyclists live and train. Riders like Jack Haig, James Knox, Pavel Sivakov, Luke Durbridge, Sepp Kuss, Robert Gesink, Julian Alaphilippe, Carlos Verona, George Bennett and others use the mountains of Andorra to train with teams such INEOS-Grenadiers, Jumbo Visma, UAE Team Emirates, EF-Education Pro Cycling. I personally have no affiliation with Decathlon or Van Rysel bikes.

there’s confirmation of the intermediate Sprint at Mercier Ben o taking the three points ahead of wellin and shackman wasn’t really contested because this du had go for it he’s coming up and over the top Theon have set the pace to sort of slingshot here they they look the most Lively on the bikes at the moment rock and roll I I think you you might say but he’s been able tojoy last couple of kilm and here comes benan taking St with him a gap up and this is good for him remember six and four a second still available this to me looks like a concerted effort by Deon Ben Conor has got is being teed up for a bit of Glory here Bri and now as the gradient start to rise Okana has daylight it does ease up and here we go to C look the freshes of all they’re going for it this is for oconor oconor wants as much as he can get there’s the finish line here it is a long winding unwind Conor is Victorious and he wins the tour of Merc What a fine win that was B [Music] [Music] foral all righty welcome to today’s episode of Tristan take video as you can see I’m standing here with Ben o Conor it’s actually about 2 weeks before Ben heads off to the jro although you guys will be seeing this a little bit closer to the jro Ben’s been having a cracking start to the year for 2024 I would say your best start defin best start to the season yeah you’ve had wins at UAE Mercia you just got back from tour of the outs where you were second overall today we’re going to talk through Ben’s bikes not only the bikes as he’s being riding and training on but also the bikes he’s about to ride in the g-ro Italia the bikes have seemed pretty fast so far they are but uh yeah let’s do a run through what you’ve got starting with the time trial bike can you tell us what uh what have we got for the TT bike here yes we got the Ben risle xcr I think I’m running a large frame with suside 800 mil uh Hoops I would say they are absolutely rapid 80 mil 80 mil much um I’ve got a at the moment carbon TI chain ring which is a 58 with a 44 I think on the inside you train on a 58 all the time yeah 5844 yeah especially up here in Andora I think kind of those drag bgy kind of valys you can keep on top of the 58 so I’d say actually in flat races I use a single 60 often but if it’s hilly then I often just St with a 44 58 58 44 or a 60 so with the jro you’ve got two time trials coming up You’ got a flat one into a climb and then you’ve got a sort of undulating will you run the same chain ring set up for both of those no no cuz this uh the first time trial it’s very hard final and a 44 is honestly on the limit for the entering that you use so yeah that’s a 58 44 and then the second time try will be a single 60 pretty sure because I think uh it’s really fast and you hit a lot of the rollers for quite a lot of speed so uh yeah and this bike seems obviously extremely fast we actually went out and rode earlier today Ben put me to the sword I was sitting on and I said I think I was sitting on at 5 WS a kilo for most of the time ever fun sit no it was like being mot paste so the thing’s obviously very very quick tell me what have your what’s your handlebar setup there you’ve got like quite a unique front end in the like yeah so it’s kind of got like a bit of a y shape the new swissside bars that made in in collab with da so they look quite narrow to be honest the cups but they’re custom fit for me who did a mold last year in November so yeah they they’ve been a really nice uh addition I think it just creates a ton more stability they got short ends and I think they’re also forward if that kind of makes sense so the cups aren’t in line with uh with the bar the cups are further forward so kind of can sit a bit further forward on your arm it kind of allows you to kind of roll into that position a little better moving on to then you’ve obviously got some some little whp shifters on there and you’re running a Shimano I believe it’s j 9200 the 12 speed and it’s got the auto shift kind of set up as well and so that means once you get above a certain Cog it shifts automatically to the inside yeah exactly and there’s different ways you can look at the shifters as well instead of just having them at the end with your thumbs you could have had them underneath I kind of just prefer I kind of lay on top with my with my hand so it’s kind of easier just to change like that rather than having a butt sometimes or somewhere lower in the so we’re not going to try and do too much referencing of like previous group sets previous bikes but I did ask you earlier today this is for you guys I did ask Ben about what he thought of being on Shimano after being on Camu for the last few years and you said you’re really happy yeah it’s I mean you know what you’re getting with Shimano it’s uh super reliable I think actually in terms of the time trial bik the shifters don’t have the little end on on doesn’t have that little end on the shifter so you kind of maximize that length to its absolute limit even if it’s half a cenm it’s still half a c cenim further for that you can be um because you’re so tall cuz I’m tall and you can use the limit now and they’ve adjusted the UCI limit for time travel positions for taller people and I think uh that was quite an important thing to to see and to to maximize yeah also kudos to fish to shano if you’re helping out with that just a couple of other things let’s talk about saddle tires other details on on the TT bike uh tires I think you often run 25s with 800 Wheels cuz the the rim actually isn’t crazy wide at the top so the front tire with the 2526 is actually faster than running a 28 and of on the back we run a 28 okay so you’re run smaller on the front for the aerodynamics yeah exactly yeah interesting um what else can I can I say that’s kind of about it you know there’s always new products and and tires coming out but uh yeah that’s kind of interesting thing I didn’t really know anything about the different size tires from front and rear but apparently makes quite a difference did you do wind tunnel testing or did you do track testing no we did quite a lot of track testing we did this in November I think we also did touch of testing in January so it seems like everything is very good the CDA is quite low at the moment for for my height and pretty happy with it and I think it’s uh it’s a good package overall yeah cool it looks very fast it feels very fast felt very fast when I was trying to sit behind you today so yeah cool all right we’ll just have a a brief pause and then we’ll get onto the road [Music] bike all righty so now we’ve gone out for a little a little road ride maybe not we did do our road ride earlier today let’s talk about the bike that everyone I think wants to know about and that is the van risle road bike they brought this bike out brand new for this year it’s extremely fast from everything that everyone can see and tell you’ve obviously had good results on it I have no affiliation with Van rice or decathlon or anything but I’m intrigued by this bike because it’s a very good price point as well first and foremost let’s talk about the bike and then we’ll talk about what you think so yeah so first all it’s the van risal uh RCR running a size large they were pretty in depth with how they went about creating uh you know the first prototypes cuz I think they kind of bought every World Tour frame they tested every single one in the Wind Tunnel we went and saw actually Toon’s kind of a factory in Leo and it’s pretty interesting seeing the other testing to with uh to do with rigidity uh compliance all those kind of things so it’s pretty cool to see then the final product that’s um that’s coming out it’s kind of like a road bike AA bike it’s kind of like a between two and clearly from the wind tunnel data that we’ve seen it’s up there you know in that top five top three that includes other era bikes from other companies so it was pretty cool to see all that so yeah loving kind of uh being on it it seems especially at high speed it goes very very well I think just the package in total you know with swide are leading aerodynamicist and they uh that makes some pretty excellent Wheels um so kind of just everything kind of just come come together quite nicely so it’s been a pleasure to to race on it just need to keep doing what I’m doing right now to be honest and kick on to the Duro just going go well at the Duro so talk me through Wheels groups at like the TT bike I’m guessing yeah I know you’re running Shimano Swiss side what Wheels what are the ssde wheels you’ve got in there yeah so I’m running uh 500 so 50 mil Wheels tubeless tubeless all the time with GP 5000s we often do use as well I think they’re 620s 6 2 mil uh Road uh racing wheels and we use those for a lot of stages stages pretty much less than 2 12,000 M climbing without a hard hard climb the aerodynamics the gain that you get from the extra 10 cm on the on the wheel is pretty crazy so even with gradients up to probably 6% that 600 wheel is probably still a better better choice cuz the way we we race on a 6% client you’re probably doing 26k an hour and if you’re accelerating going you know well over 30 so that aerodynamic kind of part has a huge benefit so it’s been interesting seeing how how much we’ve used those Wheels throughout the year to be honest and the other change I actually I’ve had from last year was uh running 38 mil P bars used to always run 40s and 38 was a bit of a gamble to try something a bit narrower it’s not just to fit through gaps in the Pelon I think it’s just more narrow shoulders I think I just kind of like roll in really well so I’ve actually really enjoyed it and you’ve got a real long stem on there though that’s always been a feature for your bikes because you’re so tall but narrow yeah so it’s got a 140 stem with 38 mil 38 CM width so yeah looks pretty cool actually the hanahar like that all that one piece that one piece cockpit so it actually looks pretty sick to look down on it yeah yeah yeah and then tell talk me through you’ve got a side large frame yeah it’s a large frame and running I think I’m running in general 54 40 chain Rings we do go to 55 often on flat pretty much most flat stages you would probably try to use a 55 if Crosswinds 56 but the ining goes up to a 42 in train you’re on 54 still4 in training yeah exactly and it’s a 40 in still it says how fast bikes are now that people are needing to run a bigger chain ring you need to run the bigger chain R because otherwise you just like I’m on a 53 and behind you today I’m like spinning like crazy you know even for me on a on a um not a specifically aerobike but just a more aerobike and as an amateur cyclist I’m able to go fast enough that I’m spinning out of 53 so for you guys it’s just general frame it’s just the extra frame aerodynamics that really makes the big difference you know you know you have your own aerodynamics as well that make a huge huge thing and if you you look back at uh videos from I don’t know 2005 2010 even 2015 we don’t look the same as uh as they did you know so it’s be interesting to seeing how that has affected the speed and that’s the reason why in the end you need a 54 to be honest yeah orig 55 it’s interesting as well cuz like you think about Kit helmet as you’re saying Wheels now you train on 50 M Wheels you train on fast tires you know everything is just another level and so when it comes to gearing you need to make up for that as well yeah actually tet tires we using tubeless always pretty much I think we run 28s in general all the time Cony G 5000s and when we use the the bigger wheel the 600 often it’s a 26 at the front because it’s uh it’s it’s a little bit better with aerodynamics so similar to the TT bike on the road very similar setup that’s only with the 600 with the bigger Rim wheel with the 500’s no in general they’re they’re touch wi of the room itself so it’s not really necessary uh all righty so just to wrap this up as well cuz it is starting to snow and I’m standing out here in a t-shirt in jacket we actually rolled out earlier it was snowing but then the the bits where we were riding were much more Sunny so that was nice just tell me a couple of final little details um saddle you’ve always run this same physique saddle I’ve run this SLE for the last or three years I reckon um physique andar adaptive kind of saddle and I find that’s that’s really been like a not just a savior but it’s uh I mean it’s really helped me over the last years where I’ve had very very little saddle problems to be honest um this kind adaptive meshy kind of material I don’t know exactly what it is but H it’s yeah it’s just the it’s just the best I know it’s expensive for people but honestly if there’s one thing to put money into it’s the saddle like the one thing to put money into buy a good saddle cuz it’ll uh really changes how you enjoy the bike there’s nothing worse than having a sore ass can I ask you do you know your saddle height off the top of your head I think it’s 82 82.3 did that change when you went from The BMC to this no that’s a dumb question I don’t know why I asked no almost any everything stayed the same I still was running I think actually me with the BMC I was running a 130 stem and I was using a 140 hanab bar Sor the 40 cm hand bar but now I’ve got a 140 stem with a 38 so so that’s the that’s the only change I had from from from the change of bikes and obviously you’ve been very happy with how the bike performs under load like you’ve got really really good results this year you know I mean sprinting descending everything seems to have been exceptional so you’re obviously very happy and I think going into the gro you’re pretty confident hey yeah I mean it’s a pretty complete package you know you’re not really left with any doubt so that’s one of the cool things so you know that especially with the TT bike it’s not little things you have to change last minute it’s dialed it’s ready to go and Hope I’ll be ready to go as well yeah I think you’re ready to go see you last couple of days you’ve been moving very quick cool all righty it’s starting to snow here up in Andora so uh say thank you and we’ll wish Ben all the best for the jro coming very soon hopefully you do well thanks man cheers man thanks guys we’ll see you later see out [Music]