Review: No. 22 Great Divide

The Great Divide, by the Toronto-based No. 22 Bicycle Company, has a titanium frame. Mike Smith and Bryce Gracey, the two men behind the company, designed the bike. When it debuted in late 2012, Lynskey Performance Designs in Chattanooga, Tenn., made the frame. In October 2013, Smith and Gracey moved production to Saratoga Frameworks in New York. They were caught off guard when the manufacturing company closed in March of this year. Smith and Gracey’s solution? Hire four of the out-of-work Saratoga employees, get a space in a 150-year-old former textile mill in Johnstown, N.Y., fill it with the necessary tools and keep making bikes. In the middle of June, the first round of No. 22-manufactured bikes went out the door.

The 2014 Great Divide I tested was an elegant matte grey with polished logos. For more bling, but tasteful bling, you can opt for the high-polish blue anodized finish. The spec on my bike is as North American as No. 22 could make it: Thompson stem, handlebars, seatpost and seat collar; Chris King headset and PressFit 30 bottom bracket; and Enve Road 2.0 1.25″ tapered fork.

“What we are trying to accomplish with the Great Divide is a 9/10ths race bike,” Smith said. “There are a lot of ‘10/10ths’ race bikes that are super aggressive: they have a lot of weight over the front end and the steering is very quick. The bike maybe works in a race, but even in a race it wears you down. Certainly our riders will race their bikes, but nine times out of 10 you‘re on a training ride or a group ride. If the geometry is aggressive, it kind of sucks. So we dialed things back just a little bit. Compared to a race bike, we run a little bit more trail, 58 to 60 mm. We have one or two more millimetres in chainstay length.” The frame also has a bottom-bracket drop of 75 mm. Smith jokes that it won’t help you in a crit, but the bottom-bracket position makes the bike stable, while still allowing the bike to have lively, not floppy, steering.

I definitely noticed these little changes out on the road. Long rides out on patchy country roads didn’t leave me feeling bashed around. With the 10/10th race bikes that Smith spoke of, I’m usually more inclined to dodge the rougher stuff. With the Great Divide, I grew pretty laissez-faire with the bumps. The frame, and no doubt the 25c tires with latex tubes, did a great job of keeping things smooth.

When things got feisty in the group, the bike was still able to perform. It was great on the flats when the goal was to be first to the sign or to simply lay down some hurt on each other. The 2014 version of the Great Divide has new titanium tubes; the fat down and top tubes are proprietary to No. 22. These frame parts cut down the weight from the previous year’s model, almost 100 g in just the head tube. The tubes bring stiffness to where you need it. In those sprints and on rolling hills, there was excellent power transmission through the machine.

You can order a Great Divide through the company’s website in stock geometry. For something custom, you can approach one of No. 22’s dealers to work out a bike that’s tailored to you. Either way, you’ll end up with a great bike that will have you looking to add extra kilometres to your ride.