Bars made in Canada

When Rob Mulder whirls around the Burnaby Velodrome, his 6’5″, 230-lb frame is hard to miss. His wheel is great to be on because running in his draft is not unlike being behind a Kenworth truck on nitrous. I, with my no-twitch body, would always fight to secure his wheel. What a rush clocking well over 60 km/h behind the big man. But every time I’d try to come around, it was like the late Miss Katrina of New Orleans fame hitting me in the face. I would fail every time.

Mulder’s passion for the track and its hardware doesn’t stay in the velodrome. His day-to-day gig is running Roberts Composites, a small company in North Vancouver that designs and builds almost anything out of carbon fibre. One of his recent projects is tied with the Canadian track team and their continued improvement under the guidance of Richard Wooles, the national coach.

Once Wooles’s gang of rapid riders were really performing well in the international scene roughly four years ago, he called upon Mulder to come up with some real aerodynamic innovations in handlebar design.

“I got to know Richard though Cycling B.C. because my kids were juniors there,” Mulder says. “He had seen that I had made handlebars for my kids and myself. He thought they were really neat.”

Soon after, Mulder started developing prototypes for Travis Smith and Zach Bell. In 2008, Bell started collecting hardware at the international level with his hands grabbing onto Mulder’s handiwork in the process. Mulder’s early designs were so successful that he had calls from some of the mainstream aero-bar makers about using his innovative ideas to build prototypes for them.

“The integrated track bars that I had made for Travis were wing-shaped,” Mulder says. “They were the first wing-shaped sprint bars. Now, some of these innovations are being picked up by other companies.”

In the year leading up to the London Olympic Games, Mulder worked very closely with the women’s team pursuit squad and Clara Hughes for her time-trial race while continuing the development of bars for Bell’s mass-start events. Mulder tailored the bars to each rider’s dimensions then painted the pieces a patriotic white and red livery. The end products are not only fast, efficient bars, but are so cool looking you could have them hung in the National Gallery.

At this past summer’s Olympics, the women nabbed the bronze in the team pursuit, but their time was two seconds faster than that of the sliver-winning U.S. squad. The only team faster was that of Great Britain, a country with a larger budget for equipment and training. There is something very satisfying about beating nearly all the world with a home-grown creation.

Another project of Mulder’s that I’m involved with is the design and construction of custom carbon frames. A track bike we built was used by Denise Schindler of the German national team in the 3,000 m women’s pursuit in the Paralympics. While she qualified with the third fastest time, she just missed the podium in the final. It seems other countries are catching on to our Canadian design. Quite the compliment, eh?