New Shimano road gear designed to be versatile

Along with the new gear unveiled today for mountain bikers, Shimano also has some high-performance offerings for those who revel on the road. The highlight, announced today in Osaka, Japan, is Shimano’s new SORA R3000, a fully-featured, 9-speed group for sports and fitness riders. With internal cable routing that makes for a cleaner cockpit, lighter shifting, stronger braking, a clean, four arm crankset, and a glossy, black-and-grey finish, the SORA R3000 appears to be a marriage of performance and style.

A big part of the SORA R3000 group’s design strategy, Shimano says, is versatility.

The group’s varying components are meant to be adaptable to different riding styles, with the sleek, lighter four-arm double (FC-R3000, 50-34T) or triple (FC-R3030, 50-39-30T) cranksets following the design aesthetic of the brand’s Dura-Ace 9000. Drop bar-equipped road bikes can take advantage of updated, internally-routed 9-speed STI Dual Control Levers for a cleaner, less busy cockpit, while their flat-handlebar counterparts are the inspiration for a different range of components.

For these bikes, such components include five-arm 2×9 (FC-R3000-CG, 50-34T) or 3×9 cranksets with chain-guards meant to go easy on your pant cuffs. Rapidfire Plus shifters (ST-R3000/30) and Optislck cable-equipped brake levers (BL-R3000) are also features, with the latter delivering a significant increase in rim brake performance—20%, to be exact—over earlier designs. Quick-release cable levers, meanwhile, make wheel changes much simpler.

Like their MTB components, the new road cranksets offered—the 50-34T and the 50-39-30T— can be combined with a wider range of 11-34T cassettes, while also including long-arm front derailleur and a more accommodating rear derailleur. A key characteristic of these cranksets is the addition of two extra teeth over the previous generation of SORA gear, aiding in ramping up the power output needed both for climbing and sprinting. When it comes to braking, Shimano is also expanding its disc brake options, introducing both flat-mounted mechanical disc calipers (BR-RS305) and stainless steel disc brake rotors (SM-RT81-SS/S, RT54-S), both of which can be combined.

Finally, the brand’s new mid-range RX31 disc wheelsets takes its inspiration from the mountain biking world, too, incorporating new 12mm E-THRU technology that offers stronger wheel locking. A new axle, the SM-AX720, enables greater ease of adjustment.

Detailed pricing information will be available on these components in summer 2016.