It appears that Cannondale has an all-new gravel bike in the works, and one that could potentially become the brand's 'race focussed' gravel bike.
Ted King, former road pro turned gravel racer, is a Cannondale-sponsored athlete and he was spotted aboard what looks to be a new bike during Saturday's Unbound Gravel 200, a race which is fast earning itself a reputation for new tech, since Quinn Simmons was also spotted at the race aboard what appears to be a new Trek Checkpoint.
King's bike, complete with Cannondale logo on the down tube, strikes a similar silhouette to the brand's Topstone, but the bike is notably void of the leaf-spring pivots on the seat tube, and the seat stays are angled higher and don't appear to bend forwards as they do on the brand's existing gravel bike.
Despite the amplified media coverage of the race, the remoteness of the race route means images of the bike are unfortunately sparse, but it's apparent from this photo that the bike doesn't currently exist in Cannondale's lineup.
It seems to meld together aspects from elsewhere in Cannondale's range, with dropped seatstays looking like the SuperSix, but the headtube and fork looking more like the gravel-friendly Topstone.
With the Topstone - a gravel bike with 'soft-tail' suspension courtesy of a leaf-spring design - already existing in Cannondale's lineup, our expectation is that this bike is a stiffer, more race-ready option that could fill the (admittedly small) void between the Topstone and the brand's Super-X cyclo-cross bike.
With the UCI's list of approved frames and forks recently gaining two new SuperSix models, the EVO CX and the EVO SE, we can only conclude that this bike is one of those. The alternative is that this could in fact be a replacement for the Super-X, which remains unchanged for almost five years.
