Cannondale releases new Scalpel | Longer, slacker and slimmer – with more travel
Every Olympic year brings a flurry of new XC whips to choose from and today Cannondale broke the internet with the official release of their revised Scalpel.
Cannondale says the bike is designed to give the best racers in the world every possible chance of victory and for those of us who don’t have Olympic dreams – it’s simply another option to ride a faster and ‘more-sendy’ XC bike. The revisions are not dramatic, but there are many that add up to what is promissed to be a far more capable package.
According to my source — an industry insider who happens to be close to Alan Hatherly — for more than a year Alan has been running 120mm of travel on his race bike. More recently, the eagle-eyed amongst you may have seen Candice Lill racing the Cape Epic aboard the new rig. Word is Candice was ‘blown away by it’s speed’.
The new Scalpel is a 120mm travel bike. That’s front and rear. There are no other travel options available. On launch and as I understand, stock is not deep – in any region. Here in South Africa, the 2024 Scalpel 2 model is available right now. That’s a RockShox SID Select+ fork, Fox Transfer Dropper, SRAM T-Type GX AXS drivetrain bike with Hollowgram carbon wheels. Retail pricing is aggressively low, at R120k. In June 2024, the higher end models will land locally.
Looking at the geometry, the designers have slackened the head angle out to 66.6-degrees, steepened the seat tube angle to 75.5-degrees and increased the BB drop a little. Oh, the reach numbers are around 10-15mm longer per frame size and the bikes also all have short stems. From a dynamic geometry point of view, those changes will help the rider ‘sit into’ the bike a lot more, as opposed to on top of it.
The rear suspension has had some changes to pivot points but the layout is very similar. Cannondale has kept the 4-bar Horst Link design with the Formula One-inspired Flex Pivot, which saves weight and improves small bump sensitivity and climbing grip. A more obvious tweak that Cannondale says shaves weight is a slimmer down tube. All in all, the bike looks amazing. Stay tuned for another sendy review. //
