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By its own admission, Mavic is fashionably late to the aero wheel party. They showed up a decade ago before the chips and dip had even been set out, fled in embarrassment, and have now returned to join a party that’s in full swing.
After helping to lead the charge towards aero wheels in the mid-90’s, the French wheel giant all but fell off the bandwagon, leaving its hallmark aluminum/carbon hybrid rims virtually unchanged for a decade and adding only climbing-oriented, lower-profile wheels to the range. Four years ago, though, internal research and development into wheel aerodynamics ramped back up.
The result is the new CXR80: Mavic’s purple suit, its splashy re-entry into the top of the aero wheel game. It may have stepped away from the top end of the aero world for nearly a decade, but Mavic has returned with a vengeance, claiming that its new 80mm aero tubulars beat the best available — faster than Zipp’s 808 Firecrest and faster than Hed’s Stinger 9.
Read more: Velonews.com