Blog

Not one, but two Olympic Golds. Are we dreaming?

• Grace Brown puts on the ride of her life to win Olympic Gold
• Australian Team Pursuit Team win Gold and take the World Record

We’ve had a lot of success since the inception of Sync Ergonomics back in 2018. We’ve seen Plappy grow from a young kid racing track, all the way to the biggest stage in the world. Our equipment has won countless Aussie Titles, won World Tour races, and been used at the Tour de France.

But, winning Olympic Gold with the Australian National Team - that’s special.

We had a handful of riders using our equipment: Grace Brown, Luke Plapp and the Team Pursuit Squads.

The Tech

Both the Aussie TP squad, and Grace Brown’s Gold winning bikes were equipped with Aerobar Four. Just looking at them, you can see that they are no ordinary Aerobar. There has been months - years - of research and development behind this tech.

While we’re not going to reveal all of the details, there are a couple of bits that we can allude to.

Grace’s Aerobar Four

Grace Brown’s ride in Paris was magical. Winning Olympic Gold is always going to be a special day, winning Olympic Gold by over ninety seconds is nuts. It was the perfect ride, on a very messy day.

For the Elite Women, the Paris course wasn’t just a race of power, or aerodynamics. It was a race of skill. The rain poured, and some of the favourites were like Bambi on Ice. Not Grace. Nothing could spoil Golden Grace’s day.

There has been an awful lot of time put into Grace’s Aerobar Four. It’s fair to say that there’s nothing on the market remotely close to what she has. We’ll go into more details this winter on Project Grace.

Aussie Team Pursuit Aerobar Four

The new Factor Hanzo track bike received an awful lot of attention with its launch at the Tour down Under. The radical design was made in conjunction with AusCycling, and seems to borrow some design inspiration from GB’s Hope/Lotus machine.

The front-end of the Hanzo is a unit designed by Sync Ergonomics, and features our iconic 3D printed titanium finish. With the TP boys breaking the World Record and winning Australia’s first Gold Medal in the event since 2004, there was even more attention to the bike. So, what can we say? Nothing really, but when you’re nudging speeds of 70kph and the margins are being measured in thousandths of a second to the other team, aerodynamics comes to the forefront…

The Riders

Sam Welsford. Kell O’Brien. Oliver Bleddyn. Conor Leahy.

Four names that will go into cycling’s history books. Four names, with that Olympic Gold, have achieved sporting immortality.

Olympic Gold is special. It may only be 3:40:730 on the stopwatch, but it’s a lifetime of work.

Plappy

Luke, Paris didn’t go to plan, but we all saw the level you were at.

Up to the first time-check, Luke was sitting second overall. He was up on his power targets and feeling comfortable. He was one of many riders who were caught out by the wet Paris roads, and crashed hard, causing him to spend a night in hospital.

Four years to LA, Luke will be back.

Featured Products

- Aerobar Three

- Aerobar Four

- Driveline Ecosystem

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About the Author

Joe Laverick’s cycling introduction was via the British time-trial scene, since starting the sport, he has been all about speed. He’s a freelance writer and privateer racer who mixes road, time trial and gravel racing. To this day, he remains one of the only riders on the planet to have beat Remco Evenepoel in a time trial.