Super Squadra

It’s hard to believe that 20th Century Fox’s executives hated Star Wars upon their first viewing. Star Wars legend has it that some of the board of directors fell into a deep slumber during their first viewing in beautiful Century City, CA. Death Star, R2-D2,  The Force, que? However, during the 40 or so years between that fateful viewing, much has been changed. The Death Star has since been destroyed, R2-D2 is serving out retirement in peaceful Naboo, and The Force has now been converted into a tangible form, Sram Force. Though often forgotten due to older brother Sram Red, Sram Force has a distinct price advantage with negligible form sapping weight penalty. Zero loss in shifters, new graphics, and material upgrades to quite nearly the whole package makes for a group that passes all 100 rules for bike set up, aesthetics. On the road the components felt eager thanks to Bicycle Sport Shop’s expert mechanics, never missing a shift or feeling anything like a second tier group.



Notable features

-Extra 2 teeth in rear cassette when compared to our former red cassettes.

-New million dollar Sram factory chain lube, which made for the quietest Super Squadra team ride, “Of All Time”.

-2150 grams for the group

-Stealth graphics

-Zero Loss in both shifters.

Don’t be daft. The dark side uses Red (lightsabers). Choose Sram Force.

It’s inevitable, over the course of a racing season, we go through a lot of gear. We break chains and flat tires. Our bar tape tears away. Even the highest quality carbon parts crack. Gears machined from solid titanium wear thin. Some of this occurs from the blunt force of a crash, but much of it is simply due to the tens of thousands of miles we ride our bikes over the course of a year.

Similarly, because of the immense, and entirely enjoyable, stress we put our bodies through racing bikes, they start to break down too. Sore throats linger. Knees and hips and backs start to ache regularly. The abrasions of a crash don’t disappear as quickly.

Sometimes, the pain doesn’t entirely go away. Most athletes, when asked about their injury history, can describe a body part they hurt and the exact amount of time it cost them (frequently to the day) from participating in the sport they love. Often, the injury lingers. It comes back when we push ourselves too hard, or spawns pain in another, even more frustrating way.

When we went looking for sponsors for Super Squadra last year, we approached businesses we felt would provide a valuable service to the cycling community. Thus, when ProloAustin agreed to come on as a primary sponsor, we were overjoyed—Dr. Fullerton and his excellent staff help athletes heal, completely.

Dr. Fullerton is one of the nation’s leading experts on regenerative medicine. Simply put, regenerative medicine focuses on using the bodies own healing capacity to treat injuries. Soft tissue injuries—which include muscle, ligament, and tendons, and are the most common amongst endurance athletes—are incredibly responsive to regenerative medicine, especially in cases where surgery or steroid shots prove ineffective.

So, what exactly is regenerative medicine? When you injure yourself, your body starts a healing process. Often, because we start to use the injured body part too soon, or because the injury was severe, we don’t heal properly. The body part continues to hurt. Dr. Fullerton, through the use of regenerative medicine, encourages the body to restart the healing process and continue it until the body part is fully functional.

This process starts with an evaluation at the ProloAustin office. Similar to any practitioner, Dr. Fullerton asks the patient about the circumstances and history of the injury. Then, he uses a unique device to aid in diagnosis. Dr. Fullerton’s skill and technique with the ultrasound machine is akin to x-ray vision. By pressing the machines wand against the injury, he can see individual muscle fibers, the attachment points of ligaments, and joint tendons. As he watches the body part move, he’s able to see small tears and abnormalities. We often wonder what it is underneath our skin that’s causing pain. Dr. Fullerton shows us.



After diagnosing the injury, Dr. Fullerton will present a couple treatment options. The most common is prolotherapy, or prolo, the namesake of his practice. Prolotherapy involves injecting the injured body part with a simple solution of sugar water and mild anesthetic. The injection spurs the injured area to produce growth factors that lead to healing. The treatment typically involves more than one injection and healing comes over time—typically a couple months. I know this, because I had prolotherapy on a frayed ligament in my knee three years ago. I didn’t necessarily notice how much better I felt. More accurately, I noticed that when I did things that used to hurt, like riding over three hours, it didn’t anymore.

The injections themselves do hurt, a bit. The area feels mildly bruised and achy afterward, but typically passes after a half day or so. Exercise helps. Don’t take IB Profen. With prolotherapy, inflammation is your friend.

The other treatment, which is newer and causes a bit more discomfort, but significantly reduces healing time, is platelet rich plasma treatment, or PRP. When he’s treating patients with PRP treatment, Dr. Fullerton draws a small amount of the patients own blood, spins it in a centrifuge to remove the red blood cells and plasma component, then re-injects it into the injured area.

It sounds pretty wild, I know, and Dr. Fullerton agrees, but the treatment has proven incredibly effective. “What would often take up to five prolotherapy shots to heal, can often be cured with a single PRP treatment,” Dr. Fullerton says. PRP treatments have become popular with pro athletes, who are often at the forefront of quick injury treatments, and have successfully used them to recover in time for important competitions.

“The primary candidates for regenerative medicine treatments are people with knee and back issues, people who have an injury that never fully healed, and people who’s injury healed to the point where it was functional, but caused an imbalance and subsequent injury in another part of their body,” says Dr. Fullerton.

The biggest misconception, Dr. Fullerton says, is that the treatment will hurt. While there is some mild discomfort (and I’m speaking from personal experience) it’s never anywhere near as painful as the actual injury.

If you have a chronic injury that keeps you from training and competing at the level you’d like, give Dr. Fullerton a call or visit the ProloAustin website to learn more. We’re proud to have ProloAustin as a sponsor, and sincerely hope the cycling and endurance sports communities takes advantage of the services they offer.

For all of the excitement surrounding alternative fuels, I decided to follow trend with a bit of testing. However, the evidence that going green, or in this case red(cherry) and blue (blue raspberry), did not point towards a viable source of energy for the future hot and humid bike rides.

On MLK Day weekend, January 17-19th, the Super Squadra elite cycling team, sponsored by Bicycle Sport Shop, will host a cycling camp for Masters and Junior cyclists. To sign up for the camp please visit the online registration. The camp flyer and the team contact information are available through the links on the right hand side of this page. Below are five frequently asked questions about the camp. Each question is individually answered by a Super Squadra team member.

Question: Who is this camp geared toward?

David Wenger: As a junior who trashed a beautiful Schwinn Paramount during my first season of racing because I didn’t know how to take the initial corner of a criterium, I can personally attest to the benefits of a professionally run cycling camp. Riding is fun. Racing requires skill—and at 190 heartbeats per minute, a large amount of concentration.

We are offering the Super Squadra Scouting Camp for junior cyclists who envision themselves racing at the collegiate, Under-23, even professional levels of the sport, as well as Masters cyclists striving to achieve their personal best, whether that’s entering your first race, winning the local group ride, or wearing a national championship jersey. Of course, both male and female cyclists are welcomed.

Question: How will this camp benefit me as a road cyclist and racer?

Phil Wikoff: The participants of Super Squadra Scouting Camp will gain insight into every facet of road cycling and racing—from diet and nutrition to handling skills and team tactics. Saturday’s SAG (support and gear) ride on the quiet country roads outside of Austin, will give camp attendees the opportunity to converse casually with Super Squadra team members, special guest lecturers, and fellow camp members, while putting in essential winter base miles. The group will ride in a pro-style, two-by-two paceline with the safety and convenience of a follow vehicle. Distances varying from two to five hours will cater to cyclists of differing ability levels.

Sunday’s Masters and Monday’s Junior seminar sessions will offer camp participants a chance to learn from top national and international cyclists. Camp members can anticipate both informational lectures (like how to properly prepare for a key event) and entertaining stories (such as when proper preparation leads to a national championship).

During the closed course, afternoon skills session at the Driveway racetrack, camp attendees will put classroom knowledge to real world use. On a safe, yet dynamic course, riders will receive individual instruction on race skills such as proper bike handling, efficient pack riding, timing attacks, and sprinting form. Each and every camp participant will leave with the confidence to ride and race in any situation.

Question: Is the Super Squadra Scouting Camp a tryout for the team?

Ian Dille: The purpose of the Super Squadra Scouting Camp is to strengthen the cycling community as a whole—to help develop good cyclists into great cyclists. We are not immediately looking to add riders to our roster, nor are we looking to recruit racers from other teams. We look forward to familiarizing ourselves with camp participants, learning their strengths and weaknesses and offering them valuable feedback.

Question: What if I can’t attend all of the Super Squadra Scouting Camp activities?

Steven Wheeler: Super Squadra Scouting Camp participants may attend any portion of the camp. Of course, we highly encourage full participation. Each day will offer different opportunities for cyclists to improve their fitness, racing knowledge, and skill. Saturday’s SAG ride will accommodate both Masters and Junior Scouting Camp attendees. The seminar and skills portion of the camp will occur on Sunday for Masters cyclists and on Monday, a school holiday, for Juniors.

Question: What can junior cyclists learn from the Super Squadra Scouting Camp?

Alan Ting: The opportunity to race with teammates who have experience at the professional level of the sport helped me develop into a more well rounded rider. I realized that racing is about more than fitness and sheer athletic ability. It’s about teamwork, from properly executing a lead out train to helping chase down a break-a-way. I let go of my individual desire to win every race to put together a winning combination for the team.

Dear Mr. Serotta,

Ian Dille here. I’m the former Kodak Gallery-Sierra Nevada pro for whom you built a custom Ottrott ST in 2005. You might remember that bike. It was an amazing blend of carbon fiber and Colorado Concept titanium tubing. It also had a custom green and yellow paint job with bright red Serotta decals. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to ride that bike much. I spent most of that year battling knee problems and was relegated to promotional duties rather than racing.



That’s how I ended up at your Serotta open house in Saratoga Springs, New York. I met hundreds of die-hard Serotta owners there. I heard Davis Phinney and Ron Keifel talk about their glory days back in the1980s, winning Tour de France stages on the initial steel creations you built for 7-Eleven. I helped lead a 62-mile ride through the Appalachian foothills past some of your previous factories, and I toured your current shop—a bustling warehouse of precision CNC machinery and artisan-like frame builders.

Now that the knee problems have cleared up and I’m racing again, somehow I was lucky enough to find myself riding one of your latest creations, the HSG. The name, which stands for High Speed Geometery, may lack the imagery of your custom models such as the MeiVici—but it couldn’t be more fitting for how we ride our bikes. Fast.

This year we’ve raced our bikes in the mountains of west Texas, across choppy chip and seal roads cutting across the wind blown plains, and at blistering crit speeds through corners riddled with potholes. In every instance, the bike has excelled.



The thing I enjoy most about your bikes, Ben, is the ride quality. Whether it’s a five-hour training ride or 90-mile road race, the HSG soaks up road chatter better than a double thick chamois—keeping my back, shoulders, hands, and feet feeling fresh. The compliant RoadMax seat stays slope gently from the seat tube to the rear wheel, while the S-Bend chainstays, developed in 1984 specifically for Davis Phinney, America’s most prolific sprinter, maintain rear end stiffness.

In fact, the HSG is one of the stiffest and lightest bikes you’ve ever built. It laughs in the face of the torsional forces put out during mass gallops to the line or while rocketing up 15-percent grades. Because your company manufacturers its own carbon fiber, rather than outsourcing to factories over seas, you’re able to maintain stringent control over the design and production process. The TC2 Torsion Core tubing used in the HSG is some of the strongest and most durable carbon fiber you’ve ever used on a Serotta bicycle.

Ben, I’m sure people tell you your bikes are amazing all the time. I’m also sure you never tire of hearing it. Simply put, we absolutely love our sleds. I know racers tend to say this about whichever bike is currently underneath them, but this is without a doubt the best bike I’ve ever ridden.

Thanks for sponsoring our team.

Zipp-tastic: A fitting adjective to describe Super Squadra’s physics defying Zipp 404 and 999 wheelsets. Forget wind cheating, rather, these hoops are competition cheating. Zipp describes it as “Speed Weaponry.” I less artfully sum it up as “Why not line up with the best?”

Zipp invests countless dollars into the sole goal of making a bike go faster—and they’ve been doing so since 1988, beginning with two discs, and pioneering the tri-spoke just a year later. Only three years after their creation, Zipp claimed their first Rainbow Jersey.

Zipp 404-1258grams $2100msrp


Bet enough history, lets talk proven and tested speed. The first time a cyclist moves from that 40lb cruiser to a svelte new roadie, they enter another realm. One where accelerations seem instant, and cornering ever more confident. The moment you hit the throttle on Zipp’s dimpled 404s, you experience that same euphoria. Perhaps bells won’t ring during your first outing. The Roman calvary may not roll in. But you can expect quite nearly everything else. For reasons that can be explained you will be ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’ or rather ‘Swifter, Higher, Stronger” .

The Zipp 404’s accelerate incredibly quickly due to their extreme lightweight (1258 grams) and superior stiffness. Furthermore, once they hit 30 mph, staying there feels almost effortless. The lulling hum is all that’s needed to remind you of the ten-plus watts the rim’s highly engineered shape and dimpling save you. Paired with Zipp’s Tangente tire, and VCLC technology, cornering can be put into a rather dangerous perspective—for your competition, that is. The buttery hubs equipped with either “basic” Swiss bearings or a full ceramic upgrade, along with Sapim bladed spokes top off an already amazing wheelset.

Overall the Zipp 404s, originally designed for time trialing yet nearly immune to crosswinds, continue to score high in all real and laboratory testing. Quick, stunningly light, and undeniably aerodynamic, they are truly the holy grail of modern carbon tubulars. Finally, Zipps new Carbon Bridge technique of binding carbon at the top of the rims side walls will keep these rockets rolling and rolling.

Summary: Stiffness and lightness paired with a 58mm deep dimpled rim, makes for a perfect do everything wheelset. The cassette body can be swapped between the three main component groups, making them even more versatile. As a special touch, Team Garmin Decals are also available (we expect Super Squadra decals in the near future).

Dimpled rim

Durable and multi-system compatible hub



Zipp 999-1585 grams, $2500msrp


World champ pedigree

Mavic’s veritable monopoly on high end track wheelsets may be over. Enter the Zipp’s 999s, which offer all the performance at…wait for it, half the cost. They may be spotted under a Super Squadra TT rig one day and hitting the boards the next, but don’t be confused, it really is the same wheelset. Zipp has created a hub system that swaps from road to track in literally 60 seconds. Stable in crosswinds, light enough for rollers, and stiff enough to avoid annoying brake rub; the 999s simply can’t disappoint. Once paired with Zipp’s 21mm Tangente tubular these wheels are over 80 seconds faster than a 32 spoke rim over 40k. The 999s beg for speed.

For me, the true benefits of Zipp’s 999s show on the track where a chink in any wheelset’s armor will quickly be revealed. Something that feels great on the road, can turn to garbage once paired with a fixed gear. A good track wheelset is all about the rear hub. Lesser hub systems lead to all sorts of trouble, including an unsecure grip to the frames horizontal dropouts. Zipp solves this problem with solid 15mm bolts and a thick steel axle where weight is not a primary concern; forming a secure, worry free system.


Once converted to a fixed gear set up, the undeniable bond between the rider and machine is formed. Zipp 999s do it all: Scratch, Points, or even quad busting Killermeters. The 999s are reliable in all race situations. Having ridden the gold standard of track wheels, Mavic’s $5000 iO and rear disc, I have come to truly appreciate the best of the best. But what amazes me is that Zipp can deliver an equal wheel set at half the price. I may only weigh 130lbs, but now that I finally have nearly equal wattage to GB’s star World Champion female sprinter Victoria Pendleton, I will continue trying to find their limits.

Summary: Zipp’s 999s give great benefits to all riders looking for the worlds fastest wheelset. Ability to be used on both the road and track minimizes cost for many riders, while versatility on the boards saves time between events.

Zimple